The rag-picker, the Yamuna sewer and the polluted air: just three of the many unpleasant things Delhiites hardly notice as we get on with our lives in the city. Even when we notice them, we aren?t touched by them. Finding Delhi: Loss and Renewal in the Megacity attempts to highlight these and many other issues in a metropolis undergoing a metamorphosis.
This collection of 13 articles edited by environmentalist-writer Bharati Chaturvedi makes the case that the capital?s development has been uneven, leaving the poor by the wayside. Released in time for the Commonwealth Games, the book?s publication roughly coincides with the 100th anniversary of Delhi being crowned the India?s capital during the Raj.
The Games placed Delhi under harsh national and international glare. Games Village on Yamuna?s flood plains, roads chock-a-block with cars and diseases spread by mosquitoes and an unrelenting monsoon highlighted issues which are touched upon in this book. However, several authors in the book tend to take the anti-capitalist, anti-bourgeois ideological line, even as they consistently run down Delhi?s world-class ambitions.
Still, Finding Delhi hosts some excellent articles, where authors detail problems and throw light on issues, without tilting at capitalists and corporations every now and then. ?Remaindered Things and Remaindered Lives? tells the story of how the city?s rag-pickers perform a key supplementary task in keeping Delhi clean, even as the entrepreneurial among them make wealth out of waste. ?Women imagining the city? explores the harrowing life many women?from even the privileged classes?face in Delhi, while admitting that the Metro and malls have created new zones of safety for them. ?Dreaming of a blue Yamuna? details how the once-mighty river turned into a polluted drain through human intervention, and expresses hope that with a lot of help, the river can be restored to its former glory. ?A climate of change? calls for less energy consumption, solar power, rainwater harvesting and cutting air pollution, and points out that many climate plans at the official level are hatched without incorporating the role of the large informal sector that thrives within the city. ?Homeless on a winter night? explains the terrible fate of the dispossessed in the city, who burn twigs and borrow quilts at Rs 10 per night to keep out the cold in the streets of the metropolis.
But if you enjoy a walk through the terminology of bourgeoisie environmentalism, perverse capitalism, rich-poor confrontation, apartheid enclaves, unfair judicial systems and exclusionary development, there are other chapters too. ?Expanding roads, shrinking democracy? pitches for more bus transport and safe cycling lanes, arguing that Delhi Metro is unaffordable for the poor while private cars choke the city. ?New Delhi?s Times? lays the blame at the doorstep of the media, which, the author argues, paints its own version of the story, suppressing dissident voices.
?Experiences?, the last part of the book, includes four narratives?from a maid, two dhobis, a fruit-vendor and a rag-picker. Here, if the book?s attempt was to tug at heart-strings, it fails. As Chaturvedi says in the introduction, Finding Delhi is activism of a kind, disallowing only one version of the story to be told. Though the book enlightens you in parts, it lets you down in other parts, offering nuggets of information on the city, and how it could be a better place to live in.