Often, and unthinkingly, a statement is made about Delhi that isn’t quite accurate. “This,” proud denizens will say, “is a city of migrants”. It is true of course that Delhi has the highest percentage of external migrants in India – more than Mumbai and Bengaluru, notwithstanding the cultural anxieties in the state capitals around “outsiders”. But before Delhi as we know it was a city of migrants, it was a city of refugees. Today, too, it is a refuge – burgeoning at the seams – for people looking for a better life, perhaps the anonymity of the city, or just to escape abject dens of conservatism across North and East India.
It is a city where you can be a techie or a writer, an academic or a journalist, a construction worker or domestic help. Rarely, if ever, will someone tell you “to go back to where you come from”. It is a city that is almost a state, a capital that has gone beyond being a centre of power thanks to the people who have enriched it. And it is being let down by a political class that is bereft of imagination. This election, more than any other recent memory, bears testimony to that fact. Read More
