Geoforum 84 (2017) 77–87

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Geoforum
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum

Enrolling a goddess for Delhi’s street vendors: The micro-politics of policy MARK
implementation shaping urban (in)formality
Dolf J.H. te Lintelo
Cities Cluster, Institute of Development Studies (IDS), UK

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: In a world of persistent and growing informality of working and living conditions in cities, and increasing policy
Urban governance efforts to formalise the informal, why are some forms of informality criminalized while others enjoy sanction of
Informality the state? This paper argues that analysis of the politics of policy implementation of formalisation efforts can
Formalisation provide rich insights into urban formal-informal relations in cities of the global south, to complement policy-
Policy implementation
making or policy impact analyses. We present an in-depth case study analysis of the contested implementation of
Public authority
Street vending
a unique policy effort to formalise street vendors in Delhi, India. A public authority lens reveals the micro-
Cities political practices employed by non-state and state actors in bureaucratic, judicial, political, market and other
Delhi arenas aiming to control urban space. We argue that policy implementation outcomes are significantly shaped by
‘horizontal' contestations within society and within the state, to complement and intermesh with ‘vertical' state-
society struggles. Moreover, contestants for public authority exploit official rules but also informal practices by
the state, to engage and advance state fragmentation, enduringly shape cityscapes and to affect which forms of
informality are condoned or condemned.

1. Introduction New Urban Agenda (UN-HABITAT, 2016) and in Sustainable Develop-

Globally, informality is a pervasive and growing feature of the
economies, governance and life of cities. The majority of urban jobs are
informal, i.e. unprotected by labour regulations and without social se-
curity (Ghani and Kanbur, 2012) and such casualization of jobs is a
major international trend (Charmes, 2012). Spatial forms of in-
formality, such as urban informal settlements, now house 1/4th of the
world’s and 1/3rd of the least developed countries’ urban population,
i.e. over 863 million people (UN-HABITAT, 2013). Moreover, the poor
and the “disadvantaged usually depend on informal rather than formal
systems of power and governance to access resources, public services or
to mitigate risk” (Mosse, 2010:1164 italics in original).
As informality abounds, one key question is why some forms of
informality are criminalized and rendered illegal while others enjoy
state sanction or are even practices of the state (Ghertner, 2008; Roy,
2009)? In this paper, we engage this question by looking at the politics
and the institutions that shape, sustain and bestow resilience to the
relationship between formality and informality. While “remarkably
enduring and under-investigated” (McFarlane and Waibel, 2012: 1),
recent studies in the global South (McFarlane, 2012; Roy, 2005, 2009)
and North (Devlin, 2011) show how the relationship between the
formal and informal critically shapes development in and of cities.
Delivering on major international development goals, as set out in the
ment Goal 11 that seeks to achieve inclusive, safe and secure urbani-
sation and cities, hence requires paying attention to the relation be-
tween formality and informality.
This paper builds on recent analyses emphasising the state playing
an active role in shaping fluid formal-informal relationships (Roy,
2005; Xue and Huang, 2015), rather than being absent or a weak
background factor (e.g. Castells and Portes, 1989; de Soto, 2000). Even
in conditions of a strong state, we view the state as a part of wider
constellations of institutions and actors engaged in the “formation and
stewardship of the formal and informal rules that regulate the public
realm” (Hyden et al., 2004:16). As such, urban governance is char-
acterised by “fierce competition between different territorialised forms
of association and patronage – be they the state, religious organisations,
NGOs or international development organisations” (Alsayyad and Roy,
2006:12). For instance, in Goma, in DR Congo, enduring fragility and a
weak and withdrawing state have enabled a range of non-state actors to
govern (Büscher, 2012), while the governance of land tenure in in-
formal settlements in Durban (van Horen, 2000), Maputo (Earle, 2014)
and Dhaka (Suykens, 2015) involves cooperation and competition be-
tween state, political party, mafia and community institutions.
Actors and institutions within and without the state thus seek to
exercise public authority: i.e. to “define and enforce collectively
binding decisions on members of society” (Lund, 2006:676) to help

E-mail address: d.telintelo@ids.ac.uk.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.06.005
Received 4 December 2016; Received in revised form 2 June 2017; Accepted 4 June 2017
0016-7185/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
D.J.H. te Lintelo
explain temporal and spatial variations in the practice of governance.
Being in short supply and heavily competed for, public authority re-
quires to be persistently asserted through a range of political practices,
from the “use of subtle idioms to more heavy handed means – often in
paradoxical conjunction” (Lund, 2006, p. 690). They include the use of
language, procedures, style, objects symbolising authority, and draw on
material, discursive and other legitimising registers. Prominent mate-
rial practices concern the territorialisation of space, by displaying au-
thority through flags, banners, signs, fences or graffiti, and the assertion
of control through dispensing justice, levying taxes or providing se-
curity. In addition, people’s support for emerging forms of public au-
thority is marshalled by referencing common notions of legitimacy, e.g.
the modern state, tradition, identity, belonging, the local and the dis-
tant, the historic and the new (Lund, 2006).
Accordingly, in this paper we employ the concept of public au-
thority to investigate the highly contested implementation of an in-
novative urban policy which radically sought to formalise street ven-
dors in a South Delhi market. By analysing the politics of policy
implementation, the article complements studies that typically focus on
the effects of policy outcomes (e.g. on land titling see: Briggs, 2011;
Devlin, 2011; Porter, 2011), or on the agenda-setting and policy-
making, and the role of the judiciary in public policy processes. For
instance, for Delhi, these processes are set out in relation to large-scale
erasures of informal settlements (Bhan, 2009; Ghertner, 2008, 2011)
and for street traders (Schindler, 2014a, 2016; te Lintelo, 2009, 2010).
We present a rich in-depth case study to show in what ways and why
the politics of implementing a policy aimed at formalisation takes place
across a wide range of arenas and through profuse tactics, to critically
(re)produce the informality of Delhi’s street vendors and to enduringly
shape cityscapes. This qualitative study combines ethnographic with
policy and legal analytical techniques. We draw on key informant in-
terviews with actors competing for public authority, a census survey
that we conducted with food vendors and non-participant observations
in Sewa Nagar market in 2005–2006. Furthermore, we analyse official
documentation of municipal, state and national level policymaking and
implementation processes, and investigate a paper trail of litigation
between contestants in Delhi High Court.
Our analysis of the micro-political practices through which actors
assert public authority over the control and use of urban space provides
new empirical and theoretical insights into the production of formal-
informal relations in cities of the global south. We explain how and why
state and non-state actors employ a multitude of tactics in a variety of
market, residential, judicial, bureaucratic and democratic arenas,
combining street politics with litigation, advocacy and backroom lob-
bying. And we propose that state fragmentation; informal practices by
the state; and ‘horizontal’ contestations within society and within the
state are critical factors in the (re)production of urban informality, to
fruitfully complement prevailing studies that ‘vertically' juxtapose state
and society.
Following this introduction, the remainder of this paper will first
review the literature, before presenting an in-depth case study, followed
by a discussion section and a conclusion.
1.1. On the relation between the formal and informal
The World Development report 2013 pithily summarises that “After
nearly four decades of debates about the concept of informality, there is
no consensus on what is meant by informal jobs” (World Bank,
2012:64). Conceptual clarity and consensus on informality has proven
elusive. Typical analyses consider spatial (e.g. settlements), group (e.g.
workers), and governmental features of informality (e.g. an ‘un-
regulated’ or ‘unorganised’ sector) (McFarlane, 2012; McFarlane and
Waibel, 2012). Informality has also been conceptualised as a practice of
the poor, as ways of knowing and being in the city (Blom Hansen and
Verkaaik, 2009; McFarlane and Waibel, 2012), and as a mode of urban
governance which operates through the constant ‘negotiability of
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Geoforum 84 (2017) 77–87
value’, characterised by shifting relationships between what is legal and
what is not, and what is authorised or unauthorised (Roy and Alsayyad,
2004).
Governance studies have long ignored the informal, deeming it
backward, impeding modernisation and lacking democratic legitimacy
(IDS, 2010). In discussions about urban development and governance
the formal is associated with state planning, and the informal a de-
viation from it (McFarlane and Waibel, 2012). For instance, informal
settlements are typically depicted as a policy problem: being un-
planned, unregulated, uncontrolled, messy and inefficient, and juxta-
posed to ordered, regulated, efficient notions of planned land use and
settlement (Porter, 2011; Roy, 2005). This narrative makes informal
settlements central to the production of the city, because they enable
and constitute debates about urban civilisation and law (Diken, 2005).
One classic notion holds the modern formal and pre-modern in-
formal economy as distinct entities (e.g. Castells and Portes, 1989;
Guha-Khasnobis et al., 2006), though critiques have noted their inter-
dependency, as for instance in the case of informal workers being in-
tegrated in global value chains (Chen, 2007). Similarly, in terms of land
governance, the formal city often gets juxtaposed to the informal city as
being subject to different sets of de jure and de facto rules (van Horen,
2000). Yet these rules never quite operate autonomously from one
another. For instance, official rules on building and land-use tend to
impose unaffordable costs on housing for the poor and thereby foster
the spread of unauthorised settlements (Chiodelli and Moroni, 2014;
van Gelder, 2013; van Horen, 2000; Leaf, 1994). Moreover, large scale
regularisations of informal settlements in one location can perversely
incentivise their respawning elsewhere (van Gelder, 2013).
Equating informality with illegality or with being outside of the law,
as for instance in the highly influential work of de Soto (2000), misses
the point that informal activity is constituted nomotropically; “in light
of the law” (Chiodelli and Moroni, 2014:162). For instance, people
carefully plan land invasions to paradoxically minimise contravening
land use laws. Moreover, informal settlements often develop unofficial
rules and dispute settlement mechanisms that mimic form and sub-
stance of prevailing state law and legal principles (van Gelder, 2013, p.
505). Their inhabitants seek to advance their legal status combining
strategies of non-compliance with adapting to the official legal system.
For instance, they use state law to transform conflicts about land into
legal conflicts, where claims to land tenure may be based on human
rights, natural rights, or civil rights to counter others’ claims rooted in
doctrines of property rights (van Gelder, 2013:497, 506).
The notion of informality as unregulated and outside the remit of
state action depends on the idea of the latter being visible and overt.
However “governmental reach may in practice be invisible” (McFarlane
and Waibel, 2012:4), for instance when state actors adopt informal
practices (Porter, 2011; Roy, 2005) that contradict official protocol.
Studying land acquisition processes in peri-urban fringes of Kolkata,
Roy (2009) thus argues that informality lies within the scope of the
state rather than outside it. Moreover, dominant notions that the in-
formal is the preserve of the poor are now vigorously challenged. For
instance, wealthy urban elites are often able to negotiate what is legal
and illegal, authorised and unauthorised in relation to building reg-
ulations and planning laws in Indian cities (Roy, 2005, 2009). Ac-
cordingly, in Delhi, much of the built city can be viewed as ‘un-
authorised’ (Ghertner, 2008). Similarly, debates about the causes of
flooding in Mumbai in 2005 have underlined how private developers
seek to bypass regulations are actively facilitated by informal practices
of the state (McFarlane, 2012). Consequently, the relationship between
the formal and the informal hence can be better understood by refuting
hard conceptual dichotomies of formal vs informal, legal vs illegal,
authorised vs unauthorised, but instead consider these to be elastic,
dynamic and part of an evolving interconnected system (van Gelder,
2013; Leaf, 1994; McFarlane, 2012; Porter, 2011; Roy, 2005; Schindler,
2014a).
Following this discussion of the literature on formal-informal
D.J.H. te Lintelo Geoforum 84 (2017) 77–87

relations in urban settings, the following sections will present a case social justice. It proposed formalising street vendors, by replacing teh-
study to show how these are crafted through a myriad of micro-political bazari licensing with vendor registration, payment of a monthly fee and
practices that aim to (re)produce public authority. a self-regulatory mechanism ensuring cleanliness and smooth traffic
flow. A successful pilot at Sewa Nagar market would extend the policy
throughout Delhi ahead of the 2010 Commonwealth Games (Municipal
2. Case study
Corporation of Delhi, 2004). The policy aligned well with goals of the
BJP led alliance ruling the country, emphasising state retrenchment,
2.1. Regulating street vending in India
public-private partnerships; de-licensing, beautification and vendors’
self-regulation.3 Moreover, it responded to a unique Prime Ministerial
Globally, urban street vendors are regulated by a variety of formal
appeal for de-licensing and creating vending zones in the capital (Prime
and informal institutions and practices (Bhowmik, 2010). In India, a
Minister’s Office, 2001).
National Urban Street Vending Policy (2005) and Street Vendors
Despite its radical approach, the policy was quickly approved
(Protection of Livelihoods and Regulating Street Vending) Act 2014
through MCD Council Resolution 505 in September 2002. However, as
provide the national regulatory framework. Their progressive framing
the Supreme Court’s Chopra Committee had not identified Sewa Nagar
however jars with historic mandates, diversely exercised across cities,
as a location suitable for tehbazari, MCD lawyers and Kishwar peti-
but typically involving restrictive licensing regimes that are reflective
tioned the Supreme Court (A. No. 393 in Writ Petition (Civil) No. 1699/
of attitudes that conceive of vendors as illegitimate users of public
1987, Ram Swaroop & ors vs. MCD & Ors, 1987) to request and receive
space, and the violent exercise of sovereignty. In Delhi, any sales of
permission to implement the policy in April 2003. The policy was also
goods and services in public space must be granted prior government
designated as implementing the National Urban Street Vending Policy
permission. Two types of licensing are issued in theory. A tehbazari li-
(Municipal Corporation of Delhi, 2004).
cense grants permission to vend on a pre-identified site, while hawking
In order to execute MCD Resolution 505 the MCD and Manushi
licenses give permission to itinerant sellers. As in Mumbai (Anjaria,
signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). It specified Manushi’s
2011), hawking licenses have long stopped being issued in Delhi.
contributions as:
Tehbazari licenses are issued highly parsimoniously not least due to a

• Improving physical infrastructure, including handcarts or stalls,

judicially imposed ceiling. The resultant scarcity drives a lucrative
black market for licenses and condemns over 95% of Delhi’s 200,000
pavements, walls and parks
• Surveying available space
plus vendors to illegal status; risking everyday municipal enforcement

• Committing vendors to operate within a fixed area delineated by a

drives that confiscate and destroy property, and occasional long term
removals from vending sites (te Lintelo, 2009).
‘line of self-discipline’
• Preventing permanent structures
Delhi’s formal regulatory regime underpins a well-entrenched in-

• Garbage disposal
formal regime that exercises public authority over the vendor popula-

• Collecting municipal taxes, electricity and water dues

tion. The informal regime governs access to public space, defining
vending location, imposing weekly or monthly ‘access’ payments
(hafta/mahina) to actors within and without the government system for • Decongesting the area through earmarked parking spaces
which vendors keep ledgers; and enforcing eviction of those unable to
The MoU further set out that the MCD would give “full assistance in
pay. While payments vary by location, product and trading volumes,
ensuring that needless hurdles are not placed in its way … that projects
our survey of vendors at two fieldwork sites showed these to con-
are not threatened with demolition or clearance operations … [and]
sistently approximate 10% of turnover value (te Lintelo, 2009). Al-
“help in co-ordinating with the Police, PWD [Public Works
though imposed, vendors generally pay up without fuzz (for fear of
Departments, ed.] and other relevant government agencies to ensure
physical and economic reprisals), and consider it a ‘fact of life’ (Anjaria,
that they do not obstruct the execution of these pilot projects” (MCD
2011). Moreover, some vendors are implicated in stabilising the rent-
and Manushi, 2003). The commissioner accordingly held meetings with
seeking system by collecting hafta. Vendor protests invariably target
deputy commissioners, police, traffic police, executive engineers and
municipal enforcement authorities to create negotiation opportunities
representatives of several public and private agencies, while residents’
(Anjaria, 2011), yet rarely challenge the rent-seeking system itself.1
concerns were discussed with Sewa Nagar’s elected municipal coun-
Tellingly, vendors in our study were more acquainted with the demands
cillor.
of the informal regulatory regime than with the official writ of Delhi’s
Various actors in and around the market opposed the policy, most
municipal authorities. Hence, contrary to popular perceptions that
notably two local Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) and the
emphasise vendors’ unruliness, their operations in public space are
councillor. RWAs and market trader associations often do not seek to
highly regulated.2 As such, Roy’s (2009) observation in case of informal
exclude street traders altogether, but rather aim to regulate the poor’s
settlements of the state’s “seeming withdrawal of regulatory power” [to]
access to space, in some instances putting in place private licensing
“create[s] a logic of resource allocation, accumulation, and authority”
schemes and security guards (Schindler, 2014b). Such contestations
(Roy, 2009:81, 83–84 italics, eds) aptly applies to street trading in
over the use of public space pit middle class’ needs for social re-
Delhi.
production versus street vendors’ needs to sustain a livelihood. At Sewa
It is against this backdrop that we analyse the implementation of
Nagar, economic interests were paramount. Interviews with shop-
radical new street vending policy piloted at Sewa Nagar market. In
keepers and market traders4 indicated that vendor regularisation and
August 2002, Rakesh Mehta, the commissioner of the Municipal
removal of illegality associated costs (hafta, confiscated commodities,
Corporation of Delhi (MCD), co-produced a new policy with Madhu
Kishwar, academic, media commentator and director of Manushi, a
non-profit development organisation working on gender, rights and
3
However the BJP lost power in the MCD council in 2002 to the rival Congress party,
who also ruled Delhi (state) throughout the 2000s.
1 4
However civil society organisations like the National Association of Street Vendors Interviews took place in July 2006 with presidents of the Sewa Nagar Market Welfare
have successfully campaigned for national policy and legislation supporting vendors (see: Association representing 32 (formal) shops and the BJP associated president of the Fruit
e.g. te Lintelo, 2010; Schindler, 2016). Vendors and their organisations thus view the Market Welfare Association, representing 45 traders operating on illegally occupied
state as both a potential protector and a recurrent threat. government land; the President of the Residents’ Welfare Association Sewa Nagar; the
2
While little is known about its specific nature, hafta finds its way to the police, po- Congress councillor and his secretary; Madhu Kishwar (Manushi); and three vendor
liticians, local strongmen and civil servants in various government authorities. In Zambia, pradhans. Additionally a census of 55 food vendors at Sewa Nagar and Nehru Place was
its management was considered the portfolio of the President’s Office (Harland, 2008). conducted plus non-participant observations in the markets (2005–06).

79
D.J.H. te Lintelo
loss of income) entailed a threat to their members’ competitiveness.
Vendors not only sold similar merchandise, but did so from sites that
could otherwise be used as car parking space for shoppers. Moreover,
regularisation reduced their power to incite vendor removal by police
and MCD. Yet, on what legal or normative grounds one group of private
actors (RWAs) seeks to regulate access to public space by another group
(vendors) must be questioned. Elsewhere, Delhi State governments’
Bhagidari scheme offered one such justification, as it institutionally
linked RWAs and (municipal and Delhi state) authorities, enabling the
former to raise examples of nuisance (e.g. street traders operating on a
sidewalk) for the latter to act on (Ghertner, 2012). However, the RWAs
at Sewa Nagar were neither registered, nor had audited accounts as
required by the Bhagidari scheme. Prima facie, the opposition by the
RWAs seemed a case of NIMBY-ism.5 And while RWA presidents
claimed in interviews to be “non-political”, Manushi asserted that the
RWA presidents acted as political mobilisers for local BJP and Congress
politicians, involved in seeking rents from street vendors (Manushi,
2005). Such allegations against RWAs were mirrored elsewhere in Delhi
(Verma, 2005). Moreover, Indian officials often perceive RWAs as ve-
hicles for private agendas that move strongly through political channels
(Coelho et al., 2011:23, 25).
Fieldwork in the market (Plate 1) showed that the pilot performed
as designed.6 Strikingly, while adjacent vendors continued paying
hafta, 158 project vendors paid monthly tehbazari fees, to be released
from paying hafta and MCD enforcement raids. Generally poorly un-
derstood (Manor, 2000), brokers (pradhans) at Sewa Nagar allocated
vending space; collected hafta; performed market surveillance; mobi-
lised vendors to participate in party political rallies; and mediated with
state agents such as the police (cf Jha et al., 2007). Pradhans also ar-
ranged access to water and electricity (at inflated prices), provided tip-
offs to vendors about imminent enforcement raids and mediated re-
trieval of confiscated goods at discounted rates, yet rarely facilitated
access to political patronage. Hence, for the MCD, the new policy made
market space legible, raised revenue forgone elsewhere in the city, and
reasserted itsauthority. However, it also fundamentally threatened the
existing rent-seeking system and its actors’ ability to exercise public
authority over street traders.
3. A myriad of micro-political practices
The following sections accordingly seek to understand how public
authority is challenged and asserted, by analysing the practices through
which the RWAs aligned to the local councillor, Member of Parliament
and the police and sought to countervail the assertion of public au-
thority by the MCD and Manushi. Three political practices stand out:
firstly, material practices of place-making in Sewa Nagar market.
Secondly, the tactical employment of discursive practices appealing to
procedures of state and venue-specific administrative logics. Thirdly,
appeals to local popular and generic legal notions of probity and de-
servedness.
3.1. Constructing stalls, building communities
Having secured area development funds from a Congress MP, from
2002 Manushi started investing the market space with a specific sense
of place. It erected portable vending stalls in orderly shapes and bright
yellow and green colours on newly tiled pavements (Plate 2), in striking
contrast to ramshackle neighbouring stalls. A shrine for a location
specific deity was built centrally in the market and an adjacent park
was refurbished. The physical assembly of the market was interwoven
5
Not In My Back Yard.
6
The map was prepared in QGIS (http://www.qgis.org) using building footprint and
street/railway geo data from OpenStreetMap (OSM, https://www.openstreetmap.org)
and country and state boundaries from DIVA-GIS (http://www.diva-gis.org/). The OSM
data was extracted using overpass turbo (http://overpass-turbo.eu/).
80
Geoforum 84 (2017) 77–87
with material practices designed to establish a new moral economy for
a community of vendors that lacked a common ethnic, religious, or
caste identity. Manushi enrolled a deity, Devi Swaccha Narayani, and
publicly displayed her statue in the shrine. It also initiated a ‘broom
worship’ (jhadu pooja) ceremony to invoke divine support for cleaning
up street vendor governance. The goddess was also enrolled to dis-
courage god-fearing opponents and to build popular moral legitimacy
for the project. Vendors further committed to a set of self-regulatory
principles: notably, to maintain cleanliness and to refrain from en-
croaching adjacent areas. Trading thus had to take place within a pa-
vement area demarcated by a green ‘line of self-discipline’ (sanyam
rekha).7 Vendors also paid a small fee for cleaning up the market. A
dispute settlement mechanism was established based on vendor peer
pressure. The monthly tehbazari payment of Rs 390 was presented as a
tax to the MCD. It was legible evidence of government recognition
highly valued by vendors as a means towards establishing justiciable
rights (te Lintelo, 2009; Anjaria, 2011). The measures of self-constraint
and self-discipline publicly demonstrated ‘responsible citizenship’, ap-
pealing to growing middle class concerns about civic order and clean-
liness (Kaviraj, 1997) and countering common discourses that portray
vendors as unruly, violating planning norms and transgressing public/
private boundaries (Anjaria, 2011:64).
From the start, placemaking and community building efforts were
severely tested. Vendors were threatened with violence and eviction,
and non-participating vendors tried to occupy market spaces and
challenge sanyam rekha (Kishwar, 2001). MCD street sweepers in-
timidated Manushi-appointed cleaners and snatched their brooms and
wheelbarrows (Kishwar, 2002). Moreover, while Kishwar presented the
project to the Chief Minister of Delhi and the MCD commissioner, MCD
bulldozers and trucks attempted to remove the vendors, only to be
deterred by Manushi staff wielding a video recorder. Commencing
tehbazari collection in October 2004 further escalated tension: vendors
were subjected to intimidation, construction work was obstructed and
stalls vandalised, to visually undermine claims to cleanliness, order and
authority. Local police officers repeatedly detained labourers and the
project architect for ‘making illegal private construction’ on public
land. Their release required intervention of an MCD deputy commis-
sioner with the deputy commissioner of police. Rumours circulated that
the police had prompted a group of vendors to make extortion com-
plaints against Kishwar, and police officers made veiled threats to her
and vendors’ safety. Kishwar (2004) in turn wrote to plead with the
MCD commissioner for protection against the police.
Asserting public authority, and delineating the distinction between
the formal and the informal thus involved a striking combination of the
crude and the sophisticated, of deliberation and intimidation, and of
violence and procedure. It encompassed a range of micro-political
practices, including intimidation and violence, but also a suit of non-
violent interventions in judicial, market, bureaucratic and party poli-
tical fields of action. Appealing to elite and popular audiences, these
interventions sought to gain legitimacy for the formalised presence of
street vendors, referencing moral probity; localness; traditional re-
ligious and fictitious kinship norms; and modern state procedures.
3.2. Engaging and furthering a fragmented state
Considering MCD sanction insufficient for implementing the policy
(Kishwar, 2003, p. 8), Kishwar attempted to persuade the local coun-
cillor to support the project: “after all, he is our elected representative … I
wanted somehow to bring him on board rather than bypass him. So I kept
making gestures of … partnership. Like, ‘it's your constituency, the credit will
go to you, why don't you own it up rather than obstruct it”’ [pers. comm.].
While arguing that the project would not serve a personal political
7
The sanyam rekha references the Lakshman rekha of the Ramayana epic: symbolising
that as long as vendors operate within the allocated space, no harm will pass.
D.J.H. te Lintelo Geoforum 84 (2017) 77–87

Plate 1. Map of Sewa Nagar market.

Plate 2. Manushi’s project stalls at Sewa Nagar market.

81
D.J.H. te Lintelo
Table 1
A fragmented state: agencies servicing Sewa Nagar.
Agency Administration
Land & Development Office (L & DO) Central government (Ministry of Urban Development)
Central Public Works Department (CPWD)
Central Government Health Services CGHS Central government (Ministry of Health)
Delhi Police Central Government (Ministry of Home Affairs)
MCD Municipal government
Delhi Water Board State government
BSES Private (Reliance Ltd)
career, Kishwar leveraged personal political networks, including Con-
gress cabinet ministers and party leader Sonia Gandhi, to put pressure
on the councillor. The president of the Delhi State Congress Committee,
with whom she shared a history in student politics, successfully per-
suaded the influential chairman of the MCD Standing Committee to
reverse his opposition to the project (Kishwar, 2003, p. 9; Sharma,
2003). However, the Sewa Nagar councillor did not budge, and himself
could draw on the support of quite a formidable patron: Ajay Maken,
local Congress MP and a rising political star.
Sewa Nagar was built in the 1950s for Class IV central government
employees (e.g. peons, drivers) by the Central Public Works Department
(CPWD) on land owned by the Land & Development Office (L & DO),
with both agencies part of the central Ministry of Urban Development.
Following construction, infrastructural maintenance of the colony was
handed over to the MCD, which subsequently relinquished responsi-
bility for water and sewage pipe maintenance to the Delhi Water Board,
a State government body (CPWD, 2004a). Accordingly, mandates were
complex and spanning across three layers of administration (Table 1).
This fragmentation enabled project opponents to strategically look
for venues with veto powers (Baumgartner and Jones, 2009), staking
claims that referenced legal and bureaucratic logics of state. The RWAs
lodged litigation in the Delhi High Court, to be refused a stay order on
the project. Simultaneously, they staged a 2-month long sit-in protest
(dharna) in the centre of Sewa Nagar market. Less publicly, the RWAs
mobilised support in various government agencies with potential power
to veto the policy implementation. One RWA president sent generic
letters of complaint to a series of authorities, including the police, MCD,
the local Member of Parliament, Members of Delhi State’s Legislative
Assembly, MCD councillors, the Lieutenant General of Delhi, the Cen-
tral Public Works Department and other authorities (Singh, 2004).
However, over time, more sophisticated appeals emerged that were
tailored to specific mandates of a range of government and private
agencies operating in Sewa Nagar.
Between October 2004 and March 2005, the RWA presidents, oc-
casionally accompanied by the MP, visited a range of administrative
agencies to obtain written interventions to halt the project. Following
one such visit, a Central Public Works Department executive engineer
wrote a memo to his counterpart in the Land & Development Office
(L & DO) noting that “allottees of Govt. colony are flooding the CPWD
enquiry office with their problems”, to assert that the project obstructed
entry to residences, caused insecurity and nuisance, and would impede
maintenance of water pipes, with stalls being constructed on top. It
recommended the L & DO, as landowner, to contact the MCD to rectify
the situation “keeping in view … the problems of the local residents
who have strong objection to construction of these shops” (CPWD,
2004a). The following day, the MP attached the memo to his own letter,
to demand “urgent action” from the L & DO chief to halt the project
(Maken, 2004a). L & DO officials responded acknowledging land own-
ership, but argued that responsibility for maintenance and clearance of
unauthorised constructions lay with the CPWD (L & DO, 2004a). CPWD
officials countered the claim by pointing to the L & DO maintenance
manual (CPWD, 2004b, 2004c). Facing deadlock, the MP next took
matters up at a higher administrative level. Joined by the two RWA
presidents, he personally delivered a letter to Mr. PK Pradhan, joint-
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Geoforum 84 (2017) 77–87
Mandate
Ownership of land
Maintains service water lines, parks, walls of colony
Runs public dispensary bordering project
Public order, law enforcement
Maintains roads, pavements, encroachment removal
Maintains main water and sewage lines
Distributes electricity, maintains networks and meter use
secretary in the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD), Government
of India (2004). The letter noted: “I have also been constantly informing
you that the residents of the area are sitting on dharna” (protest), al-
luding to repeated previous calls for support. The letter also cunningly
(and falsely) suggested that discussions with MCD, CPWD, L & DO and
resident and trader welfare associations had reached consensus that
“the intervention of your ministry is extremely solicited in removing the
unwanted hawkers” (Maken, 2004b).
Four days later, on December 27, another letter, this time from a
junior L & DO official requested the local police station to register a case
against the project in order “to stop this unauthorised construction
immediately”(L & DO, 2004b). Moreover, on December 28, the joint-
secretary and the L & DO chief wrote a letter to the MCD commissioner
(cc-ed to the RWA), noting that the “MCD should have consulted the
L & DO or CPWD before taking up such projects” to call for an im-
mediate halt (MoUD, 2004). The next day, Kishwar recalled,
“As soon as we started construction work today, [councillor] Basoya
came and forced the construction team to stop the work as he did on
three earlier occasions threatening them with police arrest. When I
phoned the SHO [i.e. Station House Officer of Police, ed.] he told me that
he is unable to provide protection to the construction team hired by an
NGO. Moreover, he read out a letter by one Mr. R.K. [sic, ed.] Pradhan,
Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Urban Development instructing the
MCD to stop work on this pilot project … Mr. Pradhan’s letter claims that
since the Sewa Nagar area comes under L & DO and CPWD, the MCD
has no business to allow improvements in the civic infrastructure and
construction of hawker stalls at Sewa Nagar”.
Kishwar, 2004
The councillor considered the letter of PK Pradhan a trump card and
urged the RWAs to stop the dharna [pers. comm.]. Yet, as the MCD
commissioner refused to budge, by February 1, 2005, the RWAs wrote
another letter to PK Pradhan. It complained that the commissioner was
“hell-bent” on implementing the project, and “his intention does not
seem to be bona fide and NOT in the welfare of the colony” (Sudhar
Sabha Kasturba Nagar, 2005 capitals in original). This letter enclosed
three additional letters from seemingly random local government
agencies: the chief medical officer in charge of a local government
dispensary generically complained about vendors; a deputy director of
horticulture in the CPWD argued that vendors prevented entry to its
parks, while an executive engineer of Delhi Water Board railed against
construction of stalls on top of water and sewage lines. Accordingly, the
RWAs’, councillor and MP mobilised alliances with individual civil
servants from across state bureaucracies. These allies helped to frame
claims in the language of state and identified procedural and sub-
stantive grounds to halt the project. In their search for a veto, oppo-
nents also pragmatically adjusted their discursive claims in ways that
opened up new bureaucratic and judicial arenas in which they could
challenge the pilot policy (Table 2).
These moral claims and appeals to bureaucratic logics appeared
intent to affirm public authority exercised by the state, however de-
liberately functioned to achieve the converse. For instance, in dealings
with civil servants, claims about resident illfare were combined with
calls to redress project violations of bureaucratic rules, notably
D.J.H. te Lintelo
Table 2
Pragmatic discursive shifts in claims against the project.
Date Source and target
22/10/2004 Letter RWA (Dharam Singh) to various authorities, inc. Police, MCD, the local Member of
Parliament, Members of Delhi State’s Legislative Assembly, etc.
29/11/2004 RWAs petition to Delhi High Court (D. Singh, U. Rawat)
15/16 and 20/21 December Correspondence CPWD – L & DO (5 letters)
2004
7/12/2004 Letter Ajay Maken – L & DO
28/12/2004 Letter MoUD – MCD commissioner
01/02/2005 Correspondence RWAs with MoUD
March 2005 Affidavits L & DO and CPWD included in petition of RWAs
a
Asserting permanence bestowed a duty on the MCD to remove such unauthorised constructions.
regarding ‘unauthorised constructions’. Such contentions cunningly
referenced longstanding tehbazari regulations that bureaucrats were
likely to be familiar with, that prevailed in most of the city, but to
which – crucially – the pilot policy at Sewa Nagar offered a radical
alternative.
More fundamentally, opponents’ search for vetoes purposively
drove a process of increased bureaucratic incoherence and porosity, and
actively undermined impersonal administrative logics. Typically, op-
ponents sought to employ administrative discourses to mobilise in-
dividual civil servants, rather than administrative agencies as an entity,
while their appeals to bureaucratic rationale often functioned to ob-
fuscate. Consequently, managerial hierarchies were violated. Thus,
while the Deputy Commissioner of Police assured he wanted to protect
Kishwar, local police officers connived with thugs who threatened her
safety, and lodged false cases against her and project vendors. Similarly,
opponents mobilised a joint-secretary in the Ministry of Urban
Development to halt the very project that implemented this Ministry’s
National Urban Street Vendor Policy. Junior officials, who in the con-
text of urban land tenure are often politicised (Benjamin and
Bhuvaneswari, 2011) were encouraged to exercise personal agendas,
subordinating their superiors by ignoring and defying their explicit
instructions. Thus, while the CPWD director-general pledged support,
officials in its horticulture division fulminated against the project, and
an executive engineer sent letters to other government agencies listing a
range of objections to the project (CPWD, 2004a, 2004b, 2004c). Such
letters were devised to gain a life of their own; their provenance served
to instil legitimacy and weight, and to enrol other bureaucratic agencies
in efforts to block policy implementation.
3.3. Deservedness, probity and reputation
The previous section highlighted the discursive politics around bu-
reaucratic state procedures. This section investigates how public au-
thority is contested through concurrent practices appealing to moral
notions of deservedness, probity and reputation, often aimed at popular
audiences in Sewa Nagar residential colony and market.
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Geoforum 84 (2017) 77–87
Grounds
– bogus list of vendors
– workers are goons
– project is a scam
– residents’ unhappiness
– unauthorised construction
– violates Master Plan of Delhi
– traffic congestion, threatens road safety
– restricts movement of residents
– disturbs the peace
– residents’ unhappiness
– unauthorised construction
– CPWD and L & DO not consulted
– maintenance water/sewage pipes
– shops abut residential quarters
– unauthorised construction
– residents’ unhappiness
– residents’ unhappiness
– unauthorised construction
– CPWD and L & DO not consulted by MCD
– maintenance water/sewage pipes
– shops abut residential quarters
– blocking access to public parks
– shift project elsewhere (NIMBY)
– residents’ unhappiness
– permanenta stalls give maintenance problems to
water/sewage pipes
– CPWD and L & DO not consulted
From the start, project opponents framed narratives that juxtaposed
the welfare of residents and vendors and that aimed to ‘other’ the
vendors. For instance, the councillor argued that the project caused
“panic amongst the residents and the local shop-keepers” and that
“Kishwar wants to make this colony hell to its residents for her vested
interest by promoting hawkers” (Basoya, 2003). The local MP argued:
“if this scheme is implemented, the residents are going to face a lot of
problems and hardship” (Maken, 2004a). The councillor argued that
vendors lacked voting rights in his ward, yet usurped policy benefits
that should accrue to local residents [pers. comm.]. “These hawkers/
squatters are not from the local area and it is also doubted that they are
Delhities (sic) even Indian or not” (Basoya, 2003). Yet, this narrative
obscured the reality of strongly intertwined interests. Residents not
only gave custom, but also illegally rented out accommodation to
vendors, and sold them electricity and water at premium prices. In
order to demonstrate that many residents were not represented by the
RWAs, Manushi presented a petition to the High Court in February
2005, in which 700 residents expressed their unambiguous support for
the project.
At Sewa Nagar, reputation provided a critical register on which
opponents’ legitimacy to exercise public authority was contested. The
RWAs argued in their petition to the Delhi High Court that vendors
disturbed children’s studies, produced malodour, and routinely com-
mitted petty larceny and sexual harassment. The councillor asserted in
a letter to the MCD commissioner that hawkers “create nuisance
throughout the day and night, by way of their illegal activities like
drinking, theft and fighting” … “Most of time, they are found in the
state of intoxication and cases like theft, quarrel and fighting are in-
creasing day by day” (Basoya, 2003). Such assertions appealed to
popular discourses that portray vendors as unruly, striking at the heart
of the project vendors’ claims to civicness.
Low level actors in political society routinely produce disinforma-
tion and spread gossip and rumours (Corbridge et al., 2005; Blom
Hansen and Verkaaik, 2009). Project opponents thus used more and less
subtle ways to slander the project and its architects. The RWAs asserted
that Kishwar must “have obtained permission fraudulently to build the
D.J.H. te Lintelo
market. The list of 263 shopkeepers is also bogus and only 73 shop-
keepers are genuine … we fear donation from abroad in the names of
bogus shopkeepers.” Moreover, “the workers on the spot look like goons
and not workers. Certainly it is a big scam going on” (Singh, 2004). The
councillor and shopkeeper and traders’ associations further argued that
vendors did not gain ownership documents for the stalls and were
therefore at the mercy of Kishwar. They were wrong: vendors did re-
ceive a receipt for purchasing the stall structure (Rs 30,000), but this
explicitly excluded ownership of the land. Opponents also questioned
why vendors had to pay – this was no case of ‘helping the poor’ –
particularly when the project was well-funded.8 Moreover, they as-
serted that vendors were looking to sell the shops at heavy profits and
were renting them out. While such attempts had indeed been made,
those vendors had been evicted.
Cruder allegations asserted Kishwar’s corruption. In letters to the
MCD commissioner, the councillor alleged that Kishwar “is collecting
hefty amount from these squatters in the name that she will provide
permanent rights of squatting on the public land” (Basoya, 2003). In
interviews, the councillor accused Kishwar of “pocketing 4.7 million
rupees” (approximately $100,000)9 while his secretary alleged em-
bezzlement of Rs 10 million of area development funds and foreign
donations; the nepotistic allocation of stalls; and the illicit auction of
stalls at Rs 1–2 lakhs each. A local shopkeeper, who later turned out to
be a relative of the councillor, informed the researcher that Kishwar
had purchased two flats worth tens of millions of rupees in popular
South-Delhi neighbourhoods, to conclude that the project was about
‘doing business, not development’.
Kishwar herself challenged anyone to audit her accounts by making
these publicly accessible on the Manushi website. Fieldwork showed
that project vendors were extremely grateful to Kishwar and many
nearby vendors desired inclusion in the project. However, as tension in
the market escalated, she also sought ways to contain the councillor’s
hostility, resourcefully drawing on popular notions of adoptive kinship
relations, which in India signify binding ideas of moral duty and order
(Corbridge et al., 2005, p. 198): “One day, he [the councillor] just, by
some slip of the tongue, he called me didi, which is elder sister. I lat-
ched on to this word and said “now you call me didi, you have to be-
have like a younger brother. In India that is a serious commitment, so
either you withdraw that word” … and he said, “well then you treat me
like a younger brother”. I said, “I will, sure, but then you have to be-
have like one” … That's how we ended up tying rakhi10 and he still
comes to me for rakhi” [pers. comm].
Yet, tying rakhi did not prevent further police raids, intimidation
and vandalising of vendors’ stalls and property. This prompted Kishwar
to launch a very public reputational counter-offensive. She brought
media attention to the case and submitted a new affidavit requesting
High Court protection against the police and others sabotaging the
project (Kishwar, 2005). The affidavit contained a petition of 700 local
vendors and residents in support of the project. Several testified on
stamp paper to have been intimidated and threatened by the leaders of
the RWAs and the local Fruit & Vegetable Traders Association, for re-
fusal to sign their petition against the project. The affidavit further
presented evidence that one of the RWA presidents, who during inter-
view had argued that vendors harass female residents, was himself out
on bail for charges of sexual harassment. As the local police station
refused to register the victim’s complaint, Kishwar roped in the chief
welfare officer in the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and
8
The project was funded through (a) the local area development fund of MP Ambika
Soni and (b) membership fees and donations to Manushi, which does not receive foreign
grants and are supported by unpaid volunteers.
9 11
In 2005, $1 could be exchanged for approximately 45 Indian rupees.
10
A Hindu festival celebrating the relationship between (actual and fictive) brothers
and sisters. The woman ties a sacred thread (rakhi) around the brother’s wrist, symbo-
lising her dedication to his wellbeing, in turn creating a moral obligation for him to
protect her.
84
Geoforum 84 (2017) 77–87
Pensions (Government of India, 2004) who has a mandate to resolve
disputes amongst residents in government housing colonies. This
person in turn intervened with the deputy police commissioner to get
the complaint registered (Manushi, 2005).
Finally, to underline the seriousness of the threats against the pro-
ject and its participants, Kishwar included a list of criminal antecedents
of opponents in the affidavit: “I took a strategic risk … to put down all
those facts about the criminal background of our corporator [coun-
cillor, ed] and his men. We were provided enough details of their long
history of crime by their own party people, by their own official col-
leagues, people who are living in that area. And, though these cases are
still going on, these people are out on bail. Even our corporator is out
on bail. He has murder charges, he has rape, he's got 48 criminal cases
going against him” [pers. comm.]. The affidavit further alleged that the
MP had demanded allocation of stalls to his accomplices.
At first instance, the strategy seemed to pay off. Kishwar’s combined
use of high level political and bureaucratic networks at different levels
of state, court action and media publicity (within changed political
circumstances) drove a wedge between the RWAs, the councillor and
their MP patron. The MP failed to broker a compromise (Manushi,
2005) and then made a remarkable volte face, at least in public. Newly
appointed as central government Minister of State for Urban Develop-
ment, Maken took the politically expedient step to publicly support
Delhi’s street vendors and middle class citizens, who were both belea-
guered by Supreme Court ordered demolition drives.11 Moreover,
councillor Basoya was not allocated a ticket to contest MCD elections in
May 2007, but bounced back to become a Member of Delhi’s Legislative
Assembly in November 2008.
Yet, Kishwar’s exposure of fears, antecedents and motives before the
High Court failed to be the envisaged insurance policy. Having lost a
critical ally through the bureaucratic transfer of the MCD commis-
sioner, the security situation in the market rapidly deteriorated. In April
2007, Manushi volunteers and participant vendors were beaten up,
hounded from the market and not allowed to return (Staff reporter,
2008). In two subsequent returns, Kishwar was again physically at-
tacked. Efforts by the MCD deputy commissioner to involve the police
and ensure protection for her failed, and when she finally decided to
lodge a case against her attackers she found they had submitted prior
First Investigation Reports accusing her of attempts at murder, extor-
tion and fraud.
Further efforts were made to publicise the project’s plight in the
media, and supportive yet ultimately ineffectual letters instructing po-
lice protection were issued by the Prime Minister’s Office and the
Lieutenant Governor of Delhi. Following years of contestation in poli-
tical, bureaucratic, media and legal arenas, ultimately violence re-as-
serted the public authority of the local councillor and RWA presidents
in the market, with enduring effects on the cityscape.
Returning to the market in 2017 we find the Resident Welfare
Associations not to have undertaken any developmental works. Some of
the Manushi built infrastructure in the market remains in place, notably
a fairly well-maintained shrine for the goddess. Most stalls have mu-
tated into permanent fixtures, stripped of their trolley wheels and
carrying protective steel shutters. Pavements in front of stalls are lit-
tered and encroached by stall extensions, violating the now very faint
green line of self-restraint (sanyam rekha). The self-governance regime
has been comprehensively defeated by a myriad of material, discursive
and popular micro-political practices. A greater number of vendor
pushcarts are operating on the road, and tehbazari license fees to the
municipal corporation have been replaced by under the counter hafta
payments. In all, the return to the typical hustle and bustle of Delhi’s
On 3 March 2006, the Supreme Court of India (2006) ordered all unauthorised street
vendors to be removed from Delhi’s streets on the back of another ruling ordering the
MCD to demolish unauthorised commercial and private residential constructions. Thou-
sands of shops were sealed, resulting in city-wide protests by traders, residents and po-
liticians of all hues.
D.J.H. te Lintelo
markets subtly underlines the failed implementation of an effort to
formalise street vending.
4. Discussion
For decades theories of urban informality have juxtaposed the
formal and the informal, with the former associated with modern
economies, the state, urban planning, rational rules and legality and the
latter linked to pre-modern economies, everyday society, substandard
housing, illegality/extralegality, and habitually viewed as a policy
problem (McFarlane and Waibel, 2012; Porter, 2011). In recent years,
theorisation of the formal and the informal has reoriented from such
clear-cut dichotomies to a more dynamic, elastic and relational ap-
proach (van Gelder, 2013; Leaf, 1994; McFarlane, 2012; Porter, 2011;
Roy, 2005; Schindler, 2014a). Our study fits within this tradition.
However, we propose that because most analyses look at the ‘vertical’
juxtaposition between state and society, these are unable to account for
intermeshing ‘horizontal’ rivalries between agencies, groupings and
actors, both within the state and within society. As such, this paper finds
groups in civil society to be deeply involved in the reproduction of
urban formal-informal relations, and this, with few exceptions
(Schindler, 2014a, 2014b), is generally not recognised. This study
contributes to this emerging literature by showcasing in which arenas
civil society organisations play such roles, using what micro-political
practices and to what effect.
Whereas Schindler (2014b) finds resident welfare associations de-
vising private regulatory regimes for street vendors in public spaces in
middle-class neighbourhoods, our analysis has focused on the role of
civil society groups in municipal policy implementation. We find these
to employ a highly diverse and wide range of micro-political practices
to simultaneously and sequentially advance their claims to the city
within and without state arenas. They target multi-layered bureau-
cracies, electoral democratic machineries, the judiciary, but also the
media, and everyday residential and market spaces. Moreover, they
weave a motley tapestry of material, discursive, symbolic and affective
micro-political practices spanning physical and metaphysical aspects, to
challenge but also confer resilience to the prevailing relationship be-
tween formality and informality. At Sewa Nagar, the RWAs and Man-
ushi used highly imaginative, and similar but not identical practices to
stake claims to public authority. They both developed alliances with
local and extralocal political leaders, employing discursive, material
and symbolic praxes tailored to popular and state audiences, seamlessly
traversing public and private spheres. Contestants sought to win sup-
port from popular audiences as well as state officials in ingenuous ways:
Manushi even enrolled a goddess to ensure the implementation of
public policy sanctioned by a secular state. Yet, whereas Manushi was
able to mobilise mainstream media to its cause, opponents to for-
malisation ultimately resorted to violence. Thus, violence between ac-
tors within civil society settled the nature of urban informality at the
market, to enduringly shape the urban landscape.
Yet, the state plays a pivotal role too. In relation to informal set-
tlements, van Gelder (2013:498) argues “how informality ultimately
takes shape varies between countries, between cities within countries,
and even between different areas and administrations within the same
city, and critically depends on the attitude of the state”. We argue that
any such attitude needs to be understood in the plural. In this respect, it
is helpful to distinguish the idea of the state as an abstract singular
entity that operates coherently in accordance with a set of rational rules
from the state as a set of bodies and institutions (cf Abrams, 1977). This
directs us to the significance of Delhi’s multi-layered, highly fragmented
and porous political-administrative structure, accommodating national,
state level, and municipal authorities. State fragmentation, limited co-
ordination and bureaucratic porosity incentivise contestants aiming to
exercise public authority to opportunistically seek executive decisions
to halt, challenge and veto public policy decisions by other state bodies.
This produces internal contradictions, administrative grid-lock, and
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Geoforum 84 (2017) 77–87
failed policy implementation. State fragmentation is hence not only an
input to, but also an outcome of the contestation for public authority in
the shaping of formal/informal relations in cities of the global South.
Accordingly, actors involved in these struggles (RWAs, street vendors,
municipal officials, market trader associations, etc.) are not only af-
fected by a fragmented state (as e.g. noted by Anjaria, 2011 and
Schindler, 2014) but actively recreate such fragmentation.
Critically, the pursuit of public authority exceeds the tactical ex-
ploitation of splintered architectures, uncoordinated officialdom and
intra-departmental competition. It also involves the navigation of both
formal (but sometimes internally contradictory) rules as well as in-
formal practices by the state. Official policies, rules and legal principles
offer strategic opportunities for people living in informal conditions to
engage the state to advance their status. For instance, informal settle-
ment dwellers in Brazil use the law’s complications to extralegal ad-
vantage with appeals to the law paradoxically serving the purpose of
keeping conflicts unresolved (Holston, 1991:695, 709). Resident wel-
fare associations at Sewa Nagar used such tactics, but also targeted
informal state practices. They encouraged acts of commission or
omission by individual civil servants, and reminiscent of a Trojan horse,
strategically appealed to state logics and procedures to seemingly af-
firm, yet actively undermine the municipality’s public authority.
In this respect we distinguish three types of informal practices by
the state. Firstly, idiosyncratic, intended and unintended acts of omis-
sion and commission by individual civil servants acting nomotropically,
to contradict Weberian bureaucratic logics of hierarchy and rule-
boundedness. For instance, we witnessed junior civil servants deliber-
ately acting in contravention of instructions by line managers. More
generally, the official operating logic of a porous Indian state is routi-
nely penetrated by social institutions and customary norms (Fuller and
Bénéï, 2001; Jha et al., 2007; Benjamin and Bhuvaneswari, 2011). This
first type of informal practice is often conducted on the sly, allowing
junior officials to exert unauthorised levels of job discretion and en-
abling private external interests to infiltrate and distort state agendas as
set out in law and policy.
Secondly, we identify uncoordinated, internally contradictory de-
cisions and actions that violate state policies and laws. For instance, in
Kolkata, the state employed laws to acquire peri-urban land ‘in the
public interest’ to violate the Urban Land Ceiling Act (Roy, 2009). And
the Supreme Court of India ordered the removal of over 150,000 people
living in informal settlements on the Yamuna River floodplain, to make
way for a large temple complex built in violation of the urban Master
Plan for Delhi (Bhan, 2009; Ghertner, 2011). In our case study, a senior
official in the Ministry of Urban Development issued letters agitating
against the very project implementing the National Urban Street
Vending Policy under its aegis. Whereas the first informal practice ar-
ticulates individuals’ ability to exercise unwarranted discretion, the
second practice involves the production of ‘policy short-circuits’, where
one policy explicitly contradicts another. Such outcomes may express a
collective inability of policymakers to reconcile powerful competing
interests through negotiated compromise. Deferral of political com-
promise however sets up the process of policy implementation for
failure. Policy ‘short-circuits’ may also be produced precisely to offer
future rent-seeking opportunities for some groups, as shown by Holston
(2007) for property titling in Sao Paolo, Brazil. Highly complex policy,
bureaucratic and legal systems that are full of internal contradictions
are typically navigated more easily by policy and legal experts and
people that can enrol them, to systematically disadvantage the urban
poor.
Thirdly, we consider informal practices by the state that are inten-
tional, coordinated and institutionalised. For instance, in Kolkata, the
state functionally (re)produces informal settlements (Roy, 2009:81),
while urban authorities in Ghuanzhou (China) regulate street vendors
in a spatially ambivalent manner, in order to balance competing social
and economic goals (Xue and Huang, 2015). And in Venezuela and
Indonesia, adjudication of land disputes and registration practices for
D.J.H. te Lintelo
informal settlements were institutionalised within specific state bodies
in direct violation of official legal systems and nomenclatures (Leaf,
1994). These institutionalised informal practices by the state relieve the
pressures of rapid urban population growth on planning systems. They
also facilitate the city’s ability to benefit from the low wages and cheap
services provided by city dwellers living and working in informal
conditions. As such, this kind of informal practice, while bureau-
cratically suboptimal, expresses an effective political solution to ac-
commodate the poor in the city.
Informal practices by the state hence play a key role in managing
urban informality. They enable brokers and fixers to mediate temporary
arrangements, for instance facilitating squatters access to government
water services, or providing unlicensed street vendors’ access to public
space (Anjaria, 2011; Chatterjee, 2004; Jha et al., 2007). Effective
brokerage however depends on a thorough understanding both of how
the state is supposed to function, and how it actually works (Corbridge
et al., 2005). Such knowledge is conventionally understood to connect
client groups to the state. However, our case study illustrates that it can
also undermine the implementation of formalising schemes that
threaten the interests of actors enjoying the rents that urban informality
tends to generate.
5. Conclusion
Street vendors are routinely criminalized by state policy and law in
many cities across the world, however, some countries are now putting
more progressive policies and laws in place (Roever and Skinner, 2016).
In India, prolonged advocacy by street vendor organisations and allied
partners resulted in a National Urban Street Vending Policy was
adopted in 2005, and a Street Vendors Act in 2014, which aim to
gradually formalise their operation in cities. Such efforts to formalise
the informal – an increasingly common development approach globally
spanning amongst others housing, economy and jobs – cannot be as-
sumed to be a simple technical exercise, as formalisation processes are
deeply political.
While various studies have interrogated the politics of agenda-set-
ting and policymaking processes, significantly less attention has been
paid to the subsequent politics, even though implementation often is
the Achilles’ heel of well-crafted policy. Accordingly, this study ana-
lysed municipal street vendor policy piloted at Sewa Nagar, Delhi. The
project implemented national policy and embodied many aspects per-
tinent to the subsequently adopted Street Vendors Act: to enumerate
vendors, connect them to a specific place, legalise their activities, and
to induce vendors to act in particular ways, such as undertaking
training and maintaining order and hygiene. The municipal policy en-
joyed Supreme Court sanction; high level political and administrative
backing; support of participant vendors; and it was implemented by a
non-profit trust embedded in influential political and media networks.
Nevertheless, the policy was undermined in a formidable manner, to
raise dark clouds over the prospects for effective implementation of the
Street Vendors Act.
How did this come to pass? By adopting a public authority lens, the
study has identified the wide and sometimes unexpected range and
configurations of actors involved in implementation politics. Locally
influential actors such as resident welfare associations, police or mid-
dlemen that have real stakes but sometimes limited legal standing or
involvement in policymaking processes were found to have a central
role. However, it is essential to understand that implementation dy-
namics of formalisation policies involve an intermeshing of contesta-
tions for public authority, not only between state and societal actors,
but also by actors within the state and within civil society. Such con-
testations play out in multiple bureaucratic, market, judicial and other
arenas through a rich set of discursive, material and reputational micro-
political practices. These practices target the internal contradictions of
a fragmented state and paradoxically appeal to as well as oppose its
formal procedural logics. They also encourage and respond to three
86
Geoforum 84 (2017) 77–87
kinds of informal practices by the state identified in this study: in-
dividual idiosyncratic; policy ‘short-circuits’; and collective in-
stitutionalised practices. As a consequence, these politics of policy im-
plementation confer substantial resilience to urban informality, and it is
within their intricate movements that some kinds of informality are
condoned while others are condemned.
Future research may hence fruitfully study the unfolding of for-
malisation efforts in cities across the globe using a public authority lens.
As the dynamics of policy implementation are likely to be highly lo-
calised, comparative in-depth case studies from within and across urban
areas, cities and countries may be particularly insightful. Such com-
parisons can further identify and help theorise in what ways and why
state fragmentation and informal state practices interact with the con-
testation for public authority to (re)create urban informality.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to sincerely thank Claire Bénit-Gbaffou, Paul
Kingston, James Allister McGregor, Laurence Piper, Shylashri Shankar,
Fiona Anciano, Nitya Rao, Jim Sumberg, and three anonymous re-
viewers for very constructive comments on previous versions of this
paper. I also wish to warmly thank Aradhana Tyagi for her indis-
pensable and tireless research assistance, all the Sewa Nagar contest-
ants for allowing me to undertake this investigation, and Rajith
Lakshman for support with drawing the map.
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