Fluid Brokerages in Different Valmiki Neighbourhoods

This chapter traces the “non-state spaces” of subaltern politics by combining an analysis of community leaders’ personal diaries, narratives, posters, and social media posts. Four different kinds of brokerage (which are not mutually exclusive) are mapped that were prevalent in different Valmiki colonies, i.e., the “brokerage of cosmopolitanism” in the legal colony-setting of Mandir Marg in North Delhi, the “brokerage of alterity” in the resettlement-colony setting of Trilokpuri in East Delhi, the “brokerage of co-optation” in the Jhuggi Jhopri cluster of 100 Quarters in North Delhi and the “brokerage of transversality” in the urban village of F-Block, Sudarshan Park in South Delhi. This is what one terms as “fluid brokerage”, a concept which opens up new vistas of subaltern politics. The different types of “fluid brokerage” prevalent in various Valmiki neighbourhoods show how subaltern community leaders act as brokers through territorially porous and non-state spaces, thereby showing how the civil and the political bleed into each other.