Hansen’s exploration of “repertoires of authority” in urban India, in this volume, demonstrates that those who define and wield informal sovereignty often are accomplished business people, activists, local politicians as well as criminal figures. They have managed t capture, privatise or make semi-autonomous territories, institutions, identity forms and practices in the interstices of fragmented configuration of sovereign power in the modern city-scape. India’s dynamic democracy has enabled these men to present themselves as populist heroes, representing manly virtues (mard) and defending-neighbourhoods and community life . J.F. Bayer captures a similar phenomenon in Africa in the ubiquitous “trickster” as an enduring cultural model of the daring, creative and highly mobile individual — physically and socially — who may end up as a respected businessman or political figure (Bayart 1999).