Informality and the Production of Publicness in India

Abstract

Informality is the quintessential reality of urban life in India. Apparent in every facet of the city—living, working, and exchange—informality is omnipresent in all physical and social structures of the city. It is present in infrastructures, services, and most importantly, in social, political, and economic interactions. Many of these interactions are visible in public life, maintaining a symbiotic relationship with public space. Moving through the city, one can experience how informality is a key generator of publicness—the core value of public space. Informal processes, visible in public space in India, demonstrate how the use of space, accompanied by the temporal patterns, creates access, agency, intersubjectivity, and inclusion for diverse individuals and groups in the city. This chapter discusses the intersection of informality and publicness. Building on Jane Jensen’s five dimensions of social cohesion—belonging, inclusion, participation, recognition, and legitimacy—it shows how informal processes offer a set of complex interactions that are an important building block of urban social order—one of the ultimate goals of public space.1 It demonstrates how public space becomes the vessel for informal practices that are generated by numerous publics in their need to work, play, socialize, demand justice, or just survive. A detailed analysis of behavior and interactions in public space in India reveals a hybrid, negotiated, and fluid space of access and inclusion, exchange and intersubjectivity, and agency—a publicness generated by informality.KeywordsPublic spaceUrban IndiaPublicnessInformalityAgency