The colonial bifurcation of populations into educated, respectable quasi-citizens entrusted with governmental and civic responsibilities and the uneducated, innocent masses that could be turned into dangerous passion-driven mobs in need of strict policing, also persisted in many postcolonial states. The “multitude” still needed to be groomed, educated, policed and governed with a firm hand in order to evolve in a proper “people nation”. The relationships between the state and the popular world have often been violent. This “political society” is the locus public authority incarnated in the ubiquitous “big men ” — the tough, self-made criminal-strongman-fixer and politician who increasingly dominate the political life in slums and townships in South Asia, and many parts of Africa and South East Asia. These men command zones of local sovereign power not entirely “penetrated” or governed by the state — neither by biopolitics, nor by languages of legality — and are still approached by governmental agencies through mediators as it happened during colonial rule.