“Propertied ambiguity”: Negotiating the state in a delhi resettlement colony

Abstract

This chapter focuses on individual perceptions of urban citizenship, corruption and local party politics as insights into how people experience the state in different ways on the social and territorial margins. I draw on ethnographic accounts from a peripheral resettlement colony in Bawana established in 2004, where people have been forcibly evicted from informal settlements in the centre of Delhi and relocated by the state. Though issues of corruption existed for residents in their former homes—albeit in varied and less striking forms—I argue that displacement disrupts previous relationships with the state, thus forcing people to navigate a new and different political terrain. I suggest that local narratives of endemic corruption form a nuanced view of subaltern politics: while the state interprets the colony’s “legality” ambiguously, for example by providing land titles but withholding ration cards, many residents repeatedly negotiate their legitimacy with the state through and in spite of “corrupt” practices.