ABSTRACT
As cities in India are continuously stretched and redrawn to encompass agricultural land, the responsibility for providing infrastructure in new peripheral settlements is increasingly being transferred from the state to the market, neighbourhood and household. In order to lobby for services and regularisation, 1 there has been a surge in neighbourhood-level initiatives in the form of residents welfare associations (RWAs), party- and trade union-affiliated groups, and inter-neighbourhood federations. Despite the salience of periurbanisation for the trajectory of Indian cities, little social science research has investigated these new geographies, the nature of such neighbourhood associations and their class identities, and the types of claims they make on the state — particularly under a scenario of neoliberal reform and restructuring.
