Residents Welfare Associations and the economic territorialization of recyclables collection markets in the Delhi metropolitan area

Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) in urban India act like states, exercising their sovereign power over the territories they control. While a rich literature has provided a deep understanding of the social regulation of neighborhood spaces by RWAs, their role in the economic regulation of informal labor remains underexplored, even though neighborhoods are vibrant sites of a range of informal economic activities that residents depend upon. Drawing on interviews with 33 kabariwalas (informal workers who buy recyclables from households) and 17 dealers (to whom kabariwalas sell those recyclables), and an analysis of balance sheets of 16 RWAs in the Delhi metropolitan area, this article shows how territorial control over neighborhood space allows RWAs to expand and exercise their state-like powers. By virtue of having monopoly rights over the neighborhood space, RWAs regulate: (a) the labor of kabariwalas by requiring permits; (b) the flows of the commodity (recyclable materials) by only allowing permitted kabariwalas to enter the neighborhood; and (c) the firms (dealers) whom some RWAs contract to provide collection services. Increasing competition in this sector because of macroeconomic shifts makes permits and contracts desirable for kabariwalas and dealers, and also allows some RWAs to capture monopoly rents. In making these contributions, this article not only adds to our knowledge about a hitherto underexamined sector of the informal economy of waste in urban India, but it also provides insight into the processes of economic territorialization of neighborhoods as a crucial part of the process of neighborhood state formation.