A big cat overthrows the Indian state and establishes a reign of terror over the residents of a Himalayan town. A developmental legislation aimed at providing employment and commanding a huge budget becomes ‘unimplementable’ in a region bedeviled by high levels of poverty and unemployment. Paper Tigerprovides a lively ethnographic account of how such seemingly bizarre scenarios come to be in present day India. This book presents a unique explanation for why and how progressive laws in India can do what they do and not, ever-so-often, what they are supposed to do. On the basis of a meticulous detailing of everyday bureaucratic life on India’s Himalayan borderland, it proposes an ethnographically derived concept – paper tiger – as a modality for the study of the state. It shifts the very frames of thought through which we will henceforth understand the implementation of law and the workings of the developmental Indian state.

Introduction
Chapter 1- A Remote Town: The Paper State
Chapter 2- The State Life of Law
Chapter 3- The Material Production of Transparency
Chapter 4- The Letter of the State
Chapter 5- Meeting one another: Paper Tiger?
Chapter 6- The Reign of Terror of the Big Cat
Conclusion- The State as a Paper Tiger
References
Index

""Provides a unique explanation of the often-paradoxical effects of progressive legislations in India"--Provided by publisher"--