Economic and Political Weekly January 14, 2006 133 I Introduction T his article explores political mobilisation based on caste identity in contemporary urban India. It draws on a case study based on the introduction of so-called “environmen- tally-beneficial” legislation proposed by the state government that posed a threat to the continued survival of the informal sector plastic recycling industry in Delhi and, by extension, the busi- nesses and livelihoods of between 80,000 and 1,00,000 people working in this sector. 1 The main focus of the article is to explore the participatory democratic channels, organised centrally around scheduled caste identity, used by market actors to combat this legislation. It is an ethnographic account based on 15 months of fieldwork conducted in and around the neighbourhood of the wholesale plastic recycling market in north-west Delhi, alongside a study based on prominent members of the “elite establishment” – government officials, inner Delhi politicians, primary plastic industry members and non-governmental organisation spokespeople. The article seeks to contribute to the social science understanding of the politicisation of caste by focusing on a dimension of caste hitherto obscured and neglected in the oth- erwise sophisticated literature on this contentious but important domain of contemporary Indian economic and political life, i e, caste mobilisation organised around participation in an urban informal sector industry, that manifests as business opportunities for traders at the upper end, and employment for labour for those at the lower end of the market. 2 During the course of my fieldwork, events transpired which forced me to take immediate notice of the domain of purportedly environmentally-beneficial legislation that formed the battle- ground between two distinct groups, from very different caste and class backgrounds, and crucially, with very different rela- tionships to the informal sector sphere. The first of these two events, and the only one discussed here, was an attempt by the legislative assembly of Delhi in 1999-2000 to ratify a bill which would effectively ban the production of recycled polythene bags. 3 After a year of being deeply embedded as a researcher in the plastic recycling market of Delhi, I was in a unique position to observe how this particular informal sector industry chose to respond to this threat, in particular, the channels used to combat a policy which in their view was merely masquerading as being ‘environmentally-beneficial’, whilst really being concerned with access to business opportunities, economic power, employment and livelihoods. The main weapon at their disposal, as it turned out, was political agency wrested by market participants, organised largely around a common caste identity and exercised through participatory democratic processes right through to the level of the state government. There is a vast and sophisticated body of literature on caste and politics in contemporary India [notably, Bayly 1999, Srinivas 1962], including work that emphasises the unprecedented “politicisation of caste” [Kothari 1970] amongst deprived groups in the recent past. This has had a dramatic impact on the landscape of regional democratic politics and, at a time of the rising ascendancy and central importance of regional political configu- rations to coalition governments at the centre, to national demo- cratic politics in India [see for example, Jaffrelot 2003]. Under- standably, the focus of much of this research has been the political articulation of numerically powerful, regionally mobilised lower caste groups that enjoy a high profile in the national domain, such as the yadavs of Uttar Pradesh [Michelutti 2004]. Again, when it comes to backward caste groupings and the economic sphere, the focus in a post-Mandal Commission India has Deprived Castes and Privileged Politics An Urban Informal Market in Contemporary India This article examines political mobilisation around scheduled caste identity by focusing on a case study of purportedly “environmentally-beneficial” legislation, which threatened the existence of the informal sector recycling industry in Delhi. It explores the democratic political avenues used by those whose business opportunities and livelihoods were at risk, based largely on market participation and caste identity, to resist this legislation. The research is based on interviews and informal discussions conducted over an extensive period of time spent in the neighbourhood of the wholesale plastic recycling market in north-west Delhi and amongst the “elite establishment” – government officials, primary plastic industry members and others. As it appears, not only is caste identity thriving in the urban sphere, but this identity is actually being used in innovative ways to gain and maintain collective access to economic and political power. KAVERI GILL S pecial articles