[Reader-list] On Delhi

[Taha Mehmood]

Dear Rana,

Your piece opens up a lot of avenues for thought, however there was
one bit which particularly caught my interest.

You wrote-

In truth, however, the anglicised class to which Azim Premji and
Nandan Nilekani belong is becoming marginalised from Indian society.
Immense upheavals are afoot, and English-speaking sophisticates now
speak about themselves as harried and besieged. They still enjoy many
privileges, but as time goes on they see their values and
sensibilities disappearing from the media and the streets, and they
are faced with the troubling realisation that they no longer rule this
society or dominate its imagination � or even understand the first
thing about it. -



Could you please elaborate more on this, because seen from the
perspective of the ID card story, Nandan Nilekani and his friends, his
'anglicised'  friends seem to have scored a point. It appears they are
shifting the rules of the game. The land economy has gone bust. The IT
has gone bust.

The next big story in India after big dams, after global back office,
after land and after education economy in all likelihood seems to be
the knowledge processing industry and chip manufacturing industry and
distribution and data maintenance industry driven by the idea of ID
cards. And Delhi will have a new role, new players, and new lingo, I
suppose.

By saying -gone bust-, my suggestion is towards the scale of intended
and expected investment in these sectors as opposed to investment in
ID.

And I think Delhi is slowly shifting towards that direction. Where are
your MCs of this game,  people who knows everyone for over two
generations? You have got a new man in Delhi, Sir! who knew no one
twenty years ago and now he is thinking of making every bloody Indian
known to him in the next one year.

Maybe land is not going to figure prominently in Capital Gains any
more maybe it will be over sized libido of men hawking ID's ;)

Warm regards

Taha