ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a study of the patterns of migration of workers in the flood-prone region of North Bihar. It argues that in post-liberalization India new forms of local governance have emerged that try to manage conflicts at a more 'micro' level than before and hence the emphasis on strengthening the panchayati raj system. The incumbent government's larger strategies of governance, based on the premise that an anarchic State had to be brought back into the ambit of the rule of law, within which the specific techniques of control discuss, are a classic case of post-colonial social governance in which the bureaucracy loom large as a paternalistic guarantor of the physical security of citizens. The new economy needed new forms of governance to incorporate the hitherto ungoverned elements into the network of global capitalism and its corresponding governmental technologies.
