That obtaining a driving license in India is all too easy is a public secret; the prime reason behind this “ease” is the ubiquitous and ambivalent figure of the broker who, as public understanding goes, is enmeshed in a system of bribery at the Regional Transport Office (RTO). This chapter explores why brokerage and bribery have become institutionalized at the RTO. Drawing on ethnographic data collected over three years in the southern city of Hyderabad, I analyze the frameworks through which the act of hiring a broker is rationalized and articulated by Hyderabadi motorists. I show how brokerage is justified and even actively desired through two central framings both of which emphasize that brokers act as buffers in mediating between motorists and the RTO: one, brokers act as an insurance against an arbitrary state and, in doing so, make the state legible to motorists and vice versa; and two, brokerage enables a distancing from corruption and blurring the line between legality and illegality. All these factors contribute toward a quiet but potent institutionalization of brokerage at the RTOs in Hyderabad and, on one level, become caught up in the complex contestations around the very function and purpose of a driver’s license.

This chapter begins by analyzing the society and culture of the South Carolina upcountry during the late antebellum period. In particular, it outlines the subregional differences between the upper and lower piedmont parts of the state and considers the nature of class relations in the pre-Civil War upcountry. With respect to the latter, it argues that certain aspects of daily life, like socially and economically meaningful interactions between men of different classes and a prevalent culture of labor, helped ensure that class conflict did not cause white society to come apart at the seams. The remainder of the chapter focuses on sectional politics, fears about the ascendant Republican Party and what their success would mean for life in the U.S. South, and the secession crisis. Ultimately, a broad consensus on the necessity of secession was achieved in the upcountry in the aftermath of Abraham Lincoln’s election, but the prevalent ethos of unanimity could gloss over different levels of fervency toward disunion.