“Capital” consciousness: Reading Rana Dasgupta

Abstract

This article situates Rana Dasgupta’s Capital: A Portrait of Twenty-First Century Delhi (2014) within contemporary trends in urban writing from India. It analyses Dasgupta’s representation of the cultural milieu of Delhi and its explosive growth in 2000s India using Saskia Sassen’s concept of “global city” and Asher Ghertner’s concept of “world-class city”. It examines Dasgupta’s usage of the non-fiction form – comprising extensive commentary and reportage – to chart the social attitudes underpinning the city’s neo-liberal evolution. In studying the way Capital critiques Delhi’s gentrification (which repackages it as a commercial city for the global stage), the article frames Dasgupta’s work as part of an extended discourse on the city which foregrounds its development as embedded in the genealogies of India’s postcolonial nationhood and economic liberalization.

Keywords:

• Capital
• Delhi
• neo-liberalism
• megacity
• Rana Dasgupta
• globalization

Notes

1. In an email message to the authors (January 11, 2018), Rana Dasgupta points out that the book was published in the UK and India under the title Capital: A Portrait of Twenty-First Century Delhi. It was later published in the US under the title Capital: The Eruption of Delhi. Subsequently, the US subtitle was adopted for the paperback edition in the UK.

2. After producing two acclaimed works of fiction, the short story collection Tokyo Cancelled (Dasgupta 2005) and the Booker-shortlisted novel Solo (Dasgupta 2009a), Dasgupta has turned to non-fictional prose with Capital.

3. Meera Nanda’s (2009) work argues that the impact of globalization in India has led to a resurgent religious backlash and the violent promotion of a more socially conservative Hindu identity.

4. See Dalrymple (2004) for more on the imperial symbolism of these structures.

5. Inhabitants of settlements near ITO (Income Tax Office), Nizamuddin, Dakshinpuri, Rohini and eight other prime locations in the capital were evicted due to urban development plans and resettled on land standing on a slush-ridden wasteland bordering a landfill (Kattayam 2012).

6. As evinced in the case of the treatment of illegal settlements and the dysfunctional organization of massive national events like the 2010 Commonwealth Games.

7. Gurgaon is a city in the Indian state of Haryana, part of the National Capital Region (NCR) of India. It was officially renamed Gurugram in April 2016. Gurgaon is noted for being a prominent financial and industrial centre.

8. For a longer discussion on similarities between Dasgupta’s work and that of Naipaul, see Srinivasan (2014; 2015).