Brewing the City: Informality, Chai and Symbiotic Care on Delhi's Footpaths

Abstract Indian cities are governed by planning regimes that aspire to produce orderly, legible urban spaces. However, the everyday practice of occupation of urban space by ordinary people creates multiple, fluid and provisional territories inscribed by complex and contested power geometries. This social reproduction of urban space produces ‘lively infrastructure’ which is inscribed by social, cultural and collective norms. Employing an ethnographic approach, this paper unpacks how footpath tea stalls in Delhi, existing in the interstices of legality and informality, recalibrate planned urban spaces to create areas of social reproduction. Pertaining to the state's adhocism, a certain type of social and cultural care emerges among the stakeholders. Such symbiotic care – manifested through credit provisioning, convivial exchange, power contestations, and space regulation norms – adds to the care and social reproduction in the city‐making process through urban informalities, which usually are considered peripheral to urban space and planning discourses.