Paper short abstract:

This paper considers how the 'legitimate' claimant is constructed by the state and apprehended by informal workers claiming benefits for silicosis, an occupational disease, in India. This scheme does not require proof of work, and is an emergent negotiation around work, welfare, and ill-health.

Paper long abstract:

This paper considers how 'legitimacy' is constructed, negotiated, and apprehended by doctors, bureaucrats, lawyers, and trade unionists impacted by occupational disease. Through twelve months of participant observation in a trade union and a health clinic in Rajasthan, this paper describes the ethical visions and anxieties that animate the life of a government compensation scheme for silicosis, a lung disease contracted by stone-carvers in my field-site. This government scheme is 'ex gratia', that is, a payment made out of a moral obligation and not a legal one, to workers with a certified diagnosis of silicosis. It marks a fundamental break from the logic of workers' compensation as it requires no proof of employment, in recognition of the fact that almost all workers are employed informally, off the books and for short periods. While 'legitimacy' is intended to be solely parsed through a medical lens, in practice, work history remains a central part of the diagnostic process. Further, silicosis itself is a 'boundary-crossing' illness: it is often concomitant with tuberculosis and other infectious pulmonary diseases. I argue, through my work, that while the bureaucratic imaginary of the 'occupational' illness has allowed for a new kind of politics that attends to informality and precarity, it ultimately limits what kinds of diseases and suffering become legible to the state. I close by considering what the contradictory nature of 'ex gratia' might open up to us, in reckoning with informality and the moral nature of disease under capitalism.