[Reader-list] On Delhi

[Rana Dasgupta]

Thank you for good thoughts, Naga: all the things you list are, of 
course, deeply relevant - and many more.  In retrospect the "land" 
section could probably have had more bite.  I did hope the Nanda 
incident, as well as the Ethiopian land acquisition, would give a sense 
of the impact - literal and figurative - between this emerging class of 
global capitalists and farmers and workers.

On socialism: though I agree that such shorthands are never satisfying 
to categorise a whole era and system - who has a monopoly on the meaning 
of the word?  Nehru called the society he built a "socialist" society, 
and the India of that era had in place many of the features - eg 
centralised production - that characterise other nations that call 
themselves "socialist".  The meaning that the word thus acquires is 
surely real...?

Thanks again

R



Nagraj Adve wrote:
> Very nice piece Rana, thanks. I sometimes have this unspoken and 
> somewhat sinking feeling when I think of this segment of the 
> capitalist class your piece discusses. Fear may seem a strong word but 
> I can't think of any other to describe the emotion. As activists in 
> this city for some years now, I don't think we even grapple with the 
> realities of this class; perhaps those who are trade unionists do.
>  
> Just some specific reactions to parts of the piece, reactions that are 
> disjointed. I liked the bits with the therapist Anurag Mishra, an 
> interesting angle. And also MC at the end of the piece. And Tarun 
> Tejpal's comments sadly are not too bleak, though there's also a 
> growing resistance to the intensifying rape of resources.
>  
> Couple of observations: The absence of any line or comment on the 
> working poor of this city - women working as domestic help and 
> increasingly as construction labour who build the stuff that DLF makes 
> its money from; factory workers; adivasi migrants who leave their own 
> homes and communities to work in the homes of the rich here - was 
> striking. I do realize that the piece was about the very rich, but as 
> EP Thompson said in his famous intro to 'The Making ...", you can't 
> have the one without the other. Also, a mention of the destruction of 
> jhuggis in 1996 and 2001 (30,000 homes along the Yamuna Pushta) would 
> have been relevant. And also the closure of industries that happened 
> at the time. Or the decline in real wages.
>  
> Finally, in passing: you refer about half a dozen times to India as 
> being 'socialist' in earlier decades. It has never been even remotely 
> so, not for a single day. Gunnar Mrydal had some blunt stuff to say 
> about that during a visit to Delhi in 1958.
>  
> Thanks for the piece.
> warmly,
> Naga
>  
>  
> On 29/07/2009, *Sudeshna Chatterjee* <sudeshna.kca at gmail.com 
> <mailto:sudeshna.kca at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     Its a really good read! Highly recommended.
>
>     Sudeshna
>
>     On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 1:10 PM, Rana Dasgupta
>     <rana at ranadasgupta.com <mailto:rana at ranadasgupta.com>>wrote:
>
>     > My recent essay about Delhi, and the culture of its new rich,
>     from the
>     > current edition of Granta magazine.
>     >
>     > http://www.ranadasgupta.com/texts.asp?text_id=47
>     >
>     > Enjoy!
>     >
>     > R
>     > _________________________________________
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>
>
>
>     --
>     Sudeshna Chatterjee, PhD
>     New Delhi, India
>     _________________________________________
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-- 
"I'm an ex-citizen of nowhere. And sometimes I get mighty homesick."

Rana Dasgupta
www.ranadasgupta.com