Rana Dasgupta - Capital - The Eruption of Delhi

22. Khushwant Singh, ‘My Father the Builder’ in Maya Dayal (ed), Celebrating Delhi (Penguin, 2010), pp. 2–11

23. My thanks to Basharat Peer for this English translation of Colonel Oberoi’s poem.

24. Urvashi Butalia, The Other Side of Silence (Penguin, 1998), p. 3; I am indebted to this book, too, for the historical summary which follows.

25. See Pavan K. Varma, Krishna: The Playful Divine (Penguin India, 1995), pp. 61, 206 and note 19

26. Veena Das, Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary (University of California Press, 2007), p. 23

27. Das, Life and Words , p. 29

28. ‘What Makes Delhiites Kill?’, Hindustan Times , 10 January 2010

29. ‘Confession of Vikas Before Cops’, Times of India , 29 May 2008

30. In the interests of protecting identities, this section is compiled from two separate interviews.

31. Quoted in Marshall Berman, All That is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (Verso, 1983), p. 88

32. The fortunes of the Indian Coffee House declined with the advent of corporate café chains, and in 2011 it was announced that it was unable to cover its rental payments to the city, and would shut down. The Hindustan Times understated the institution’s age by more than a decade in its report, ‘After 42 Years, Sun to Finally Set on Indian Coffee House’, Hindustan Times , 14 July 2011.

33. Philip Bowring, ‘Maoists Who Menace India’, New York Times , 17 April 2006

34. Delhi Human Development Report , Oxford University Press New Delhi, 2006

35. ‘Parents of Nithari Kids Claim to Have Seen Dr Amit Kumar at the Infamous D-5 House of Pandher’, Midday , 11 February 2008

36. Dr N. Rangarajan, quoted in teesutalk.blogspot.in

37. Quoted in ‘Inside Nithari Killer’s Mind: “Would Watch Girls Come In, Even I Felt the Urge”’, The Indian Express , 12 October 2009

38. Quoted in ‘Nithari Murder: SC Upholds Death Sentence for Koli’, The Indian Express , 16 February 2011

39. ‘Portrait of Evil’, India Today, 22 January 2007; I owe to this article the majority of my detail about the Nithari crimes.

40. Quoted in ‘Portrait of Evil’, India Today, 22 January 2007

41. I am grateful to Raghu Karnad for this anecdote.

42. S. Mulgaokar, ‘The Grimmest Situation in 19 Years’, Hindustan Times, 3 November 1966, quoted in Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy (Pan Macmillan Delhi, 2008), p. 415

43. Guha, India After Gandhi, p. 569

44. Das, Life and Words , pp. 113–4

45. Das, Life and Words , p. 168

46. ‘Key Players in Bofors Scandal’, India Today, 28 April 2009

47. Michael Walton and Aditi Gandhi, ‘Where Do India’s Billionaires Get Their Wealth?’, Economic and Political Weekly, 6 October 2012, pp. 10–14

48. ‘Lok Sabha Polls to Cost More than US Presidential Election’, Mint , 1 March 2009

49. Dev Kar, ‘The Drivers and Dynamics of Illicit Financial Flows from India: 1948–2008’ (Global Financial Integrity, Washington DC, 2010)

50. Pranab Mukherjee, ‘Black Money: White Paper’ (Ministry of Finance, New Delhi, 2012)

51. This conversation took place in 2010, when Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky was living in exile in England. In March 2013, he was discovered dead in his Berkshire home following his probable suicide.

52. From an account given on the DLF corporate website (2010).

53. ‘Guptas in Spotlight over South African Dealings’, The National , 19 March 2011

54. ‘Guptas’, The National

55. ‘The Gupta Interview: A Peek Behind the Sahara Curtain into the “Gupta Desert”’, Business Day, 4 March 2011

56. ‘The State of the World’s Children’ (United Nations Children’s Fund, 2013); and ‘Delhi Development Report’ (Planning Commission, Government of India, 2013)

57. ‘Sprinting to Disaster’, India Today , 25 September 2010

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and would be grateful to be notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

• • •

Epigraph from The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny © Kurt Weill & Bertolt Brecht, Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. Extract from “My Father the Builder” by Khushwant Singh, reproduced from the title Celebrating Delhi with due permission from the publisher, Penguin Books India and the Editor, Mala Dayal. Extract from The Other Side of Silence by Urvashi Butalia, reproduced with due permission from the publisher, Penguin Books India and the Editor, Mala Dayal. Extract from Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary by Veena Das, © 2007 by the Regents of the University of California. Published by the University of California Press. Extract from India After Gandhi by Ramachandra Guha, Copyright © 2007 by Ramachandra Guha, reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Chapter Seventeen epigraph, quoted from and reproduced by kind permission of Delhi Sultanate, rapper.

The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. The link provided will take you to the beginning of that print page. You may need to scroll forward from that location to find the corresponding reference on your e-reader.

Aarti (fictitious name), 99–110

Advani, Lal Kishanchand, 329

Africa, 366, 367

agriculture, 260–62, 271

food deficits and famine, in 1960s, 313

Green Revolution and, 261, 317

liberalisation, impact of, 261

patented seeds and, 261–62

Akali Dal party, 332–33

alcohol, 81, 247

Ali, Choudhary Rahmat, 187

All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, 98

American Express, 61–62

Americanization, 93–96

Amit (fictitious name), 99–110, 320–28

Anand, Dev, 177

Anil (fictitious name), 143–48

Anurag (fictitious name), 407–20

aristocracy. See elites/aristocracy

Arora, Manish, 84–90

arranged marriages, 118–19

art scene, 42–43

Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay, 54

Bahadur Shah Zafar, 149

Baljeet (fictitious name), 288–92

Bangalore, 318

Bangladesh, 186–87, 316, 399

banks, 289–90

bars, 81

Berezovsky, Boris, 356

Bhabha, Homi, 54

Bhagavad Gita , 441

Bhagirathi River, 430

Bhalswa Colony, 236–52

declared illegal by government, 247–50

drinking water, lack of, 240

drugs and alcohol in, 247

flooding in, 240

inaccessibility of, 251–52

layout of, 239–40

resettlement of workers to, 237–39, 243–45

schooling, lack of, 241

trash surrounding, 236

unemployed males in, 246–47

Bhindranwale, Jarnail Singh, 332–34

Bihar, 258

billionaires, 304–5

black money

Anurag (fictitious name) interview, 408–11

of businessmen and politicians, 350–52, 405

property market in Delhi and, 325

Bofors financial scandal, 344

bohemian and alternative culture, 39–43, 81–84

Bombay cinema, 176–77

bourgeoisie. See middle classes

Brazil, 445

briefcase politics, 317

British East India Company, 154–55

British Indian Empire, 186–87

bureaucracy, 319–28

Burma, 186–87