Little Box Retail: Illegality and Improvised Governance in Small Town India

Date de début:

29 Mars 2016 - 13:45

Type d'événement:

Conférence

Publié ici :

12 Avril 2016

Mis à jour le :

18 Juin 2017

Contact:

christine [at] csh-delhi.com

Mots-clefs:

Illégalité
improvisation
gouvernement
ville indienne
Inde

Zone géographique:

Asie

Location Conference Hall, Centre for Policy Research, Dharma Marg, Chanakyapuri

As part of our Urban Workshop Series, the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) and Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH), Delhi, are delighted to invite you to a Workshop on Little Box Retail: Illegality and Improvised Governance in Small Town Indiaby Durba Chattaraj, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Director of Writing at Ashoka University.

In this paper, I describe the small roadside shops which line a major national highway in West Bengal, India. Situating myself specifically in an important roadside town along the highway, Diamond Harbour, I describe the world of “little box retail” in the town, arguing that while “little box” retailers form the center of local economic and social life, a majority of them are unauthorized structures, which squat illegally on state land. Given that highway towns lined with roadside markets are a very common urban form within India, and that the space immediately bordering highways falls within the Right of Way of relevant road-building authorities, it is likely that there are millions of similar cases of illegal little box retailers across the country. I demonstrate that these illegal shops are central, not marginal to Diamond Harbour’s economy, and that the local municipality collects taxes from them. I uncover the unusual way in which the municipality taxes these unauthorized structures, through the creation of informal “trade licenses”. While some might dismiss these documents as illicit examples of local-level corruption, I argue that they present an innovative case of a municipality's attempt to achieve a compromise between the law and on-the-ground reality. I read these illegal leases as forms of "improvised governance" which are created using the imperfect options at hand, and which attempt to mediate the dissonance between the law and actual practice in everyday life in India. While these improvised documents provide benefits to both the municipality and shop owners, I argue that roadside shops in contemporary Bengal are regulated not legally, but politically. They rely on the support of political party functionaries for their existence. Finally I argue that Diamond Harbour presents just one case of the widespread marginalization of the law in roadside markets across West Bengal, as well as the rest of the country. As India proceeds on the path of highway modernization and road widening, it becomes important to question the future of these vibrant, and unauthorized, roadside marketplaces.

Durba Chattaraj is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Director of Writing at Ashoka University. Her research addresses economic and cultural transformations in India in an era of globalization, and is based on fieldwork conducted along National Highway 117, which connects the metropolis of Calcutta to rural and marginal areas in West Bengal. Her current research focuses on informality and space in New Delhi.

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Little Box Retail: Illegality and Improvised Governance in Small Town India

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Little Box Retail: Illegality and Improvised Governance in Small Town India

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Contact:

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Visiter le site web

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