Welcome To Super City Delhi- A Secret Letter From The Delhi CM To The CWG Guests
By Sumati Panikkar
28 September, 2010
Countercurrents.org
A satire, written as a letter by the Delhi Chief Minister to the Commonwealth Guests, exposing the destruction they have wrought on the lives and livelihoods of millions in the city
Welcome to Delhi : “Bharat ki rajdhani dilli main aapka swagat hai”
A warm welcome to the city of the commonwealth games!
If you are a foreign tourist, preferably white, welcome to the shining and developed capital of the rising super-power India . In the next few days you will witness the hospitality and progress of our lovely city Delhi . Please do not believe any of the reports you have seen all your life about India being a backward economy (some mad commies say its 'semi-feudal, semi-colonial'. hahaha, whatever that means!) inhabited by poor and starving people. In reality we are the fastest growing economy in the world, we all own cars, we live in big flats (apartment in your country), the larger majority of us lives in bungalows (roughly, cousins of what you call pent houses, but probably larger). Our young generation is entirely employed by the beacons of development and liberty– multinational corporations and if not, then Indian National Corporations (any wonder that they share the acronym with our beloved, most liberal and pro-development nationalist party the Indian National Congress!). A lot of these youth earn their income faking American accents, you will be glad to know, in occupations we lovingly call ‘call-centre'. So anyway the point we started out reiterating is that all this jazz about poor people is hogwash to tarnish the image of our nation, probably implanted by the terrorist country across the border or the ex-commie Han rulers north of us-all of whom have vested interests and jealousy because of their own pitiable conditions.
Fiction of poverty : Friends, contrary to allegations, you will actually not find a single street dweller or poor person in rags on the streets of Delhi . These filthy people called workers and labourers are the biggest menace to any developing nation. They don't make any contribution to our fast-growing economy and then they dare to demand wages for building all these structures that we reside in, all these malls and multiplexes were they obviously cannot and should not enter, all these stadiums and games villages they built all through the decades. Tell us, is that any kind of work that demands wages? Characters of this fiction : Apart from these filthy labourers, there are several other categories of ‘The Filthy' which are a figment of somebody's imagination (our enemies all of them). We are just making you aware of all these categories so that you recognize propaganda when you see it. There are some fictitious creatures called the ‘Homeless' which are also called by propagandists as ‘street dwellers' or some odd thing like that. It is alleged that there over a 100,000 of these fictitious beings on the streets of Delhi, and it is said they do not have any access to food, shelter, clothes, medicines, water, sanitation etc etc. It is said people die on these streets due to severe cold, severe heat, starvation, dehydration, diarrhea and what not. Tell us, how can this be true? Delhi is such a small and beautiful city. How can there so many hundreds of thousands of such useless people here, there is just no place in the city, especially on the streets. (I can vouch for that as it is SO difficult nowadays to find parking in the city for the 6th Car of my house!) There is just no space! Then there is a category of filthy slum dwellers. Now this is a semi-fictitious group. Which means, it is part fiction, part bitter-truth. We accept that some slums do exist, but which growing, wannabe-capitalist (ya, we are still not fully there yet despite our best efforts :( ) economy will not have slums? America and Europe all had slums at one point when you were at the peak of your Industrial Revolution! (Now you have ghettos). Now as much as want to eliminate all these dirty slum people it is impossible to remove all of them. After all, all these educated and pro-progress youth of India cannot be expected to wash their dishes and clothes, clean their houses, cook their own food, drive their cars, guard their apartments, do their own plumbing and all that. Our youth and their parents must get some time for leisure and play right after all the hard work they do? Right? Well, there are a few million of these filthy semi-fictitious characters working in our factories and industries in very inhuman conditions and at inhuman wages (my grandkids' daily budget for chocolates cost more than their daily wage!). But does that labour really count as work? The real credit of all the production from these industries and factories must go to the enterprising brains behind them and to the people who provide the capital for these, and not to the hundreds hands that work in them to produce. We have learnt this principle from your honourable countries' glorious history of capitalist development, so we cannot go wrong. Recognizing and awarding entrepreneurship is a main task of our government, after all what else can lead to the free market paradise that awaits us? Anyway, so as I was saying, some of these filthy people become indispensable. But the rest of them are pure fiction. A few millions is said to be the number of them. I am sorry but so much poverty in India , you must be kidding! The only millions I recognize are the profits we have made through muzzling in the Games (some people call it a corruption scam, but they are just propagandists. These protestors are also part of the same filthy categories that I wish to eliminate)
At Your Service: So, I assure you with all my heart and soul that there is not a single of these filthy people around in the city. If you go to U.P or Bihar , and some godforsaken place called Jharkhand and Chattisgarh or something, maybe you would find these people but not in Delhi . P.S- if you do actually spot a few, please immediately call our officers in charge so that the needful can be done. (Me and the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi had given them strict orders to remove al these unwanted beings from the streets and corners of Delhi , especially the ones you pass by. These orders are in place for the past 5 years in fact. But now with so much pressure and workload they might have forgotten to remove a few of them, so please don't be offended by the sight) . Well, I did warn them!I had asked them many times to return to their poverty and backwardness stricken homelands and not crowd our lanes and streets. But do they listen? Is that a quality the poor are ever born with? Phew. So we had a take a few steps ourselves for your sake.
Oh there is also a sizeable section of middle classes in the city. The lower sections of them are a pain too..with their scooters carrying the whole family of 4 or 5 on its tiny surface area (what a hilarious sight it is from my car window. Sometimes I crack myself up!) and their dirty blue-line buses and cycle-rickshaws. It's such a eye sore. So that they don't cause sores to your eyes too, i have made special efforts to tackle with these as well. The street vendors and cycle rickshwalas have been removed to de-congest the roads. (These are part of the filthy fictitious circle too). The buses have been ordered not to ply during the time that all of you are here. the dirty blue line buses will be off the road. There will be buses of course. But they will all be pretty and nice- produced by the company of one of our country's leading lights TATA- and many of them are air-conditioned too. Some say that most of the bus-users of Delhi cannot afford the charges of the AC buses. But I tell you, these people have a habit of complaining about everything. The bus commuters will certainly face some problems going to their workplaces and homes because of the reduced number of buses on the roads. But can progress ever be achieved without some amount of hardship and sacrifice by the commoners?
In short, a few millions have been asked to suspend their lives till the commonwealth games are over. The rest have been asked to modify their lives a bit for some days. Don't take this or that route to go to work, don't dare walk on this or that road. They have been told specifically that if they don't have decent enough clothes to wear and decent enough cars to drive, they should stay inside. Lest they should cause you some pain in the eye and some shame for us rulers. To make things easier, we have imposed section 144 on many of the strategic locations, like the roads and near the venues and all, so that some moronic disrupters do not start protesting there. And to ensure that you are not misbehaved with or fleeced by people in our tourists markets, we have assigned one of our national gems Aamir Khan to educate people through television on the importance of being civil to foreign tourists . I am sure his charm will work.
For any other complaints and queries, I am sure you wont have any, please feel free to call me on my phone. I have dedicated the last 10 years of my rule in Delhi restructuring and changing the whole city JUST for this prestigious event called the Commonwealth Games. I am at your service forever.
When you get time, do cheer some of our athletes and sportspersons. They are quite useless. They don't practice. Actually after spending so much on beautification, and toilet papers and footpath tiles, malls and all that, we don't have any money left to provide facilities for them to train and practice. So these games are entirely for your players and visitors, as we have made sure our players don't disrupt your enjoyment by winning or some such thing. Many of them don't even have proper places to stay or healthy food to eat, so winning will the last things on their mind. And some of the women players are too busy dealing with sexual harassment from their coaches to concentrate much on playing well. So the Games are all yours. :) :)
I'm signing out with much pleasure and pride. This was meant to be a short welcome note. But I'm sorry it's turned out to be 3 pages! It's hard to control one's emotions when you've given so much of your time and energy on one single glorious event. To sign off I would say, though the Queen officially left us about 60 years ago and though we ostensibly celebrate our independence day every year since then, we are very happy to have you and maintain our colonial relations (some leftist insurgents say 'yeh azadi jhooti hai'! can you believe them? we have arrested all those say such shameful things in public!). We would even request some of you to stay back and help us in our road to glorious development, on the path of free market. Happy games and hope you enjoy the sight of the Akshardham temple-a brilliant product of our attempt at mixing capitalism and religion- from your rooms in the Games village!
Love
The CM
Sumati Panikkar is a student activist in Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
