Provisional Authority: Police, Order, and Security in India

Policing worldwide frequently involves excessive violence, corruption, and criminalization. These issues are particularly widespread in postcolonial nations like India, where Beatrice Jauregui conducted years of fieldwork studying police officers in Uttar Pradesh, the country's most populous state. She examines the puzzle of police authority in contemporary India and its connections to social order, democratic governance, and security through empirical research and theoretical analysis. Jauregui explores the contradictory expectations facing Indian police, who face routine accusations of abusive authority while simultaneously being asked to take on numerous official and unofficial responsibilities. Her ethnographic study of their daily work reveals that police authority is provisional in multiple ways: it shifts across time and space, depends on resource availability and movement, and relies on both shared moral codes and practical demands. She argues that police authority in India functions as a contingent and volatile social resource used to address human needs and desires in a pluralistic, postcolonial democracy—not merely as raw power or legal violence. The book provides an insider perspective on Indian policing and examines an institution marked by moral, legal, and political contradictions.