Colossus: The Anatomy of Delhi

Description

The National Capital Region of Delhi is a diverse and unequal space. Its more than 30 million people are sharply differentiated by economic class, religion and caste, education, language, and migration status. Its 45,000 square kilometres is a tapestry of spaces - ghettoes, slums, enclaves, institutional areas, planned and unplanned and authorized and unauthorized colonies, forests and agricultural fields. In some ways it is a dynamic society aspiring to global city grandeur; in other ways it is a bastion of tradition, sectarianism and hierarchy. Colossus details these realities and paradoxes under three themes: social change, community and state, and inequality. From the material condition of the metropolis - its housing, services, crime and pollution - to its social organization - of who marries whom, who eats with whom, and who votes for whom - this book unpacks the complex reality of a metropolitan region that is emblematic of India's aspirations and contradictions.

Sanjoy Chakravorty is Professor of Geography and Urban Studies and Global Studies at Temple University. He has written books on epistemology (The Truth About Us), inequality (Fragments of Inequality), land (The Price of Land), industrialization (Made in India), and the Indian diaspora in the US (The Other One Percent). Neelanjan Sircar is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Ashoka University and a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, Delhi. He writes on the political economy of India (with a focus on elections), comparative political behaviour, and Bayesian methods.