[Urbanstudy] post II

[Bhavya Dore]

Our first post outlined the topic area we intended to cover and how our
research interests had expanded since the time of our original proposal. In
this, our second post, we will be delineating some of the key themes we wish
to look at while studying Delhi before after and during the Asian Games, in
the 1980-1984 period. The basic thematic remains how a city constructs,
dresses up and refashions itself.





   - Part of the 1980s clean-up drive can be seen in consonance with the
   rise of the Indian middle class as an intellectual and policy influencing
   force in general. The best evidence of this can perhaps be seen in the clean
   up and urban planning impulses that have studded architectural and
   developmental agendas ever since.



   - Foucault writes eloquently of state conceived and disseminated
   notions of "health" "hygiene" "urban infrastructure" in his discussions on
   17th century France when the anesthetic impulse and the desire to
   control people as "populations" took root. Delhi in the 1980s is a fine
   contemporary example of such a paternalistic attitude on the part of the
   state. It is the panoptic vision of that state that is constantly seeking to
   restructure lives and rebuild the city.



   - But it isn't just about mass surveillance and urban plotting, Delhi
   1984 was to be the apotheosis of the city's, in fact, the country's showy
   splendour and international impress. It was an opportunity to make its debut
   on the international stage as a 'global' city, the first site of the
   quadrennial Asian Games. The developmental impulse was quickened by the
   calls to national pride and positing the city as the face of a coming-of-age
   country, with spanking good roads and transport services, greenery, and an
   all-new Games Village.



   - The constant cross cutting chronological and spatial city related
   developments also need to be seen in the light of Delhi not just as the
   capital of an ambitious young democracy but also as a Mughal center of
   power, a child of imperial desire and finally as both Old and New- 2 cities
   simultaneously bound up in the self same urban space.



   - It is these spatial strategies of cultural reproduction that merit
   investigation- producing and maintaining the hegemonic notions of order,
   cleanliness, disease that seek to uproot any deviances on the way to
   creating the idealized urban condition. Since it is by nature a condition
   marked by anonymity the strident drive by the administration and judiciary
   to do away with urban eye sores- slums, squatters, small-scale shops and
   vendors, as the targets shifts restlessly from time to time- smacks of a
   certain command politics ideology. But it is these "casualties" in the way
   of national growth that in fact have a long history of making sterling
   contributions to the city's economy. Studies in Asia's largest slum
   district, Dharavi, in Bombay have repeatedly shown that the city's economic
   infrastructure receives a tremendous fillip from the unacknowledged
   contributors- the dhobis, the ayahs, the papad makers, the leather tanners.



   - Part of studying Delhi of the early 1980s is the inevitable
   anti-Sikh riots and the way in which communal violence was altered by and
   altered the social and emotional architecture of the city. Interestingly, in
   the aftermath of the riots, in fact within 2 weeks of one state sponsored
   enterprise, Rajiv Gandhi inaugurated another: Appu Ghar opened on
19thNovember 1984 as a flowering of Indira's brainchild amusement park
project.
   From massacre to mass amusement the government lurched in the space of some
   days- the two near simultaneous events need to be seen in the light of each
   other



   - Part of the challenge of being a post colonial city is the onus of
   balancing the contesting concerns of 'tradition' and 'modernity'- the
   so-called showcasing of Indian culture (whatever heterogeneous polyglot that
   is at the moment), a challenge that playing host represented. Modern
   infrastructure and sensibilities interspersed with liberal doses of
   traditional art and culture as in the opening and closing ceremonies for
   instance.



   - Transformation of south delhi with the games and the concomitant
   development of Delhi in general.
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