Local Bureaucracy

People encounter the state in myriad ways, at multiple levels of intensity and frequency. Beginning with wall paintings, hoardings and the media, the 'state- people ' encounters spread over to numerous instances where teachers, doctors, health workers, surveyors and other state bureaucrats interact with the people, affirming the existence of the state, its intentions, roles and current priorities.
In rural India, the local government offices are the points wherein the people routinely negotiate with the state for the provision of entitlements, property rights, benefits and services, issuing certificates, licenses and permissions for their socio- economic activities. In these transactions, the people interact with bureaucrats of different departments

It reveals that the state 's role is still that of the provider of benefits and services rather than that of a facilitator. It demonstrates how diversely the perceptions of the state are shaped among the poor and how they cope with it (Corbridge et al. 2005). It shows how the discretion used at the local level by the bureaucracy goes beyond its supposed rationality as observed in western states (Simpson 1972; Lipsky 1980). It also reveals the recurring themes of government failure due to bureaucratic limitations: 'the social production of indifference ' (Herzfeld 1993)and the paradox of the Indian state that, despite having seemingly well intentioned and well directed policy measures, the needs of the poor are ignored, resulting in routine structural violence against them (Gupta 2012).
In this context, the present paper discusses the nature of local bureaucracy in the context of rural India. Joel S Migdal describes India as a “strong society and

Based on extensive empirical work on the United States ' urban bureaucratic structure, Lipsky provides the important characteristics of 'street level bureaucracy ', its working conditions and behavior.
Lipsky defines street level bureaucrats as “Public service workers who interact directly with citizens in the course of their jobs, and who have substantial discretion in the execution of their work”. School teachers, police officers, social workers, judges, public lawyers, health workers and other local public employees can be categorized as street level bureaucrats. Lipsky 's work summarizes the characteristics of bureaucracies, their decision making processes, use of discretion and relative autonomy, working conditions, client relationship and nature of services provided by