In this article I attempt to do an ethnography of the state by examining the discourses of
corruption in contemporary India. I focus on the practices of lower levels of the bureaucracy
in a small north Indian town as well as on representations of the state in the mass media.
Research on translocal institutions such as “the state” enables us to reflect on the limitations
of participant‐observation as a technique of fieldwork. The analysis leads me to question
Eurocentric distinctions between state and civil society and offers a critique of the …

While doing fieldwork in a small village in North India (in 1984–85, and again in 1989) that I
have named Alipur, I was struck by how frequently the theme of corruption cropped up in the
everyday conversations of villagers. Most of the stories the men told each other in the
evening, when the day's work was done and small groups had gathered at habitual places
to shoot the breeze, had to do with corruption (bhrashtaachaar) and ''the state.''1 Sometimes
the discussion dealt with how someone had managed to outwit an official who wanted to …