Compulsion

Abstract

This chapter examines how the differential capacity to affect and susceptibility to be affected shapes citizens’ access to resources in Dehradun, India. In encounters between municipal councillors and their constituents, affects are engendered that animate, mobilize or compel the former to accede to the demands of the latter, or alternatively, to ignore them. Voters’ capacity to affect in these encounters is not even, with some voters able to demand and receive more than their legal entitlements, while others are unable to secure their basic rights. The capacity to affect is therefore an important, yet overlooked factor in citizens’ ability to gain access to resources and services from the government, or their ‘entitlements’. The uneven force of citizens’ capacity to affect municipal councillors has the potential to reinforce, as well as disrupt existing forms of privilege and disadvantage.