Abstract
The history of mass political formation in postcolonial metropolitan India has generally been narrated through the optic of ‘competitive electoral mobilisation’ of the poor. How then are we to explain cases of successful mobilisation in the terrain of ‘political society’ when the poor do not exist as ‘vote-bank’? What are the analytical registers that one may consider in addition to the collective electoral choice? The paper makes a case for looking into the spatial and archival dimensions of mass politics for an understanding of the histories of subject formation in urban India since 1970s. Constructing a critical history of the footpaths in Calcutta, the paper examines the socio-economic processes and politics of urban informality with special reference to the organised mobilisation of footpath hawkers in the last four decades.
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