This is an empirically grounded study of the political manoeuvrings of marginalized urban dwellers in Delhi, who inhabit informal or semi-formal settlements. Life in these settlements is precarious due to their unclear legal status and lack of regular access to basic services such as waste disposal, running water, and electricity. To improve their living conditions, the urban poor lobby local leaders, invest in relationships with social activists, organize public protests, take legal action against the state, and make themselves visible to the bureaucracy by creating archives, collecting documents, and keeping lists. By providing a comprehensive review of the most important tactics and techniques employed by the urban poor, the author offers a valuable resource for those interested in urban India. Routray’s detailed study challenges ideal-type distinctions such as those between civil and political society, as proposed by Partha Chatterjee.Footnote ¹ The former refers to the bourgeois public, who can enlist the support of the administration, while the latter refers to the poor, who mobilize democratic leaders to enforce their rights. While this rough distinction captures general trends, it is not a useful tool for understanding the diverse methods of grassroot mobilization.

The book’s focus on lived practice wonderfully illustrates the advantages of an approach that takes seriously the idea of the intertwining of state and society. The state is not a separate entity, but emerges performatively through acts of exercising authority or the deployment of techniques of governance.Footnote ² Through an in-depth exploration of subtle negotiations, informal arrangements, and the role of networks, the book demonstrates how the urban poor negotiate in a grey zone between the formal and the informal to establish themselves in the global city, despite the prevailing anti-poor atmosphere.

Ironically, the structure of the book, which neatly distinguishes between top-down planning and bottom-up politics, as well as the argumentation in the first part, “The Politics of Planning”, which treats its subject as a mostly abstract process, somewhat counteracts the book’s main argument. In Chapter One, through an extensive literature review Routray provides a broad overview of the planning logics that have driven different phases of post-colonial urban planning in Delhi. While it offers a useful introduction, the tendency to treat the state as a unified and reified entity limits its insight into the subtle contradictions between planning ideals and the various ways in which cities are developed. The complex interaction between plans and practices, as well as the tensions between different state agencies, become more apparent in Chapter Two, which focuses on urban changes in the new millennium when Delhi became more strongly drawn into the maelstrom of globalization. Here, we gain insight into multiple levels of planning, the inherent contradictions of planning activities, the disconnection between departments, and the toleration of illegalities. While this complexity is refreshing, the overall description of state planning remains one-dimensional. Nevertheless, Chapters One and Two provide important background information for the subsequent study of the agency of the poor, as they convincingly illustrate the strong class bias of the planning logic that has criminalized the habitations of the urban poor in all phases of postcolonial planning.

The four chapters of the second part, “The Politics of the Poor”, are the result of a systematic in-depth exploration of the different means by which the urban poor assert their rights – namely engaging with formal politics, practising inverse governmentality, invoking the law, and mobilizing the community. Chapter Three explores the multifaceted activism of local intermediaries, including self-styled leaders, locally elected politicians, and low-ranking state officials. These intermediaries provide access to more powerful people in the political hierarchy and help to get things done, including lobbying to improve and maintain infrastructure, helping individuals with welfare applications and acquiring necessary documents, providing important information on services, and offering protection from law enforcement agencies. While these local leaders are a crucial source of empowerment, they also line their own pockets by tricking people into making poor decisions. Elaborate forms of self-stylization and well-rehearsed, ritualized interactions are commonplace. The careful balance between depicting these leaders’ actions, their working style, and colourful performances makes this chapter rich and informative, and a real pleasure to read.

Chapter Four provides an overview of the multifaceted social life of documents in negotiations between citizens and bureaucrats regarding social services and rights. Street-level bureaucrats often reject applications due to inconsistencies in information across documents, missing vital documents, or incorrect submission timing, while citizens counter these strategies by amassing documents, writing appeal letters and petitions, mobilizing political support, organizing collective protests, and forging documents. Together, the large number of cases narrated in this chapter demonstrate the obscurity of the circumstances in which some applications are successful and others fail, while also indicating systematic discrimination based on religion and language. They tell us little about how the poor use intermediaries to manipulate processes and secure informal arrangements.

Moving to a discussion of how the urban poor and the salaried classes use the law to fight for a right to place and to clear their neighbourhood of “slums” respectively, Chapter Five shifts the register. While the book’s dominant narrative strategy is to present numerous examples to illustrate the methods marginalized people use to gain a voice, this chapter employs the method of the extended case study. Through a detailed account of the lengthy legal battles to formally register Sitapuri Transit Camp and secure compensation for destroyed houses in Gautam Nagar, it illustrates the multi-dimensional relationships between marginalized citizens and various state institutions. The shift between threats of eviction and confirmation of the right to housing during these protracted struggles are the results of shifting alliances between the organized poor, the political elite, state institutions, and the courts. The chapter is a real highlight of the book. It brilliantly illustrates the precarious position of poor people, who, despite all efforts, fail to achieve stability in their lives, yet continue to struggle, encouraged by occasional victories and fleeting moments when their rights are officially acknowledged.

The final empirical chapter, Chapter Six, focuses on collective political action and alliances with social activities and NGOs. Forming alliances with nationally and internationally funded organizations is important and yet fraught with tension, since the work of these organizations is project-based and often short-lived, and gatekeeping allows some urban poor to profit more than others. Moreover, the potential beneficiaries of their programmes are sceptical about the motives of middle-class people engaging with their issues, knowing that these well-meaning individuals will only remain involved for as long as it serves their own interests. Despite these misgivings, NGOs or INGOs are important partners, providing education and demonstrating pathways for mobilization, as well as granting access to resources and networks. Alongside seeking alliances, the urban poor employ various established techniques of resistance, ranging from peaceful to violent methods, such as sit-ins, protest marches, ceremonies honouring their heroes, militant protests, blockades, and destruction. While Lisa Mitchell provides a brilliant history of how these forms have evolved throughout different phases of Indian history,Footnote ³ Routray gives a systematic overview of how they are mobilized in the contemporary struggle for the right to the city.

The conclusion offers a concise summary of the empirical findings, viewed through the lens of two key terms that structure the narrative of the book: “numerical citizenship” and “rann-nitis”. “Numerical citizenship” highlights the importance of collective action. As they are often powerless as individuals, the urban poor engage in collective action, such as voting as a bloc for leaders who offer patronage, compiling lists of claimants to make themselves legible to the authorities, establishing networks to reach out to those in power, and investing in community building. Surprisingly, more individual forms of action, which also play an important role in the chapters, are omitted from the summary, such as individuals fighting to obtain necessary documents or benefits, splinter groups defecting from a movement to pursue other aims, or leaders betraying the trust of their followers. The strength of the chapters lies precisely in capturing the oscillation between collective and individual action, and the multiple forms in which they overlap, intersect, and sometimes cancel each other out. A deeper theorization of the notion of numerical citizenship and its limitations would have added value to this otherwise rich ethnography.

Similar shortcomings are evident in the handling of the key term rann-niti, which is translated as “the tactics and counter-tactics of the urban poor”. Using local terms is a common technique in area studies. However, to demonstrate the value of such a move, the author should have provided a more detailed explanation of how the term is used in practice and the connotations it carries. Similarly, it would have been helpful if the author had clarified why he is diverging from the standard translation of rann-niti as “strategy”, instead referring to “tactics”. From the empirical material, it appears that people alternate between the strategic and the tactical as they react dynamically to evolving political situations, something that would have warranted further consideration.Footnote ⁴

Despite the conceputal shortcomings, this remains a very strong book. Drawing on a profound understanding of the politics of the urban poor, it offers a rich and evocative portrayal of the varied struggles and uncertain successes of collective and individual action. Its captivating portrayal of the lived reality of marginalization in urban spaces illustrates the will to survive and the ingenuity of the poor, as well as the structural conditions that trap them in a state of permanent precarity. Students and scholars of South Asia in particular will benefit from this multidimensional book about “ordinary” politics as manifested in everyday life.