ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses that the genealogies of local social organizations as they evolved in the camp since their settlement in the 1970s. It argues that the social action of different organizations such as the women's collective or Mahila Mandai, the male panchayat and the more recent Residents' Welfare Association reflect the gendered politics that have evolved during different moments of uncertainty and encounters with law around the squatter home since 1970s. Much of the mediations with the state or agents of the state that these gendered collectives engage in, might appear at first to be captured by Chatterjee's notion of political society'. The chapter explores the how law and illegality becomes part of a politics of gendered organization in camp. Abida finally summed up what she thought of Neeti, the leader of the Mahila Mandal who had knocked on her door more than 20 years back and given her the confidence to enter the public realm of feminist participatory activism.
