Delhi is a city of extraordinary contradictions.
It has magnificent monuments, world-class infrastructure, a sophisticated Metro, leafy avenues, sprawling parks and an extraordinary cultural heritage. It hosts diplomats, politicians, businessmen, tourists and people from almost every corner of India.
And yet, somewhere between the flyovers and the footpaths, the Metro stations and the markets, the grand urban vision and everyday life, something rather amusing has happened.
Delhi has developed its own civic culture.
It is a culture in which a queue is negotiable, a zebra crossing is decorative, a public wall is a potential canvas, a road can become a wedding hall, a footpath can become a shop extension, and a car horn can serve as an emotional support system.
Before anyone takes offence, let me confess: this is not an indictment of Delhi. It is an affectionate observation of a city that has enough character to laugh at itself.
But beneath the humour lies a serious question:
Can a city become truly world-class if its infrastructure moves into the 21st century while some of its everyday habits remain happily in the 20th?
The Great Delhi Queue Experiment
The queue is one of civilisation’s simplest inventions.
You arrive. You stand behind the person who arrived before you. Your turn comes. You move forward.
Simple.
Unless, of course, you are in Delhi.
At bus stops, hospitals, government offices, restaurants, cinema halls, concerts and countless other places, the queue often begins with admirable optimism and ends as a study in crowd dynamics.
One person moves sideways.
Another discovers a gap.
A third suddenly remembers that he is “just asking something”.
Someone appears from nowhere and joins the front with the confidence of a person who has apparently been personally invited by the management.
Before long, what began as a queue has evolved into a democratic wrestling match.
The underlying philosophy appears to be remarkably sophisticated:
Why wait for your turn when you can create your own turn?
Perhaps this is Delhi’s contribution to metaphysics: resources are limited, humans are unlimited, therefore the quickest hand gets the larger piece of the pie.
The tragedy, of course, is the quiet person who actually waited.
He has followed the rules and therefore finds himself at the back.
Perhaps our genuine VIPs could start a new fashion by demonstrating that the most impressive status symbol is not jumping the queue, but standing in it.
Delhi’s Red Carpet Treatment for Public Walls
Delhi has another remarkable civic art form: paan expressionism.
Walk around certain streets, staircases, underpasses and public buildings and you will encounter abstract red patterns that appear to have been created by an invisible contemporary artist.
The medium?
Betel leaf, areca nut and tobacco.
The technique?
Spit.
The artists come from every educational and economic background. In this respect, the art form is wonderfully democratic. It does not ask whether you are a professor, businessman, government officer or daily wage worker.
Everyone is welcome to contribute.
The unfortunate part is that the wall has not consented to participate.
One can even observe an interesting concentration of these artistic signatures around places where Uber taxi drivers wait. The roadside beside a row of parked cars can sometimes resemble a gallery exhibition.
There is, however, a larger lesson here.
Public cleanliness cannot be created merely by sending municipal workers with buckets and brushes. A clean wall is ultimately a behavioural achievement.
And this is not uniquely Delhi’s problem. Large parts of India bear similar testimony. But Delhi occupies a special position. It is the country’s capital and the place where visiting dignitaries and international guests receive their first impressions of urban India.
Perhaps the National Capital Region could aspire to become India’s first genuinely spit-free metropolitan region. Remember how Delhi Metro protected its train and station from stain.
It would be a small revolution.
And one requiring no satellite technology.
The Horn Has Something to Say
Delhi traffic has developed a language of its own.
The indicator communicates one thing.
The brake communicates another.
The horn communicates everything else.
A short horn may mean, “Please move.”
A longer one may mean, “I am in a hurry.”
A prolonged one may mean, “I have been waiting for three seconds and civilisation is collapsing.”
And the rapid-fire horn?
That is perhaps best translated as:
“I exist. You exist. But I should exist ahead of you.”
Honking has become so deeply embedded in the driving culture that some motorists seem to press the horn before the traffic situation has even developed.
Urban planners talk about road width, vehicle density and congestion. Perhaps we should also talk about acoustic congestion.
A city can be physically jammed and mentally exhausted at the same time.
The horn is supposed to be a safety device. In Delhi it sometimes behaves more like a personal grievance department.
And silence?
Silence is not weakness.
On the road, silence is discipline.
The Zebra Crossing That Nobody Reads
Delhi’s zebra crossings are among the city’s most optimistic pieces of road furniture.
They are beautifully painted.
They are clearly visible.
They are full of good intentions.
Unfortunately, many motorists treat them as though the stripes were merely decorative.
The pedestrian approaches.
The vehicle approaches.
Both calculate.
The pedestrian wonders whether the driver has seen him.
The driver wonders whether the pedestrian intends to cross.
The pedestrian takes one step.
The vehicle takes another.
And suddenly the most ordinary act of crossing the road becomes an exercise in courage, timing and faith.
The pedestrian is often treated as though he has arrived on the road to inconvenience the automobile.
But walking is not an inferior form of transport.
The pedestrian is not a beggar asking for charity. He is a citizen exercising a basic right to use public space safely.
A truly civil city is not one where cars move fastest. It is one where the person with the least protection—the pedestrian—can move without fear.
When the Pavement Goes on Holiday
Delhi has another fascinating phenomenon: disappearing public space.
A shop needs a little more room.
A house needs a slightly larger entrance.
Someone wants another step.
Someone else needs a ramp.
A display counter would look better two feet outside the shop.
A car needs parking.
And gradually, almost imperceptibly, the public road begins to shrink.
Encroachment rarely arrives with a marching band. It comes quietly, a few inches at a time.
One day the pavement is wide.
A few years later, it has become a narrow corridor between someone’s staircase and someone’s merchandise.
The pavement, if it could speak, would probably say:
“I used to belong to everyone.”
Public space is perhaps the only property in the city that everybody owns and nobody feels responsible for.
I am not forgetting the vertical non-linear growth of the building flouting all municipal norms by just having a connection here and there in the power corridors.
That needs to change.
When Love Takes Over the Road
Delhi weddings are magnificent.
They are colourful, musical, generous and impossible to ignore.
Sometimes they are also impossible to escape.
A wedding procession appears on the road.
The band arrives.
The dancers arrive.
The relatives arrive.
The lights arrive.
The drums arrive.
The traffic disappears.
For several hours, an ordinary public road is transformed into a private celebration venue—with thousands of unwilling citizens receiving complimentary front-row seats.
The music is sufficiently enthusiastic to ensure that even those who have never met the bride or groom are emotionally invested in the marriage.
Nearby residents discover that sleep is an optional activity.
There is something wonderfully democratic about Delhi weddings: everyone is invited.
Unfortunately, sometimes the invitation is compulsory.
Celebration is an important part of urban life. But celebration and consideration need not be enemies. A little restraint in sound, duration and occupation of public roads would allow the bride and groom to remain happily married while the rest of the neighbourhood remains happily asleep.
Delhi’s Four-Legged Traffic Police
Delhi’s roads have another unique traffic-management system.
It has four legs.
Cows, oxen and dogs occasionally position themselves in the middle of roads with the serenity of seasoned traffic regulators.
The driver approaches.
The animal looks at the driver.
The driver slows down.
The animal remains completely unimpressed.
In that brief moment, Delhi’s most impatient motorist is forced into mindfulness.
There is also a deeply human impulse behind feeding animals, particularly cows. Compassion is admirable. But when feeding takes place in the middle of busy roads, compassion can unintentionally become a traffic hazard.
Perhaps we should find a way of combining the two virtues: care for animals and care for human beings travelling on the road.
The cow need not become a speed breaker in order to receive our blessings.
And Then There Is the Problem of Volume
Delhi has many wonderful public spaces—parks, gardens, Metro trains and neighbourhood green areas.
Yet silence seems to have become an endangered species.
A park bench may host a loud mobile-phone conversation.
Another corner may have a cricket match.
Someone else may be playing music.
A group may be conducting a lively discussion.
And somewhere nearby, a devotional song may be attempting to compete with all of them.
There is nothing wrong with conversation, cricket, music or devotion.
The question is simply:
Must everyone else participate?
The modern ear has headphones.
They are a wonderful invention.
They allow us to enjoy our music without making the entire park enjoy it with us.
Similarly, speaking softly on a mobile phone, particularly in public spaces and the Metro, is not a sign of weakness. It is a small gesture of consideration.
Even personal hygiene has a civic dimension. In a crowded Metro, strong odours from unwashed clothes or excessive perfume become a shared experience for unwilling fellow passengers.
Civility sometimes means recognising that one’s personal space ends where another person’s nose begins.
These Are Small Things. And That Is Precisely the Point.
None of these problems requires a moonshot.
We don’t need artificial intelligence to stand in a queue.
We don’t need 6G to stop spitting.
We don’t need a smart city dashboard to tell us that a pedestrian should be allowed to cross safely.
We don’t need a billion-rupee project to lower the volume of a mobile phone conversation.
These are tiny acts.
But tiny acts repeated by millions of people become the culture of a city.
Delhi’s infrastructure has changed enormously. Its Metro, roads, public spaces and urban architecture increasingly reflect a modern and ambitious India.
Our civic behaviour needs to catch up.
A Different Kind of Viksit Bharat
The transformation of a city is usually measured in kilometres of roads, number of flyovers, Metro extensions, buildings constructed and investments attracted.
Perhaps we should add a few more indicators.
How many people actually queue?
How many drivers stop at zebra crossings?
How many unnecessary horns are avoided?
How many public walls remain unstained?
How much public space remains genuinely public?
How many wedding processions manage to celebrate without paralysing a neighbourhood?
How many parks allow people to hear birds instead of Bluetooth speakers?
And how many citizens can say:
“I have the right to do this, but I also understand that others have rights too.”
That last sentence may be the most important infrastructure of all.
Delhi Does Not Need to Lose Its Character
The purpose is not to turn Delhi into some artificially sanitised, humourless metropolis where everyone walks in straight lines and speaks in whispers.
Delhi should remain Delhi—loud in its celebrations, generous in its food, colourful in its culture, argumentative in its politics and irrepressible in its spirit.
But perhaps it can become civil without becoming dull.
It can retain its personality while acquiring a little more patience.
It can remain energetic without being aggressive.
It can celebrate without occupying every inch of public space.
It can be proud without assuming that everyone else is less important.
And perhaps that is the real civic challenge before the capital.
Delhi has already demonstrated that it can build impressive things.
Now it needs to demonstrate that it can behave impressively too.
Because cities, like people, are ultimately remembered not merely for what they possess, but for how they make others feel.
And Delhi has the opportunity to make that feeling considerably better.