Between Consolidation and Speculation: Aspirations and Strategizing on Delhi's Rural Periphery

ABSTRACT The paper examines how residents of Delhi's rural peripheries navigate change and shape their futures amidst rapid urban expansion. The paper shows that they employ two overarching strategies, consolidation and speculation, to these ends. Consolidation involves digging in to preserve and strengthen agrarian life and livelihoods, as seen in the ongoing efforts to manage floodwaters for better agriculture and in the collective resistance against a proposed hazardous waste facility that threatened their land and way of life. Speculation, on the other hand, refers to the relatively uncharted, sometimes risky, investments aimed at achieving swifter economic mobility. Locals' adoption of urban‐based occupations and demands for a new university campus adjacent to the village demonstrate this strategy, which seeks to create new pathways for the younger generation that shift away from relying on agrarian‐led development. Seen together, the paper concludes that the peri‐urban trajectories are multiple and contingent on active strategizing, wherein residents do not passively accept state or market‐imposed change, but instead assert their agency to shape desired futures.