ABSTRACT
In Machiavelli’s The Prince, Michel Foucault finds that “the object, the target of power is, on the one hand, a territory, and, its inhabitants.” Kashipur was part of the erstwhile Ghumsar–Kalahandi kingdoms. It has an uneven topography with plateaus and rolling hills once covered with dense forests. Immediately after conquering Ghumsar and the adjoining areas, the colonial government started reorganising the mutha for extracting revenues, timber and other forest products, and free labour. The infrastructural development gave birth to a new class of contractors, commodified labour-power, and created a class of wage labourers, provided opportunities for work and earning cash and wheat, and introduced monetary payment of wages. The British anthropologist F.G. Bailey conducted ethnography in Bisipara, close to Kashipur, in the 1950s to understand India’s experiment with electoral democracy. Beyond the rituals of elections, there was hardly any political activity or mobilisations in Kashipur after Independence.
