11 - Spatial Politics: Sociality, Transparency, and Ideas of Community in Delhi and Gurgaon

Summary

Introduction

This chapter seeks to explore certain ideas around corruption, transparency, and community as they emanate from two different socioeconomic contexts. The first of these concerns the middle-class locality of what I will call New Gurgaon. In particular, my focus is on the privately developed DLF City—built by the Delhi Land and Finance (DLF) company—located in the district of Gurgaon that borders Delhi. Gurgaon is in the state of Haryana, located immediately south of the national capital, and a part of the National Capital Region (NCR). According to one report, the areas falling under the recently (2008) constituted Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon (MCG) (that includes DLF City as well as several other privately developed residential enclaves) contains around 1.2 million persons. However, residents’ groups (known locally as the residents’ welfare associations or RWAs) dispute this estimate, claiming the true figure to be closer to 2 million. RWAs suggested that the actual figure had been suppressed so that the “corrupt” corporation did not have to provision for the actual number of residents.

The second context of my discussion is the now demolished slum locality of Nangla Matchi (“Nangla”) that, till 2006, lay on the western banks of the Yamuna river that flows through Delhi. The locality, established in the late 1970s, was demolished between 2006 and 2007 to make way for an urban “beautification” program connected to the preparation for the 2010 Commonwealth Games.

My aim in this discussion is to think about some of the key aspects of urbanization and what they tell us about ideas of citizenship, relations with the state, and notions of community across different class fractions. The ideas that link the two quite different socioeconomic contexts I will discuss here are those of “transparency,” corruption, faking, and morality.

With regard to the discussion that concerns DLF City, I will work on my discussion through a specific concept that I refer to as “post-nationalism.” This concept, I suggest, illuminates crucial contexts of new forms of urbanism in India as well as changing relationships between the state and middle-class citizens. It also, I further argue, allows us an entry into understanding ideas regarding corruption and transparency among specific class fractions.