Performing purity : the ethical worlds of public servants in Sikkim's organic conversion

Abstract

This dissertation explores the ways in which officials engaged with the government-mediated conversion of the Indian Himalayan state of Sikkim to a ‘fully organic farming state,’ a process declared complete in 2016. My research was conducted within the agriculture and horticulture departments of the state government. I interrogate the tension between the mobilisation of notions of Sikkim as embodying a state of nature bypassed by India’s green revolution and hence ‘organic by default’, and the bureaucratic work of ‘organic by design’ entailed in bringing about such a state and presenting it to the world. In keeping with the global basis of the organic movement, Sikkim’s organic conversion was significantly outward-facing in focus, and relied on notions of authenticity, and technologies of authentication, including centrally that of certification. As the global organic movement promoted notions of the ‘yeoman farmer’ (Guthman 2004), so department officials valorised the figure of the ‘hardworking farmer’. This valorisation was reflected in their own practice, with ‘the field’ as a site of authentic official work, set in opposition to ‘the office’. The field featured prominently in representations of officials’ professional formation and early careers in agricultural colleges, research stations and demonstration farms, and even in those of hard rural childhoods. But it sat uneasily with their aspirations for an escape from these histories through their careers in the office.