How Brokers Emerge

This chapter demonstrates that the migrants who populate Indian slums are neither passive recipients of election-time handouts, nor cowering victims of local kingpins. In actively selecting their brokers, slum residents powerfully shape who represents their political interests in the city. With multiple aspirants vying for resident support, residents have meaningful choices in whom to seek assistance from and whom to follow. In choosing their brokers based on their problem-solving abilities, residents ensure a degree of quotidian, performance-based accountability within city politics. Tracing the formation of slum brokerage networks thus reveals a more substantial, if far from perfect, degree of representation and accountability within political machines than is commonly depicted.