Public health emergencies like epidemic outbreaks provide a challenge to the legitimacy of the state as the mechanism for the maintenance of public order in modern societies. Official agencies, under such circumstances, are faced with the formidable task of ration alising the state's failure to pre-empt a crisis, that is, to maintain their legitimacy in the face of human suffering. This article explores how the Delhi government responded to an outbreak of dengue fever in 1996, an event for which it was entirely unprepared. Using a multi-sited ethnographic approach, I trace the lineaments of the disease out break on the multiple but interconnected registers of the state, the media, the medical community and individual citizens. Crucial to this analysis is the notion of crisis, since the implicit line drawn by the state between public disorder and the concern for public good is demonstrated during crises, in the manner in which they are resolved and the legitimacy and stability of the state maintained.
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