The design strategy employed, to paraphrase Carl von Clausewitz’s famous aphorism, is urban development as the continuation of politics by other

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[Patel's] new Parliament building will be topped with a modern shikhar, a few modest centimetres lower than India Gate, and the old building will be dedicated to presenting the progress of ‘Indian’ democracy. The Central Vista will now be dominated by a phalanx of multistoried government office buildings for accommodating the staff of the Indian government, but will retain the lawns, trees and water channels the colonial government built. This enormously popular, and democratic public space will be turned into a gated security area, but still be available to record selfies.

These proposals are Machiavellian in their brilliance, because they blunt criticism by not demolishing the British era buildings or its visual aspect, but give them an ‘Indian’ content and context. This design strategy, to paraphrase Carl von Clausewitz’s famous aphorism, is urban development as the continuation of politics by other means. Modi himself could not have envisaged a neater resolution to fulfill his, and the RSS’s, agenda.

Modi is determined to deliver a centenary gift to the RSS. It will add a feather in his hat which, in an election year (2024), could help him get re-elected. This is his moment, and he will exploit it, all criticisms and objections notwithstanding. He has no credible political opposition: he did not find it necessary to consult them to build a new parliament. His ministers obligingly genuflect when they are tasked to do a job: urban development minister Hardeep Puri, formerly a distinguished diplomat, for example, willingly ignored the protocols of democratic governance when he proclaimed that the redevelopment of Central Vista that was being implemented was Modiji’s “dream”. That is one of the random dots I have joined to reveal the hidden motivation behind this project.

The bureaucracy and its vaunted steel-frame has been reduced to being mere pen-pushers, eager to please. The judiciary too, is now ‘committed’.1