Contextual Framework

In this chapter, I argue that even if urban planning in the Global South does suffer from the mimicry of planning in the Global North, emergent participatory spaces do facilitate the interests of subaltern communities. The chapter shows this by evidencing why and how neighbourhood associations or RWAs evolve as avatars of a resurgent civil society in Delhi and are co-constitutive of the legal and political tussles that go on between Delhi's state/provincial government and the central/federal government. It also provides a comparative analysis of the election manifestos of the three key local political parties, i.e., Congress Party, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which were released during the municipal elections of 2017 and 2022. This chapter also informs us about the salient features of Bhagidari (meaning partnership), the RWA-led participatory governance model of the government of Delhi, and the numerous implications it has had for different classes (low/middle/elite) of citizens, ward councillors and officers in different echelons of the bureaucracy.