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Thesis ID: CBB001561135

Delhi in the Electrical Age: Technologies of Rule and Rites of Power in India's Capital, 1903--2006 (2008)

Princeton University
Borneman, John
Publication date: 2008
Language: English

Publication Date: 2008
Edition Details: Advisor: Borneman, John
Physical Details: 357 pp.

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Abstract (Summary) This dissertation is a cultural and political anthropology of state formation and economic reform in modern India, based on a historical and ethnographic study of the governance of electricity distribution in Delhi. Electrification has been a hallmark project of the modern state, and electrical power has been in India a site of practical investment, cultural concern, and a sign of state capacity for both colonial and postcolonial governments. Through a local study of the politics of electricity in Delhi, from colonial installations to present-day privatization, changes in the cultural content of state power and historical transformations in ideologies of governance and practices of economic regulation in India are documented and analyzed. Both state and private projects of electrification are examined, following the political history of Delhi from a colonial city, to a national capital, up to its present status as a political laboratory for neo-liberal economic reforms: from temporary electricity installations for a colonial ritual--the Coronation Durbar--in 1903 and the establishment of electric trams and lighting in parts of Delhi by British firms at the same time, through nationalist programs for nation-wide electrification both before and after Independence, and finally to the present-day privatization of electricity distribution in Delhi. The politics of electricity are described in each period, and the routines of governance and ideologies of state--e.g., imperialism and nationalism--that shaped these politics are analyzed. We follow debates over regulation of the electricity sector, citizen demands for access to electricity, and concerns about the impact of technological change on Indian society. Emphasis is placed on the deployment of electricity and electrification as a sign of sovereignty and state power, and on attempts to monopolize electricity both in practice and in discourse. The final section, an ethnographic study of the restructuring of the electricity sector and privatization of electricity distribution in Delhi and the resulting activism based in middle-class neighborhoods of Delhi, documents a novel response to globally-charismatic neo-liberal ideas and programs of privatization in the electricity sector--a response shaped by the legacy of previous Indian projects of electrification. The ethnography traces both state interests and activist responses, and shows that the latter were not anti-privatization, but demanded further privatization through delegation of electrical sovereignty to sub-municipal political organizations. This post-privatization politics, it is argued, represents a popular recognition of--and protest against--an actual increase in local state power achieved through privatization. This historical and ethnographic study offers insights into the role of economic and technological governance in the cultural project of state-formation in twentieth century India, and the transformation of that state in the present. It draws from historical and anthropological understandings of the configurations of power and authority specific to colonial- and national-era governments, and to present-day efforts at reform, to explain the outcome of local projects of electrification in each case. Reciprocally, it employs the politics and rituals of electrification as a lens into the structure and functioning of each of these practices and ideologies of state. It constitutes a history of electrification in Delhi and an anthropology of state power and political ritual in India, and contributes to literatures in the anthropology of the state, the history of colonialism and Indian nationalism, the political and economic aspects of globalization, and the social study of science and technology.

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Description Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 69/10 (2009). Pub. no. AAT 3332406.

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