Proposals for the redevelopment of a section of Delhi.

In this insightful book, Jagmohan recounts the moments of triumphs and tragedies which he came across during his long and eventful date with Delhi’s development, from Jawaharlal Nehru’s time till date. His narration and analysis of these moments, in the context of larger forces that have remained embedded in the post-1947 India, bring under sharp focus a number of fundamental questions that need in-depth consideration of national leadership of all hue and colour: • Why did Nehru, despite his grand vision of a beautiful and balanced growth of Delhi, extend only a weak implementational hand, when it came to actualizing that vision on the ground? • How was it that, while most of her senior party leaders of Delhi lambasted the author and his colleagues for launching a drive to implement some of the clearance-redevelopment projects, Ms. Indira Gandhi experienced a sense of ‘thrill and pride’, when the results of that drive surfaced on the ground and enhanced the image of the Republic and its Capital, especially in early 1980s, the years of hosting ASIAD, NAM, CHOGAM? • Why were the few remnants of Gandhian Truth, which were seen in Prime Minister Morarji Desai’s stand regarding Master Plan schemes, butchered by his Home Ministry bureaucratic caucus and the Shah Commission? • How was it that when, in accordance with pre-Emergency decision of the Central Government and unanimous resolution of the Delhi Municipal Corporation, the government owned slums of Turkman Gate were cleared, it was given a communal colour and subjected to the most diabolical campaign of calumny known to contemporary Indian history? • What led Prime-Minister A.B. Vajpayee, a nobility-oriented statesman, to act against his own beliefs and change author’s portfolio of Urban Development? • Why did Mrs. Sonia Gandhi-Shiela Dikshit regime think that its principal plank for winning Delhi State Assembly Elections and Lok Sabha Elections should be a large reward to those who had ravaged, with impunity, the landscape of Delhi in form of thousands of unauthorized colonies? And why could not rival political parties think of any plan other than competitive negativity? • How is it that “We – the People” hardly ask ourselves: In what type of Delhi do we want to live, and what type of legacy do we wish to bequeath to posterity and to our children and grand children? Do we want our city to become junk-yard of unauthorized constructions, mirroring civic and moral chaos? • Was inaction on the part of the Election Commission to check the existence of an unhealthy clientistic relationship between the land-grabber/illegal builder/voters and those seeking their votes justifiable? The author has many other posers which extend to the infected ethos of Indian State, Society and Civilization. Nor does the author limit himself to questions and posers. He points to the way out, outlining a broad strategy of action.

The world has witnessed many protests in recent years over a range of issues, from climate change and rights of marginalized communities to threats to democracy or the rise of fundamentalism. This collection explores how any particular city (usually the capital of a nation) participates in, and provides answers and closure (or not) to, the issue and its protesters, negotiating both their identities and its own.

No other city in the Indian subcontinent can lay claim to having so many lives as Delhi. This book examines Delhi in the politically and culturally dynamic nineteenth century which was marked midway by the 1857 uprising against British colonial rule as a watershed event. Following British occupation, Delhi became a receptacle for encounters between the centuries-old Mughal traditions and the incoming colonial ideal, producing a traditionalism-modernity binary. Employing the built environment lens, the book traces the architectural trajectory of Delhi as it transitioned from the seventeenth-century Mughal Badshahi Shahar (imperial city) first into a culturally hybrid Dilli-Delhi combine of the pre-uprising era and thereafter into a modern British city following the uprising. This transition is presented via four constructs that draw on the traditionalism-modernity binary of Mughal and British Delhi and include Marhoom Dilli (Dead Delhi); Picturesque Delhi; Baaghi Dilli (Insurgent Delhi) and Tamed Delhi. The book goes beyond the nineteenth century to examine the vestiges of Delhi’s four nineteenth-century lives in the present while making a case for their acknowledgement as a cultural asset that can propel the city’s urban development agenda. By bringing together the city’s past and its present as well as addressing its future, the book can count among its readers not just scholars but also those interested in cities and their evolving landscapes.