ABSTRACT
If the colonial state was gradually becoming a kind of pervasive, impersonal, sovereign, territorial state—developing in short into a new kind of state, defined by its borders and its self-knowledge of categories and classes—then, meanwhile, of course, the system of administration also was undoubtedly being transformed. This too is important to an understanding of the question of agrarian policy, because it has never been enough merely to make policy and to legislate. If there were real as opposed to rhetorical interventions in the Indian countryside, there must have been an administrative as well as a legal revolution. A later part of our consideration of the Bengal Tenancy Act will concern this question of the means of intervention, the changing capacity as well as ambitions of the state.
