Is 30 years a wink of time – or an aeon ago?

September 11, 2016 10:16 am | Updated September 22, 2016 06:40 pm IST

Thirty years ago, the lap-top was unknown in Delhi. So, 30 years ago, the Prime Minister’s team was mocked as the “computer boys”. Thirty years ago, Delhi had not seen a mobile phone. Thirty years ago, TV had only one channel. Thirty years ago, Delhi had virtually no flyovers. Thirty years ago, no one actually believed the 30-year-old tale that Delhi would one day have a metro. Thirty years ago, Gurgaon was a faraway village. Thirty years ago, Palam was a sleepy, shabby airport with few planes beyond Indian Airlines and Air India landing there. Thirty years ago, you had to negotiate trams, tongas, cycle rickshaws and inert sleeping bodies on the streets to get to the Old Delhi station. Now, you have to ask at which of the four different stations your train is going to stop. Thirty years ago, Connaught Place was not Rajiv Chowk.

Physically, Delhi has changed enormously over three decades. But almost all its landmarks – except perhaps the Bah’ai temple and Akshardham which came up in the last 30 years – remain the same. Qutab Minar, Siri Fort, Lal Qila, Jama Masjid, all have been the same for hundreds of years – thousands if you accept that Purana Qila was the site of the Mahabharata’s Indraprastha. And New Delhi is no longer “new” – the bungalows, Lutyens’ avenues, Rashtrapati Bhawan and North/South Blocks date back almost a century.

So, the soul of Delhi remains the same – welcoming, inclusive, taking diversity for granted, increasingly a microcosm of India (there was one Naga in my Delhi college; there are now nearly three lakh north-easterners who have made our Capital their home). Delhi is tolerant, smiling, a nice city to live in. But while culturally and civilisationally Delhi remains as it has ever been, the material change has probably been more dramatic than at any time in the last 300 or even 3,000 years. Delhi has become a prosperous city. Every corner of the Capital is overflowing with restaurants – everyone seems to be eating out all the time. The multiplexes and the shopping malls are testimony to money to spend. As a college student some 60 years ago, I remember the most expensive seats in the poshest cinema went for Rs.3.50. Now, Rs.350 gets you where the two anna floor seating used to be. We may have progressed. But we certainly have runaway inflation.

Thirty years ago, foreign goods were virtually unavailable. Now – begging Make in India’s pardon – it is almost a miracle to come across something not made in China or Bangladesh. It was just over 30 years ago, when I was posted in Karachi, that a Pakistani said to me, “You guys make the worst cars in the world – but, at least, you make them”. Now, our streets are overflowing with cars that others have made. I do not feel the pride at being an Indian that I then felt.

Thirty years ago, Jamna-paar was still far, far away. And one wondered how to get to Noida without a helicopter. Patparganj was then inhabited by goats; it is now inhabited by retired Ambassadors.

What has not changed at all in Delhi in the last 30 years is the pecking order. Top of the pick are still the ministers, followed in quick order by the senior babus , and aspiring netas , all puffed up by sweet-talking contractors, agents, liaison officers, and middlemen. But where the bar of the Delhi Gymkhana Club was once the place to be seen, the pivot of power (and pretence) has now definitively shifted to the India International Centre, with Habitat a close second. Saddest of all is the fate of the Press Club. Where once you got yourself in the news by stealing into the thali lunch there, now only the jholawalas find outlets for self-publicity on its crumbling premises.

Thirty years ago, Delhi did not have The Hindu . Today, Delhi is inconceivable without The Hindu – the paper that makes the nation think. Happy birthday!

The writer is a former Union Minister and MP

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