Emotions in the Time of ‘Licence Raj’
What happens when low-ranking officials encounter (identification) documents in a society saturated by emotion-laden practices of kinship and ritual? Documents of rationing summoned deep interpretive traditions of governance and enabled the fluid negotiation of administrative boundaries of rules. In addition, they unlocked emotions of food officials that were ‘culturally motivated’ and ‘socially articulated’ (Lutz and White 1986: 409) and conjured dynamic constructions of the bureaucratic Indian self. This chapter argues that it is by paying attention to the tangibility, materiality, and at other times, the magical power of rationing documents to circulate in various spaces that ‘street-level bureaucrats’—to deploy Michael Lipsky’s phrase (Lipsky 2010: xi)—were able to flesh out cultural norms that were dear to them during the period designated the License Raj in India.