The Bureaucrat’s Wage: (De)Valuations of Work in an Irrigation Bureaucracy

Abstract

Drawing upon ethnographic research conducted in Pakistan’s Punjab, the country’s agricultural heartland and home to the world’s largest contiguous irrigation network, this essay posits a structure of feeling of devaluation among officials of an irrigation department. It examines everyday practices of supplementing salaries, anti-corruption measures, World Bank intervention, and officials’ efforts for an enhancement of the bureaucratic scale and refusals of work. It argues that alienation from official roles, erosion of authority, knowledge practices amid patchy information, and ill will vis-à-vis donor organizations cohere as a structure of feeling of devaluation. The devaluation is inflected by individual career trajectories, challenged, and deepened even as quotidian corruption yields gains. Examining corruption as part of the labor process, the essay expands the scholarly lexicon of corruption and bureaucratic work.