ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the everyday inhibition of the mobilization of the urban poor through the application of preventive laws. In many unregistered instances—which go uncounted and escape adverse press coverage—preventive laws are used to penalize various unwanted but legal activities, particularly among the urban poor. The mobilization of the urban poor to obtain what they increasingly consider their lawful due is related to the developments of Indian democracy, the pluralization of the last decades being accompanied by the multitude of moves of the poor to struggle against their daily disenfranchisement. The most enduring and pervasive way in which law relates to the urban poor in India is the illegalization of most aspects of their existence. Illegalization and poverty are thus intricately connected, illegalized forms of urban existence in many cases arising from plain poverty: as, for example, the impossibility of acquiring private property in land or real estate.
