India, Dec. 24 -- Among the many issues that the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls across the country has unleashed, is the burden and stress it is causing to booth level officers (BLO) tasked with distributing forms, enumerating voters, and verifying lists. For several weeks now, news of stressed out, exhausted BLOs resigning, and, in far too many cases, dying or committing suicide have been pouring in. These grim stories put a much-needed spotlight on the lived realities of India's sarkari (government) officers. Far away from the comfort, glamour and power of the lal batti (red beacon), are India's street-level bureaucrats or other government personnel, the block development officer, the patwari (revenue officer), the schoolteacher, the Asha worker. It is through these government functionaries that most Indians encounter the power and possibilities of the Indian State. But their presence on the national mainstage is mainly as a caricature of all that is wrong with the Indian State. The corrupt, apathetic, incompetent officers living off taxpayers' largesse who bear the responsibility for the Indian State's stubborn refusal to provide even the most basic of public services - from clean streets to clean air. Our policy debates are preoccupied with curtailing their role and curbing any discretion they enjoy in implementation. This is why the Indian State has one of the most centralised governance structures in the world. Local governments account for a mere 3% of total government expenditure, compared with 51% in China and 27% in the United States. Technology has opened new avenues for discipling bureaucrats. MIS systems, GPS trackers and apps, biometric monitoring systems, etc, are the new tools of "good governance", deployed by senior bureaucrats as they surveil their "errant" juniors. In this world, the street bureaucrat/government functionary must follow commands. Their voice, views and experiences are dismissed as irrelevant. But the horrors faced by the BLOs should force us to look beyond these simplistic narratives and the shiny but frankly counterproductive solutions put forward. Unlike our debates that vilify these officers, global scholarship has paid serious attention to the complexity of their role. As MIT political scientist Bernando Zacka's work demonstrates, at the street level, bureaucrats and other government functionaries have to navigate between the demands of administration and the lived realities of citizens they encounter. This creates unique pressures that make fulfilling their tasks about negotiating moral rather than merely administrative dilemmas. I routinely come across these dilemmas in my research. Government school teachers, for example, often show indifference to students from very poor families, not because of apathy but because they feel ill-equipped to deal with their traumas. How does one go about meeting targets on attendance demanded by the administration when the student couldn't attend school because her home was razed by bulldozers the night before? But there is no time for empathy or responding to the realities of the student when the administration is commanding administrative targets and syllabus completion. The hapless BLOs are confronting similar challenges under greater pressure. This is not a naive argument. Street-level bureaucrats are no angels. Class, caste, and power play a role in shaping their behaviour, and corruption and apathy are rampant. However, the answer, somewhat counter-intuitively, lies in empowering street-level bureaucrats with a sense of professional identity and collective mission rather than curb discretion. This is best illustrated in political scientist Herbet Kauffman's classic study of the US government's forest rangers. Kauffman's work highlights that the forest service, where rangers were spread in remote areas, achieved high levels of performance by adopting management practices that appealed to forest rangers' identity as foresters and cultivated an allegiance to the mission of forest protection. Rules and standards were monitored, but authority was established with enough subtlety to allow for most rangers describing themselves as free agents - "kings in their own domains". Moral dilemmas will be navigated well only when officers have an allegiance to the "mission" and a sense of agency to resolve dilemmas aligned to this mission. Contrast this with India's street-level bureaucrats. In the many conversations I have had, powerlessness and lack of autonomy are routinely invoked. My research suggests that this is not an outcome of apathy and corruption alone. Rather, it is a logical consequence of a very narrow rule-based culture of performance that pervades our administrative hierarchy. Here's one illustration of how this plays out. Between 2016 and 2019, for instance, my colleagues and I built a database of over 8,000 "circulars/orders" issued to schools in Delhi. The circular commanded teachers and bureaucrats to action, threatening them with "sanctions", and "penalties" if orders weren't followed. In this culture, bureaucrats on the ground have little agency, their voice considered irrelevant to the larger decision-making process. As one bureaucrat put it, "What suggestions can I give? I am just an officer following orders". When a bureaucrat's self-image is dominated by this passive rule-following understanding of corruption, it alienates them from their jobs and legitimises their apathy. After all, if the government wants, it can do anything, but "we have no power". In times of stress, this lack of agency creates the pressures that the BLOs in the SIR are going through. A system that does not privilege the agency of its street-level bureaucrats also has little room for resolving their burdens. The difficulties experienced by our BLOs is an urgent call for reframing the debates on India's frontline State. This time round, the debate must focus on empowering our street-level bureaucrats, not belittling and disciplining them....