JONATHAN SHAPIRO ANJARIA AND URSULA RAO

Talking back to the state: citizens’

engagement after neoliberal reform in
India

In this article we propose a different approach to the study of neoliberalism. We shift away from institutionally
focused accounts of neoliberalism as a strategy of rule, to examine the way citizens engage with neoliberal re-
form. While there is a burgeoning body of literature on the expansion of civil society, new entrepreneurship
and novel governmentalities, not enough is known about the ways the state is restructured by the social pro-
cesses that follow on from neoliberal reform. How does the to-and-fro between policy makers, state agents
and citizens shape emerging projects and what consequences do citizens’ actions have for state structure?
The article uses two case studies from India: a local governance reform and a new health insurance. Unpacking
their multiple unexpected outcomes, we argue that neoliberalism does not represent a discrete set of state prac-
tices or ideologies but a set of ideals operating in a political field that is far in excess of it and creates new con-
testations about how to structure and improve the relations among the state, markets and citizens.

Key words neoliberalism, urban governance, health security, social practice, India

Introduction

This article examines the ambivalent meaning and position of ‘the state’ in neoliberal
projects. In a recent article, Wacquant (2012) reiterated that neoliberalism is essentially
a state project aimed at reorganising the social to serve the interests of the dominant
class. Like others, he reminds us that we must move beyond market ideology and eco-
nomic policies if we wish to uncover the complexities of the contemporary process of
restructuring. However, while there is a burgeoning literature on the expansion of civil
society, new entrepreneurship and novel governmentalities, it remains the case that we
have insufficient knowledge of the ways the state is positioned through the reforms
brought about by neoliberalism.
The broad aim of this article is to contribute to the teasing out of the processes of
restructuring the state in the twenty-first century. We critique the homogenisation of
state action frequently found in discussions about neoliberalism and argue for an ap-
proach that pays greater attention to the multiplicity of state–citizen encounters, as well
as heterogeneous flows of power. We take inspiration here from recent debates on the
anthropology of the state. Numerous texts have shown how states are internally con-
tradictory (Das and Poole 2004; Hansen and Stepputat 2001), that their practices do
not always conform to a rationality (Das 2007), and that they do not operate in a realm
separate from the social worlds state actors might seek to transform. What might this
mean for our understanding of the location and consequences of neoliberalism? How
do people reacting to neoliberal reform, both within and outside state institutions,
affect reforms, the state and state–citizen relations?

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To find out, we examine the way neoliberal reform is co-produced by top-down

and bottom-up processes. In order to expand our understanding of neoliberalism we
move beyond institutionally focused accounts of neoliberalism as a strategy of rule,
to accounts of ordinary practice; from ‘actually existing neoliberalism’ (Brenner and
Theodore 2002) to neoliberalism as an experience. By moving down from the office
and out from the institutionalised perspective, we will foreground the quotidian inter-
actions that shape emerging practices after neoliberal reform that have significant con-
sequences for institutional form. A few recent studies (Freeman 2008; Hsu 2007;
Sharma 2008) provide pathways for such a project by shifting the focus to citizens.
They examine how, by inhabiting neoliberal projects of governance, people shape these
projects in often unexpected ways. Thus, Elana Shever (2012) shows that private entre-
preneurs in the Argentinean oil market invest in patronage relations and purposefully
undermine competition so as to survive in a volatile and precarious market. Nancy
Postero (2007) shows how empowerment projects that are ostensibly aimed at all citi-
zens re-draw essentialising social boundaries between ‘naturally’ unsophisticated vil-
lagers and superior urbanites (see also Kipnis 2007).
We shall contribute to this discussion about how social agency unfolds in neolib-
eral projects by focusing on the consequences of social action for state re-structure.
Changes in policy activate citizens who try out new roles, test the reliability of new
systems, and fill in emerging power vacuums. We will complicate the debates on
neoliberal reform by studying the to and fro between policy makers, state agents and
citizens. Our argument uses two different case studies located in urban India that trace
the reactions of poor and middle-class citizens to specific neoliberal policies and the
ensuing processes of renegotiating policy. The first example concerns the idea of
‘inclusive growth’. It discusses a new health insurance that covers hospital expenses
of people living below the poverty line. The private–public partnership offers improved
health care to poor citizens at the cost of burdening them with increased responsibility
for managing personal health. The case study discusses the evolution of the project over
five years and shows how a range of unexpected reactions by beneficiaries and private
doctors significantly impacted the project, forcing the state to become more responsive
to citizens’ needs and also accept new responsibilities for public health. The second ex-
ample focuses on the effects of decentralising urban governance with the aim of devolv-
ing responsibility for civic amenities and local infrastructure to residential groups.
These new neighbourhood groups became cells for political mobilisation. Rather than
demonstrate greater civic responsibility, members lobbied for better state services and
mobilised against the poor. The evolving activism prompted state agents to re-emphasise
their role as protectors of a shared social space against the extractive and divisive forces
of particularistic interests. While each case study is unique and merits extensive sepa-
rate investigation (Anjaria 2009; Rao forthcoming), we chose a comparative approach
for this article.
The aim is to demonstrate the vicissitudes of neoliberal policies that are prompted
by citizens’ reactions to these policies. Both cases discuss state initiatives that aim to
improve social life and services by devolving a set of responsibilities to citizens. How-
ever, rather than accept the new roles prefigured by the policies and supporting state
programmes in the anticipated way, citizens offered their own interpretations. As a
consequence, state agents found themselves compelled to re-engage with heteroge-
neous aspirations and demands. Rather than initiate a transition towards a new division
of labour between market, state and citizens, the reforms prompted reactions that

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questioned the old and the new status quo and led to pleas for strong markets, a strong
state and empowered citizens. As a result, the policy initiatives reopened long-standing
arguments about the difficult relation between rich and poor, state and market, and
responsibility and protection.
Our argument about people’s impact on the evolving role of the state after neolib-
eral reform proceeds in three steps. We offer a brief overview of anthropological and
sociological debates about neoliberalism that have turned a totalising concept into a
flexible instrument for the situated analysis of evolving histories. We propose to use
the term neoliberalism, like development or modernisation, as an analytical tool that
helps trace the role of specific ideologies and practices for social transformation. This
conceptual introduction will be followed in the second step by analyses of the two case
studies of private health market behaviour and middle-class civil activism. In this we
shall identify the neoliberal imagination that underpins these policies and examine
how pitfalls in their implementation led to a restoration of key features of the socially
oriented development state. The final step compares the two case studies and draws
conclusions about the role of citizen–state encounters for the shaping of evolving hy-
brid regimes of governance.

Neoliberalisms

This section traces debates in the social sciences that have turned neoliberalism into a
flexible concept for the situated analysis of concrete social relations. We will argue
for the use of neoliberalism as an assemblage of practices. It will enable us to analyse
the specific impact and unexpected outcome of neoliberal reforms as they emerge in
heterogeneous social spaces that, as we argue, are far in excess of what could be
summarised under neoliberal transition. Social science literature shows three dominant
uses of the term neoliberalism. It refers to a set of political doctrines, to a complex field
of policies after the demise of socialism, and to new approaches to governance that pro-
mote devolving of responsibilities to citizens, the market or civil society. As a doctrine,
neoliberalism is associated with privatisation, an emphasis on market freedom, and
rolling back the state (see, for a summary, Peck 2008). Debates on policy quickly
turned towards the vagaries of specific practices and its uneven relation to theory.
David Harvey (2005) notes, for instance, that the implementation of neoliberal ideas
remains uneven and that state policies often diverge significantly from neoliberal
orthodoxy or may even act in contradiction to core doctrines. He diagnoses that the
neoliberal project is driven by a desire for class restoration and thus variously adapted
to this end. In a similar vein, Loic Wacquant (2012) depicts neoliberalism as ‘the
reengineering and redeployment of the state as the core agency that sets the rules and
fabricates the subjectivities, social relations and collective representations suited to
realising markets’ (p. 68). These and other studies focus primarily on institutional
transformation in a world that has turned against various forms of (embedded)
socialism.
A third set of studies analyses shifts in the way populations are governed in neolib-
eral societies. Following the work of Michel Foucault, neoliberal governmentality has
been described as a set of techniques that target the individual as responsible agent.
New policies – as Nikolas Rose (1996b) contends – stimulate citizens to take responsi-
bility for their lives and invest in their own self-care. Rather than provide blanket safety

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nets, the state now assists citizens through targeted programmes to develop an appro-
priate relationship to themselves. In this process, prior notions that social citizenship
and common society legitimise state-making projects are now dismissed and are being
replaced by an investment in responsible individuals as part of self-governing popula-
tions (Rose 1996a). Aihwa Ong (2006: 6) distinguishes between two optimising tech-
nologies. ‘Technologies of subjectivity’ induce people to self-govern. They are
complemented by ‘technologies of subjection’ that frame the agency of people and
structure their movement and behaviour in relation to broader state goals.
Broad universalising descriptions of neoliberalism have been complicated by local
in-depth studies that demonstrate how time and space affect the meaning and practice
of neoliberalism. Ong (2006, 2007) describes Chinese exceptions to neoliberalism as
characterised by specific combinations of authoritarian and liberal forms of governance
that create uneven conditions in an economic space punctuated by special economic
zones. She defines neoliberalism not as fixed ideology or policy, but as migrating
assemblages of governance that produce milieu-specific calculations and result in
locally variant constellations (see also Schwenkel and Leshkowich 2012; Zhang 2012).
The meaning of neoliberal interventions can only be gauged with reference to prior
conditions, states Mathieu Hilgers (2012) with reference to the African case. Against
Wacquant (2012), he asserts that one cannot roll back a non-existent welfare state. In
many African countries, structural adjustment has led to demands for stronger (not
weaker) states that would be capable of implementing market reforms.
Such arguments about spatial variations are complemented by studies tracing the
historical evolution of ideas and policies. Neoliberalism does not proceed in scripted
ways nor produce predictable outcomes. It is an evolving process of adapting and
adjusting interventions so as to render them effective. Peck and Theodore call this pro-
cess ‘failing forward’:

neoliberalism’s rolling and roiling programme has repeatedly ‘failed forward’

through cumulative episodes of discursive re-branding and institutional reinven-
tion. Heavy drinkers of the neoliberal Kool-Aid may have once believed that
simply acts of state withdrawal would be sufficient to spontaneously animate free
markets and civic voluntarism, but the prosaic and frequently tawdry practice of
deregulatory statecraft has more often than not been a prelude to deregulatory
failure, trial-and-error experimentation, market-oriented re-regulation and
exploratory re-engineering. (Peck and Theodore 2012: 179)

By emphasising the processual character of social policies, Peck and Theodore

account for the shifts that have altered neoliberal approaches over years of experi-
mentation. Reforms are locally configured. They may fail, encounter resistance and
become enmeshed in a web of signification that far exceeds the initial intent of policy.
Thus, for example, the promotion of individual responsibility does not necessarily
create a more disciplined workforce (Hilgers 2012). Collier (2011) shows that the
devolution of budget responsibility and imposition of fiscal discipline in post-soviet
Russia motivates state governments to engage in high-risk employment policies that,
in the case of failure, would force the central government to bail them out. The com-
mon ground to all of these studies is their focus on political agency. We learn about
the way state agencies conceive, implement or structure new projects that will trans-
form social relations.

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Here we expand the purview by turning attention to interpreting, acting and

desiring citizens and their contributions to the calculative projects of neoliberal
states. Rather than focus on the agency of policy makers, we wish to investigate
the effects citizens’ involvement have on policy. We share an interest with other
anthropologists in the contextual self-making of citizens. Thus, Comaroff and
Comaroff (2009) highlight the entrepreneurial spirit of citizens who expand the
market logic into new terrains, such as ethnic competition. Freeman (2008) shows
how a rebellious young generation experiences investment in high-risk personal
enterprises as liberation from the suffocating morality of their parents who
prioritise care for family and investment in future stability. These studies of entre-
preneurial self-fashioning remind us of the passion and ambition citizens bring to
social reform projects. While techniques of governance penetrate further into the
intimate spaces of life, they do not determine the outcome. The proliferation of
markets has a number of paradoxical outcomes not easily subsumed under even
an expanded definition of neoliberalism. Our focus here is not on the outflow or
overflow of policies that create their own new social spaces and contradictions,
but rather on the citizen in direct relation to state projects.
How do self-governing subjects talk back to the state? The strategic interventions
of calculative governance encounter a multitude of reactions by heterogeneous groups
of citizens. Together they shape not only people’s lives, but the emerging trajectories of
neoliberal reconfigurations. How do people burdened with the responsibility of
cleaning cities, managing health and seeking profit react to these initiatives for
responsibilisation, and how do their reactions impact state–citizen relations and policy?
Our case studies take governmental reforms as the starting point for entangled disputes
about the distribution of responsibilities and power on the way to desired futures. The
evolving projects question the relationship between classes as well as that between
groups of citizens and the state. The aim of encouraging entrepreneurial selves seems
jeopardised when state agents faced with middle-class ambitions reluctantly re-inhabit
the role of the protector or educator of the poor. By plotting unintended policy out-
comes, we can show how the collaborative remaking of the social may create institu-
tions that do not fit comfortably with any narrow definition of neoliberalism. In this
scenario, transformation is not solely driven by the (often fetishised) agentive power
of (neoliberal) reform, but also the social confrontations that shape the trajectories of
projects.
Our analysis of multiple power relations traces how neoliberalism enters everyday
life without assuming that a shared identity exists between social life and neoliber-
alism. Like modernisation and development, we treat neoliberalism not as an all-
encompassing term, but as a social concept deployed to justify intervention,
oppose reforms and press for change. Positioning neoliberalism in this way allows
us to recognise the relevance of other doctrines, practices and normative projects
that energise social action and propel new hybrid conditions, such as a commit-
ment to welfare, a desire for class maintenance, and a belief in the need of social
distinction and institutional differentiation. Used thus as an analytical tool, discus-
sions of neoliberalism can avoid the dangers mapped out by John Clarke (2008),
who laments promiscuity, omnipresence and omnipotence from which the term
suffers. Rather than follow Clarke and retire the term, we aim at a contextual analysis
of the work performed by neoliberal frames of reference and of the new constellations
they inspire.

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Health care solutions

In 2009 India introduced a National Health Insurance Scheme (RSBY, Rashtriya

Swasthya Bima Yojana) for people living below the poverty line. The initiative is a
reaction to widespread discontent with the public health care system. Endemic
underfunding and severe overcrowding of government hospitals, as well as widespread
corruption and inefficiency, have led to massive gaps in medical coverage. The new in-
surance aims to give poor people a choice of providers and relieve them of having to
wait in long queues at government hospitals that might not have sufficient staff, equip-
ment or funds to provide adequate treatment. Under the new programme, families clas-
sified as living below the poverty line receive – for a token fee of Rs 30 (€0.37) – private
health insurance paid for by the government. It covers the expenses for in-patient hos-
pital treatment at a range of private and public providers for up to five family members,
with a maximum coverage of Rs 30,000 (€377). Anil Swarup, the architect of the
project, explains the empowering potential of the new initiative: ‘This is perhaps the
first scheme that gives choice to the beneficiary. He decides which hospital he wants
to go to […]. It is huge empowerment’ (Civil Society Online, December 2012).1
The reform is based on a set of assumptions typically associated with neoliberal-
ism. The state is configured as inefficient and wasteful, and as such juxtaposed to an
ideal market. As a remedy, the market – in this case the market of private insurance
and hospitals – is mobilised to enhance competition and ensure better services at lower
costs. Government hospitals as well as private clinics are encouraged to participate and
attract customers by offering adequate offers for needy patients. The RSBY website
introduces the project as a ‘business model for a social sector’.2 The key to better health
care is an incentive structure that motivates all stakeholders to ensure best service.
Insurance companies are paid per issued card, and thus seek to hike up circulation rates
and make access to the card easy for beneficiaries. Hospitals can increase income from
labour-class patients by accepting the card and thus extend top-level treatment to poor
customers as well. Finally, patients who sign up for RSBY can choose between
providers and avoid institutions that fail to satisfy their expectations. In this ideal
scenario, the role of the state is reduced to paying the insurance premium and monitoring
implementation. The pharma news portal Pharmabiz.com thus speaks of an ‘asset light’
model:

Asset light model mainly focuses on bringing down the infrastructural and man-
power cost incurred by the government by empowering the existing empaneled
doctors across the country to treat patients covered under the schemes like […]
Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna (RSBY) […]. All that the doctors need to do is
treat the patients covered, collate and report the data to the Centre by maintain-
ing electronic health record of the patients.3

Not surprisingly, implementation proves to be more challenging than this ideal sce-
nario of a win-win situation. Insurance firms are frustrated by people’s lacklustre

1 See http://www.civilsocietyonline.com/pages/Details.aspx?236, accessed 1 August 2013.

2 See http://www.rsby.gov.in/about_rsby.aspx, accessed 28 June 2014.
3 Shirodhakar, Suja Nair, 2014. Healthcare experts urge Centre to adopt ‘asset light’ model to secure
better use of resources. Pharmabis.com (http://www.pharmabiz.com/NewsDetails.aspx?
aid=82662&sid=1) accessed 28 June 2014.

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attitudes on enrolment day; hospitals grapple with slow reimbursement procedures;

insurance companies struggle with an unfavourable balance between income from the
policy and costs of treatment; and policy makers fear escalating costs in the tertiary
health sector at the expense of sustained support for primary care (High Level Expert
Group 2011). In practice, complications are abundant. They mobilise the state to pro-
duce flexible solutions to ever new emerging complications (Rao forthcoming).
In this context we shall focus specifically on challenges resulting from the behav-
iour of patients and doctors, who frequently fail to live up to the roles defined for them
in the new system. In line with the orthodoxy of neoliberal governance, RSBY is
designed to empower and make responsible citizens for welfare. Rather than rely on
government hospitals for cure, patients are asked to act as mature consumers and
choose, calculate and purchase the best possible care on an open market. However,
patients find choosing impossible and many doctors are unaccustomed to the docu-
mentary practices required by insurance companies. In the following section we shall
follow several ‘unfinished’ subjects in the making, whose acts repeatedly fail to square
with the neoliberal policy. We will show how the ingrained habitus of the participants
prompts the development state to get involved and offer new additional services,
thereby significantly altering the relations between welfare citizens and state represen-
tatives. In the course of shaping a market, the state must begin to mould citizens to
appreciate its offers. In the course of this struggle to raise awareness and competency,
the role of state representatives is gradually reconfigured. Not only does the ‘slim state’
become a distant dream, but the typical postcolonial scenario of a distant state likewise
begins to crumble.
Ursula Rao began research on RSBY in 2010,4 when the policy moved into its sec-
ond year. Enthusiasm among beneficiaries was not great, and NGOs in charge of
mobilisation had difficulties convincing people to renew their insurance card. There
was a lot of hype around the smart card in 2009. People were impressed by the ease
of enrolment and the insurance found wide distribution. However, most beneficiaries
lacked the opportunity to use the card in the course of the year because no member
of the family needed hospital treatment. ‘Where to take this big illness from, which
you need for this card?’ complained a middle-aged mother in a resettlement colony
North East Delhi,5 where Rao supported social workers during an RSBY information
campaign. She preferred to pray to god that he might protect her from serious illness.
Surely, anticipating a health crisis and planning for it by getting a health insurance
would summon bad luck. And anyway, people had heard that not all was well with
the programme because it encouraged greedy private doctors to extract unimaginable
high profits for unreliable services. ‘Go to Muhammad Ahmed6 and listen to his story!’
one elderly lady remarked in a bitter tone.

4 Research for this project took place for 10 months between 2010 and 2014 in Delhi and Chhattis-
garh. Together with the Delhi-based NGO Ankur, a team collected health stories of RSBY benefi-
ciaries. Rao also observed enrolment procedures and the use of the card in hospitals; finally, she
conducted interviews with doctors, policy makers, state employees, insurance companies and repre-
sentatives of third party administrators.
5 The resettlement colony accommodated former slum dwellers, who lost their homes during the rad-
ical slum demotion drives in the run up to the Commonwealth Games in Delhi 2010. A survey con-
ducted by Mission Convergence on behalf of the Delhi Government during the years 2010 to 2012
found that a large majority of families living in this area are vulnerable or extremely vulnerable. In
Delhi, eligibility for RSBY was determined on the basis of this survey that accounts not only for
economic, but also social and spatial vulnerability.

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Mohammad’s wife Begum became so weak that one day she could not get out of
bed. Mohammad remembered the smart card and admitted his wife to a private hospital
where after extensive check-ups, she was diagnosed with cancer. Her treatment started,
but after a few months the funds on the smart card ran out. ‘From that day onwards I
had to pay myself’, Mohammad remembered. ‘Every second week they asked for Rs
300 (€3.77).’ Anxious to save his wife, Mohammad borrowed money and continued
treatment; a few months later his wife succumbed to the cancer. When I met him, he
was still in a state of shock. Seven children and huge debt! What then remains of life?
Should the doctor have told him that the chances of survival were slim? Had she ever
had a chance? When should one give up? Who is to be blamed for false hopes?
There are of course other stories. Minna Srivastava was lucky. She too consulted a
private clinic when her son developed an ear infection. We can treat him as an outpa-
tient, the doctor said, but if you want to use the card we will have to admit him. Then
we will subtract Rs 15,000 (€188) from your card. Minna was stunned. The sum
sounded astronomical to her. She considered the options and decided to have her son
treated locally for a total cost of Rs 6,000 (€75). This was about what she earned in a
month. It was not exactly cheap, but not ruinous. During our conversation she remem-
bered thanking God for giving her the wisdom to take the right decision, because a few
months after the ear incident her eldest son had an accident and needed the entire
amount of Rs 30,000 (€377) on the chip card to recover.
These cases illustrate the predicaments people faced when they wanted to use the
card. Rather than engage in calculable risk management, they felt they were taking a
gamble. In Delhi many NGO workers scoffed at the project, saying that people should
be spared such daunting decisions about life and death. It was the task of the govern-
ment to see people through health crises. However, others argued about the right to
choose and the fact that people now also had the option of treatment in those many in-
stances when resource-starved government hospitals turned them away, quite un-
moved by their plight. The goal was the mature customer, capable of a calculative
engagement with personal health, who extracts the best possible services from the med-
ical market within a certain budget. Ranu Ahuja too was trying to become such a
person.
Rao met Ranu in Savda in 2010 during the public information campaign. She was
sitting out in the sun in front of her house. Passing by, I asked her routinely whether
she had re-enrolled in RSBY. Instead of an answer she proudly presented her smart
card. Then her face turned serious, and she summoned the researcher to sit.
Ranu Ahuja: ‘Will the card help my daughter?’
Ursula Rao: ‘What is wrong with your daughter?’
Ranu Ahuja: ‘There is a continuous trickle of blood, even though her period
should long be over.’
Ursula Rao: (shocked) ‘You must go to the hospital immediately!’
Ranu Ahuja: ‘Will the card pay for it?’
Ursula Rao: ‘Yes, if she has to be admitted.’
Ranu Ahuja: ‘And if not…?’
Ursula Rao: ‘Then you will have to pay.’

6 All names of people, institutions have been changed to protect the identity of informants.

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Ranu digested the information for a moment. She had heard from others that the
rates at private hospitals were much higher than the costs for treatment locally. Yet,
they also talked of high medical standards, friendly staff and short waiting times.
Should she risk the trip to the expensive private hospital? What if she had to pay the
bill? Or maybe she should first consult a doctor at the overcrowded government hos-
pital? Would they give her advice? The decision was precarious; at stake was not only
the well-being of the daughter but the economic security of the entire household.
The medical market is one of hope that confronts people with difficult ethical de-
cisions (Good 2010) that are steeped in emotions underscored by worries about the
outcome of illnesses and a desire to secure family welfare. While people quickly learned
the basic features of RSBY, the number of questions did not diminish, but increased
with more frequent usage. People wondered why the Rs 30,000 (€377) lapses every
year. Could they save up the amount for a really bad day? They wanted to know
whether they should save the money till the end of the year or spend it early on. What
if a new baby is born and family size exceeds five members, who should they remove
from the card? As regard the providers, should they chose the more expensive places
and get better medical treatment, or economise and approach cheaper clinics. What
are the gains and potential setbacks? RSBY decision-making requires assistance and
RSBY functions best in places where the project is supported by substantial additional
state services. Chhattisgarh regularly proves to be the leader in this respect. Here an
approximate 35% of treatments are paid for through RSBY.7 This success is due to
massive state investment. A separate team of nine full-time employees in the health
ministry mediate between stakeholders and monitor implementation. They collect
feedback from the field, manage a helpline, organise awareness and information
campaigns, and provide technical support. They also supervise district managers who
attend to problems locally, mobilise the support of district medical officers and the
police, and lobby politicians for infrastructure improvements, such as internet connectivity
for hospitals.
RSBY prompts the development state to secure a host of services and programmes
as the backdrop for a health care scheme. The desire to make RSBY work heightens the
awareness for the innumerable developmental challenges that need addressing in order
to render welfare effective. Alongside technical infrastructure, the education of subjects
remains a key issue. Earlier we addressed the challenges faced by patients. However,
doctors likewise needed support; this became clear during a trip that Rao made to
urban and rural hospitals in Chhattisgarh, which was undertaken together with Jagdish
Trivedi, the quality assurance office from the state health ministry. On our way we met
Dr Pandey, owner of a redirected small private orthopaedic clinic who was frustrated
because 20% of RSBY bills had not been paid. Jagdish asked him to open the Excel
spreadsheets the insurance company had sent him. Dr Pandey said that this was
computer work and had nothing to do with treatment. He could produce the patients
and show which body parts had been fixed. Jagdish explained that bodies were not
sufficient evidence, but that virtual communication was required to document perfor-
mance. The technician was called. He retrieved a number of unanswered emails that
demanded additional medical explanations and paperwork as evidence before payment
claims could be processed. The IT employee had not understood the English in the

7 And another 35% by a similar programme called MSBY, which offers the same health insurance to
all residents of Chhattisgarh not living below the poverty line.

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emails and did not think that formulating medical arguments was part of his job. A long
discussion ensued about the system, and the need for medical staff to talk to IT profes-
sionals. It had not occurred to the hospital staff that a new platform had been created
that required fluency in medical and technical knowledge. Jagdish switched into teach-
ing mode and explained to Dr Pandey the need for rearranging workflows in his hos-
pital. The doctor listened attentively. He wanted to make RSBY work because the
system had directed significant funds into his pocket. In fact he had been happy to
write off the 20% reduction in payments as an expected transition loss – as a ‘sacrifice’
(ahuti) to the system, or more crudely speaking the normal bribe.
Jagdish was angry: ‘It is your duty to fight for full payment. This is a corruption-
free system.’ The doctor retaliated: ‘People come to me with shattered bones and after
surgery they walk out as whole human beings. Why should this not warrant payment?
What other proof do you need?’ The grievance officer continued to work with the
clinic explaining the logic of medical documentation. When Rao returned in 2014 the
clinic had registers listing the illness, treatment, date of admission and dismissal of each
patient. The computer operator sat smartly dressed at his work station. His salary had
doubled and he proficiently entered details from registers into computer tables. They
were sent to the insurance company8 together with photocopies from the register.
Rao was impressed and confused: ‘I thought RSBY was paperless?!’ The grievance of-
ficer confirmed that paper-free processing was an aspiration. However, the priority
was adherence to minimum standards of quality control. He and the insurance com-
pany were willing to accept a range of locally devised systems for documentation as
long as they ensured effective surveillance. With the new system, the rejection rate at
Dr Pandey’s clinic had come down to 2%. He gleefully acknowledged that his income
had further increased while still allowing him the pleasure of a ‘sacrifice’ as a token of
his appreciation.
Discussions of neoliberal governmentality focus frequently on constraints imposed
on subjects of governance. In turn, much less is known about the way people relate to
the new roles assigned to them by governmental policy. In the case of RSBY the fit is
uneasy. Rather than silently embrace the new calculative projects, patients and doctors
have clamoured for help and prompted state agents to engage with the contradictions,
complexities and paradoxes thrown up by contingent life situations. RSBY has failed in
states unwilling to expand their health infrastructure to monitor and assist a low-cost
medical market and its customers. In turn, it celebrates successes where states have
augmented health-related services. Thus, rather than relieve the state of any responsibility
by involving the market, active stakeholders with their plethora of problems, worries and
actions have forced state agencies to get involved, to motivate, explain, educate and solve.
The private market and its dynamics have summoned the development state. At one level
this finding is unsurprising, considering that theories of neoliberalism have always
insisted that the new policies do not render the state superfluous, but redirect its resources
towards creating reliable infrastructures for a free market to flourish. Thus, Hilgers (2012)
argues that after the first round of structural adjustments, the recommendations of the
institutions of global governance towards Africa changed, demanding stronger, not
weaker states.

8 Communication with the insurance company is processed by a third-party administrator.

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The failure of IMF and World Bank policies led these organisations to de-
mand not only economic structural adjustment, but also political adjustment
as a condition to aid (de Villers 2003). As such, the perspective of the World
Bank is clear: structural adjustment requires a ‘strong state’ (World Bank
quoted in Harrison 2010: 41), and no longer a mere strategy of bypassing
or counterbalancing the state by strengthening civil society and NGOs
(Bratton and Hyden 1992). (Hilgers 2012: 84)

Here we are not concerned with such an abstract entity as strong or weak states.
Instead, we are interested in the entanglements of the state in everyday life, what the state
means for people and how state functionaries respond to people’s ordinary practices. In
the process of rolling out RSBY, citizens – as subjects of policy and reform – reacted to
state initiatives. They demanded help or where it was not available turned away from
the new project. They preferred the overcrowded government hospitals, where they
could hope for a compassionate doctor over an unmanageable calculation that involves
buying service on the private market. An ability or willingness of citizens to self-reform
and embrace new techniques of risk management was contingent on the ability and
willingness of state employees to help, advise, engage and care. RSBY not only incited
patients and doctors to engage in self-care, but forced state agencies to move from being
part of a distant authority to become actively involved in solving innumerable issues that
hindered the smooth process of curing and money-making in the private medical market.
The transition is not absolute. Lots of people are left behind, not everyone gets cared for
and the debate about whether RSBY is a sustainable project will continue. However, what
has become apparent is that downloading the responsibility for self-care onto poor people
induces multi-dimensional changes that confront state agents with new problems and
demand self-reform, even among those who govern.

Neolib era lism on s haky g ro und

The concept of an active citizen so central to the empowerment of poor people

through RSBY is also apparent in other areas of government reform, such as the re-
cent push towards decentralised governance in cities. In the decade following the
74th constitutional amendment that called for decentralisation, which passed in
1992, numerous new civic groups led by middle-class professionals appeared on the
political scene of metropolitan India (Nair 2005; Harriss 2007; Lama-Rewal 2009).
In Mumbai, for instance, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (henceforth,
BMC) initiated a programme to facilitate people’s participation in the maintenance
of their neighbourhoods. In 1997, the first Advanced Locality Management (ALM)
group was formed in a middle-class neighbourhood in the city’s northwest. This pilot
project was conceived to get local residents actively involved in issues such as waste
management (in particular, separating ‘wet’ from ‘dry’ garbage) and drain mainte-
nance – two of the central roles of the BMC.
The ALM idea spread rapidly. Within a few years, there were over 350 ALMs
(Rathi 2005), most of whom represented neighbourhoods in the city’s northern sub-
urbs. While the ALM idea was developed by the BMC, each group came into existence
as a result of the initiative of local residents’ associations and civic activists. The ALMs
were all ‘registered at the local municipal ward office, which appoint[ed] a nodal officer
to attend to citizen complaints’ (Singh and Parthasarathy 2010: 96). This development

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coincided with a larger growth in civil society organisations in the city. In the mid-
1990s, a number of civic activists, many of whom had been active in local residents’
associations, started new NGOs that specifically focused on issues such as good gover-
nance, transparency and civic participation. These organisations, such as Action for
Good Governance and Networking in India (AGNI), Citizens’ Forum for the Protec-
tion of Public Spaces (CFPPS), along with newly politicised residents’ welfare associa-
tions and ALMs constituted what many in the media saw as a wave of ‘citizens’ groups’
that promised to transform how the city would be governed.
The making of these new organisations was informed by the principle that
ordinary citizens should involve themselves in the functions of the state. The central
premise of ALMs, for instance, was that the BMC would offer more efficient services
if the recipients of those services – people living in a particular neighbourhood, for
instance – were actively involved in its everyday application. For instance, local
volunteers provided neighbourhood-level outreach, teaching people how to separate
wet and dry waste. Likewise, people took an active role monitoring the condition of
drains, or nalas, and reporting to their local ward committees if they were in need of
cleaning or repair. The ALM concept, along with the rise of civic activism which they
represented, was widely lauded. To many it sparked the ‘hope of spanking clean streets,
residential societies and localities’ (Ramnath 1999: np), as well as the hope of cleaning
up its city politics.
The emergence of citizens’ groups and, in particular, ALMs in Mumbai appeared
to be a straightforward manifestation of neoliberal principles regarding the ideal
relationship between state and society. First, ALMs’ focus on getting local residents
involved in everyday service provision suggests the idea of ‘governance-beyond-
the state’ described by Swyngedouw (2005: 1992). This is a form of governance that
‘give[s] [a] much greater role in policy-making, administration and implementation …
to parts of civil society … [and] self-managing what until recently was provided or
organized by the national or local state’ (Swyngedouw 2005: 1992). Moreover, ALMs
are also premised on an ethic of individual initiative-taking. As their advocates put it,
rather than wait for the BMC to manage garbage collection efficiently, or wait for the
BMC to identify and clean a blocked drain, ALMs enable residents to make it happen
on their own. Indeed, as many writers have noted, this kind of programme envisions a
new kind of relationship between the state and society. Whereas the welfarist model con-
ceives of a state that provides services, this new model conceives of a state that provides
‘individuals and collectives with the possibility of actively participating in the solution
of specific matters and problems which had hitherto been the domain of specialized state
agencies specifically empowered to undertake such tasks’ (Lemke 2001, quoted in
Swyngedouw 2005: 1997).
However, as we have argued throughout this paper, the neoliberal principles of
state projects do not dictate its effects. Here we draw attention to a shift that
occurred shortly after ALMs were created, when they moved focus from facilitat-
ing state functions to critiquing the state. Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria (2009, 2011)
has explored spatial contestations involving hawkers and civic activists in Mumbai
since 2005. The following case spells out how the new participatory instruments of
governance were used by civic activists to intervene in conflicts over street vending.
Rather than focus narrowly on the assigned task of participating in and monitoring
the cleaning of streets and provision of urban services, activists used the new
governance platform to rally against state corruption, inefficiency and the very idea

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of making citizens providers of state services. From a small effort directed at a technical
problem – an extension of governance – ALMs transformed into ‘interest groups’
(Zérah 2007: 67) whose main ideological targets were the very authorities responsible
for their creation.
The popularity of ALMs among middle-class professionals was a product of a
yearning of greater participation in civic affairs, many of whom felt excluded from what
they considered the dirty politics of its elected officials. Its associational form of politics
– consisting of meetings in schools, function halls and apartment building common
rooms, as well as with the BMC officer tasked with taking citizen complaints –
represented a break from what many considered the corrupt, ad hoc and opaque net-
works of power through which the business of governance had typically taken place.
Indeed, while these groups were created to promote good governance – a purportedly
universal project – their class characteristics became immediately evident. In theory,
anyone may participate in an ALM, however in practice nearly all ALMs consisted
of middle-class professionals. Moreover, these organisations began to predominantly
work on issues such as urban beautification and fighting encroachment, which often
targeted poorer populations such as street vendors and slum residents. Ironically these
efforts to ‘clean’ the streets of hawkers brought urban activists in conflict with state
authorities, who in course of mobilisation turned into major targets for protests against
lax policy implementation and bribe taking.
There were a number of reasons for the tension between ALM members and the
local state (the BMC, or Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation). In part, tensions be-
tween members and state functionaries were a product of the city’s matrix of class and
ethnicity. Mumbai’s civic groups, as a number of scholars have shown, ‘perceive coun-
cillors as political opportunists, corrupt, and even criminals’ (Singh and Parthasarathy
2010: 95) and often seek to subvert their authority by going straight to the executive,
non-elected, officers. Moreover, ALM members are mostly upper-middle class and
come from relatively well-to-do Gujarati or Parsi communities. Largely English-
speaking and well-educated professionals, they carry linguistic and class privilege that
many municipal workers and elected officials lack. Indeed, class privilege was often
brought to bear on state functionaries themselves, rather than simply on the urban
space over which ALM activists sought control.
What is striking about the ALM phenomena is that the key concerns of ALMs,
while elite-oriented, did not mesh with state’s logic of rule; the agenda of the ALMs
did not coincide with the agenda of the state, even though they were a product of it.
Encounters among ALM activists and BMC officials became increasingly fraught as
class privilege was brought to bear on municipal officials themselves, rather than sim-
ply on the urban space over which they were supposedly tasked to control. ALMs
and their allies were frustrated by the BMC’s seeming willingness to tolerate street en-
croachments. Civic activists affiliated with the ALM movement advocated quick, tech-
nocratic solutions in contrast to the state’s practice of slow compromise and political
negotiation, albeit punctuated by sporadic violent demolition. Frustrated by the con-
stant criticism, Anjaria witnessed one instance in which a BMC official suggested that
the civic groups should address the hawker problem themselves by hiring private secu-
rity guards. The activists rejected this proposal, interpreting it as a further sign of the
state’s abdication of its responsibility over the city. Years later, a prominent civic group
similarly campaigned against municipal authorities leasing public parks to corporations
who would, in turn, pay for their upkeep (see Anjaria and Anjaria 2013).

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‘Marketisation’ of governance and privatising public space, rather than upheld as an

ideal by ALM members, were seen as further evidence of the authority’s lack of con-
cern for the condition of the city.
The ALM system was a devolution of specific kinds of authority, but it was not an
example of elite capture of the political system. Civic activists’ aim was to transform the
political system. At times this meant encouraging greater pressure against the poor,
whereas at other times it meant fighting against the privatisation of public space. As
the scope of ALMs expanded beyond straightforward technical problems, encounters
with BMC officials became increasingly fraught. By the mid-2000s, the BMC tried to
contain the unintended outcome of its own policy by curtailing ALM activities. ‘ALMs
should only raise issues of garbage, cleanliness, segregation and recycling’ (quoted in
The Times of India 2010), said one BMC official. The ALM involvement in the hawker
issue in particular was irksome to the municipality. The ALM overstepped their
bounds, it seemed, when they intervened in how the city’s streets were governed in
practice. Shyama Kulkarni, an activist with AGNI, an organisation connected with
many of the city’s ALMs, explained, ‘We were told that ward officers felt they were
caught in a slinging match with ALMs. In 1999, the reason to start ALMs was for
SWM [solid waste management] and Singh [the BMC official] wants us to bring it back
to its original purpose’ (The Times of India 2010).
What started as an effort to devolve governance to extra-state entities transformed
into a critique of the everyday life of the state, how it functioned and how power was
negotiated on the ground. What we see here is an artefact of neoliberal doctrine work-
ing against neoliberal principles; civic associations, legitimised by the decentralising
logic of liberalised India, campaigning against the privatisation of public space. This
is a neoliberal policy towards unlikely ends, redirecting and reimagining the seemingly
monolithic governance agenda of which the elite are its supposed beneficiaries.
There is a disconnect between the ideologies of rule implicit in governance prac-
tices and the messy realities of their experience. Municipal authorities advocate for
decentralisation of authority to residents’ welfare groups while simultaneously restricting
their sphere of influence; likewise, calls for greater government action against slum
residents and hawkers are complicated by state officials’ complicity in their continued
presence in the city; neoliberal doctrine might frame upper-level political rhetoric, while
its implementation is stymied by lower level officials. A focus on neoliberal ideologies
of rule and the agentive power of state agencies overlooks the way people make sense
of state practices and influence the direction of change by re-appropriating policy towards
at times unlikely ends.

Conclusion

In this article we introduced two examples of neoliberal reform and discussed some of
the tensions that arose during their actualisation. Both initiatives were couched in a
language of enhancing efficiency through increasing citizens’ involvement and responsi-
bility. Both cases represent experiments in governance that reconfigured social relations
in a less straightforward manner. Our comparison has emphasised in particular the way
the reforms – that were aimed at enhancing the involvement and responsibility of citizens
– evolved to re-direct attention to state agencies and staged the need for a strong and
efficient state.

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The case study of RSBY focuses on the predicaments of the postcolonial state as
they become re-articulated in the context of neoliberal reform. The dominant themes
are development and education. The vision of activating responsible selves, who will
buy suitable health services in a private market, encounters major limitations, among
them a failure of poor people to desire a risky coverage, the difficulties of patients
and families to assess the consequences of health-related decisions, and – related to this
– the lack of standardisation of medical services. The roll out of RSBY makes apparent
that an effective privatisation of the tertiary health market will depend on a significant
expansion of auxiliary state services. These services create new responsibilities for the
state in the public health sector, and begin to redefine its role vis-à-vis citizens. State
agencies find themselves compelled to develop platforms for easy and non-bureaucratic
help that will assist harassed citizens in times of health crises. A new hands-on ap-
proach is required that brings formerly distant authorities into a much more immediate
relationship with citizens, who are now reconfirmed in their role as customers of med-
ical services.
In a similar vein, the effort to spin-off municipal projects to local citizens’ groups
in Mumbai, led to intensified negotiations about the role, authority and responsibility
of state agents. Conceiving themselves as entities operating outside the political system,
ALM activists felt uniquely suited to critique the inefficiencies and corruption of
municipal governance. Neoliberal reform, said to be informed by elite interest, did not
coincide with the interests and desires of well-off ALM activists. Rather than support
the privatisation of space and urban cleaning drives, urban citizens rallied for greater state
involvement in the maintenance and policing of public places. State practices in turn
subverted the interest of the new bodies of urban governance they had created by
trying to restrict their sphere of influence and continuing to invest in practices of slow
social compromise between various class interests.
Together the two cases show how neoliberal politics in India are potentially im-
pacted by citizens. Reacting to policy initiatives they can influence the position of state
agencies and trigger discussions about the role and responsibilities of the state. The
developments that follow on from local governance reform and a new health initiative
involve state agencies in re-articulations of typical predicaments of postcolonial states
that are faced with massive class conflicts as they govern heterogeneous populations.
Class conflict is arbitrated in two distinct ways that encapsulate a persistent tension
between different interests. The local Mumbai state took a hostile attitude towards
middle-class and elite activism against encroachments, even as it waged its own battle
against hawkers and slums. Initial efforts to encourage greater involvement of civil
society in local governance were quickly reigned in once ALM members became an
‘interest group’ (Zérah 2007: 67). In case of RSBY the government came out in support
of private clinics and health insurances by augmenting supplementary services that
would persuade poor people to more actively engage with the private medical market
to manage family health.
The results of both policies are what Zhang has called a ‘new variegated historical
development of viable alternative systems outside the long divide of liberalism/
neoliberalism and Marxism/Leninism’ (Zhang 2012: 666). India’s post-liberalisation
reforms have introduced new ideas – notions such as decentralisation, efficiency and
the privatisation of government responsibilities. These ideas have transformed the ways
people encounter the state, yet they have not produced unilateral outcomes of making
citizens responsible for their own self-management or promoting a particular unequivocal

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class politics. Instead we find fresh debates about the role and responsibilities of the state
in a society characterised by deep social fissures. The embrace of neoliberal doctrine at
the highest levels of state does not correspond with a thorough transformation of
society and do not determine the direction of evolving state–citizen relations.
By focusing specifically on the way people talk back to the state, we have
drawn attention to the eclectic possibilities of neoliberal reform, the negotiated
character of reform and the tenuous character of what has become a rather dis-
persed ideological project. Its twin tenets – the marketisation of the state and the
promotion of entrepreneurial and risk-taking subjectivity – are often held up as
ideals, and yet they are rarely actualised in the way originally conceived. We con-
clude that neoliberalism, like all logics of governance, must be understood in terms
of the dense web of practices, desires and aspirations in which it manifests. In the
process of implementing, interpreting and appropriating reform, state agencies as
initiators and managers of new policies face the challenge to react to the multiple
unexpected outcomes of their interventions. Examining these experiences suggests
that neoliberalism does not represent a discrete set of state practices or ideologies
of rule so much as a set of ideals operating in a political field that is far in excess
of it. Rather than a unidirectional change, we observe the emergence of new battles
over the function, role and strength of the market, the state and citizens and their
appropriate relation to each other.

Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria

Department of Anthropology
Brandeis University
MS 006, Waltham, MA 02454
USA
janjaria@brandeis.edu

Ursula Rao
Institute of Anthropology
University Leipzig
Schillerstraße 6, Room 419
04109 Leipzig, Germany
ursula.rao@uni-leipzig.de

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