Seven Deadly Sins of Delhi

Recently I used very harsh words to describe my perception of Delhi Crowd.

Surprisingly, This Outlook Article is also voicing similar opinion.

Delhi's Seven Deadly Sins

1 Aggressive, lawless driving; India's road accident capital

2 Touting, hustling culture, grab-what-you-can-get mentality: law-breaking acceptable across classes, everything 'negotiable'

3 Callousness towards the vulnerable: disabled, visitors, elderly, poor

4 Most unsafe city in India for women; India's rape capital

5 Obsession with hierarchy & status

6 Officious, self-important political and bureaucratic class

7 Appalling cultural and professional manners

Some things about Delhi have got better, whether it’s thanks to initiatives by the courts, greater prosperity or the drive to create a showpiece city for the Commonwealth Games 2010

• Improved air quality, lower pollution levels
• Abundant greenery and increasingly well-maintained parks
• Some hope for its crippled public transport system with new Metro, new buses
• Growing corporate, cultural, educational hub
• Vibrant, throbbing city with explosion of choices for food, shopping, clubbing
• Improved housing options, with satellite towns Gurgaon, Noida slated to get well connected

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"Delhi’s grown from sleepy town to metropolis, incorporating a rural population of independent and aggressive small landholders over whom the urban influence is still very shallow.... Delhi is also the seat of power; everything here is a power play...negotiable and up for grabs. Even among the educated, who’ve been to the right schools, the first instinct is to break the law."

Dipankar Gupta
Sociologist