Paper power: The State rules by files, notices, circulars, orders

Government notices, orders, circulars, tax compliances, each creating an endless paper trail, are on my mind this month. For weeks now, I have been mired in generating reams and reams of paper responses, contributing to the red tape. All this paper has resulted in me living, quite literally, the life of my research. The Indian State has not been referred to as the “Paper State” (to quote from anthropologist Nayanika Mathur) for nothing. Paper, files, orders, notices have been at the heart of my own studies of the Indian State. There is no better mode to understand the State, because this is what makes the State move. So, indulge me, as I am tempted to share with you some vignettes and reflections on the life of the bureaucrat and her peculiar relationship with paper (and what they order) and people.

“I’m just moving from circular to circular and I will follow these instructions in an unquestioning manner.” This is what a frontline bureaucrat said to me some years ago when I interviewed him about his job profile. These circulars, orders, and notices arrive at bureaucrats’ desks (or WhatsApp in the 21st century), quite literally mandating, instructing or “ordering” them to get things done. And this is what shapes their work profile. So wedded is the bureaucrat to the order that often, interpreting the order is often the primary job of the day. “We fought for three hours over whether the circular meant to say the word ‘and’ or ‘or’,” said a schoolteacher I once interviewed! If it is on paper, only then is it real.

Paper in the form of files, circulars, government orders are at the heart of India’s bureaucratic tradition. Its roots trace back to the colonial origins of the modern Indian State. In a fascinating account of the evolution of bureaucratic practices in India, Mathew Hull (2012) traces contemporary India’s bureaucratic obsession with paperwork to the colonial bureaucracy’s deep distrust of local Indian functionaries. Distrust in local government manifested itself in kaghaz raj or ‘document rule’: rule through files and papers. Only through a connection with a piece of paper (a bill, warrant, note, book), argues Hull, could an action be construed as an action.”

Contemporary Indian bureaucracy embraced this colonial passion for kaghaz raj and has actively used “paper” to affirm hierarchy, rules and establish an accountability based on paper performance. Consider this. While studying school reforms in Delhi, my colleagues and I built a database of over 8,000 circulars received by schools in a period of three years. The sheer volume of circulars speaks for itself. But what is more interesting is what the circulars say. They command, they mandate, they threaten, they order officers to get the job done.

When we analysed the language, we found that 70 per cent of our sample circulars used negative, threatening language. Think about what that does – it affirms hierarchy, creates a culture of distrust, and reduces accountability to compliances to paper. This is what scholars Lant Pritchett and Dan Honig call “accounting-based accountability”. Accountability that is reduced to top-down control and compliance. It fuels distrust and inevitably strips officers of a sense of ownership and empowerment toward their jobs. So, it is about “moving from circular to circular”, and for the rest, it’s the bosses who rule.

But the Indian State is remarkably clever about how it deploys its passion for paper, especially when it comes to shaping its relationship with citizens. At one level, it cannot live without it. But when convenient, it uses paper to cast suspicion on citizens and uses its own paper as a tool of coercion. Consider the discourse around the National Register of Citizens in Assam a few years ago. Those in possession of government documents (paperwork that the government had supplied to people) were asked to come forward and have the government “verify” its own documents. This verification, it argued, was necessary because of rampant corruption and poor quality of documentation. In essence, the State was admitting that it doesn’t trust its own documents and used this to cast an eye of suspicion on citizens.

In another instance, at the peak of the Covid lockdown-induced crisis, when the need to provide free food to migrant workers became urgent, the State refused to act without paper. The onus was on citizens to furnish documents to prove their eligibility. Those without ration cards had to apply for e-passes and other paperwork, even though giving grains to anyone who asked for them was what was so urgently needed, amidst a crisis. The passion for paper once again was an instrument of coercion.

But this passion for paper is also the citizens’ only source of power. Transparency of government documents empowers citizens to quite literally see the State and demand accountability. So powerful is the power of paper that when a citizen “applies” through the Right to Information Act to “see” the State, the citizen is quite literally creating a file, which forces the State to answer the citizen. This is true democratic power, even if the State obfuscates in its answers to the Right to Information queries.

And herein lies the power of democracy. The State may distrust (even its own), coerce and obfuscate with its paper. But in a democracy, it is the citizen who has power even over the State’s passion for paper.