Between informalities: Mahipalpur village as an entrepreneurial space

Abstract

Mahipalpur village, for most of its 900-year history, remained a small village at the outskirts of Delhi. Development pressures grew, as the city got nearer. As early as the 1960s, state agencies began acquiring farmland from villages, in exchange for urban services. The services, unfortunately, did not materialize. With the unshackling of private enterprise in the 1990s, small-scale developers and entrepreneurs moved into monetize the village’s proximity to Delhi’s international airport and to the employment hubs around south Delhi. Frenzied building by investors, combined with neglect of state regulators, ensured that Mahipalpur became a dense settlement, lacking civic infrastructure, and unsafe in terms of building quality, fire protection and flooding. This chapter traces the evolution of urban villages as spatial and institutional phenomena and investigates the tensions and contests that produce this peculiar space.