When hunter gets hunted: Role of resilience in institutional change

In this paper, we contribute to the body of knowledge about the process of Institutional change with evidence from transition of informal to formal economy of street vendors, in India.By digging into this extremely peculiar context through interviews and archival data, we find that while individual resilience helps into facing the disruptions caused through environmental or societal elements it may not be sufficient for Institutional change. By situating our research in the context of institutional voids and deep poverty, we draw attention to the role of non- marginalized actors in making dis-empowered actors in an informal economy, resilient to various disruptions, and specifically caused by socio-economic and legal bodies. Starting from the premises that poverty is a symptom of a lack of capabilities required to achieve full economic and social citizenship, we focus on developing resilience of the informal economy participants as an important, however understudied aspect of the informal economy. With our work, we highlight the importance of resilience in institutional change. We do so, by presenting resilience building mechanisms that lead to institutional change.