Poverty as biopolitics --
The state and the politics of poverty --
Corruption, politics, and the imagined state --
Narratives of corruption --
"Let the train run on paper" : bureaucratic writing as state practice --
Literacy, bureaucratic domination, and democracy --
Population and neoliberal governmentality.

"Red Tape presents a major new theory of the state developed by the renowned anthropologist Akhil Gupta. Seeking to understand the chronic and widespread poverty in India, the world's fourth largest economy, Gupta conceives of the relation between the state in India and the poor as one of structural violence. Every year this violence kills between two and three million people, especially women and girls, and lower-caste and indigenous peoples. Yet India's poor are not disenfranchised; they actively participate in the democratic project. Nor is the state indifferent to the plight of the poor; it sponsors many poverty amelioration programs.