Paper short abstract:

This paper traces shifts within the Indian state towards increasing digitisation of Public Distribution Systems (PDS) and ID provision. The paper considers the implications these material changes have for everyday relations between the state, low-level netas (politicians) and those they represent.

Paper long abstract:

This paper traces the effect of shifts within the Indian state towards increasing digitisation of Public Distribution Systems (PDS) and ID provision, a process bound up not only in the construction of the Indian state but also within global processes of technological and ideological change. Specifically, the paper considers the ways in which material changes, which seek a move away from a state bureaucracy shaped through paperwork and documents to a 'rationalised' digital apparatus, have complex implications for everyday relations between the state, low-level netas (politicians) and those they represent. In this context, the emphasis falls onto the practice of sifarish (obtaining a recommendation/ putting pressure on or leaning on someone to get something done), the exercise of which is key to legitimising the authority of local netas and other political actors. However, as avenues of access to the state become increasingly digitised, the ability of netas and others to navigate channels of influence are disrupted, potentially undermining their position in the eyes of those who gave them their votes. The ethnographic setting is the relatively poor and often marginalised Muslim mohallas (neighbourhoods) of the provincial North Indian city of Saharanpur. As such, the paper also considers the ways in which technological change intersects with processes of marginalisation and inclusion/exclusion.