How Does It Feel To Live In A Rising Place?
Today The Guardian had a about a bungalow in Delhi selling for ?17 million.
To live in Delhi now is to be subject to the pornography of numbers. People talk about rising property prices with awe, as if they gave an objective index of their feelings.
These feelings are difficult to express in other ways because they are new feelings that circle without a precise reference. They are feelings about the future, and the possibilities of the self. They are about acceleration. They are about the ancient theme of devastation and subsequent rebirth that now finds a new awe.
My friends Monica Narula, Shuddhabrata Sengupta and Jeebesh Bagchi, who together form Raqs Media Collective, a collective of artists here in Delhi, today sent me the introductory text to their upcoming art show. It begins like this:
"Sometimes it feels like things are beginning to get really interesting ... We have a sense that Delhi, today, in the first decade of our young century, is ... quickening to the possibilities of a new life.
"This new life does not come upon us without its share of pain, because it exists simultaneously with the cruel transformation of the city that evicts hundreds of thousands of people, and destroys their carefully built frameworks of existence. It is not without its share of paranoia, as the shadow of the deep state, through a variety of surveillance networks, leaches into every street corner. It is not without its vulgarity as new money explodes and talks tough and dirty ...
"Even as our city re-invents itself through escalating conflicts over extant and looming habitation and property, new migrants re-define the face and voice of the street, women take an increasingly visible place on the precincts and old urbane certainties crumble; a new sensibility takes hold. Delhi has outgrown the destiny of being a small town with a violent past and burdened with Imperial grandeur. It is now just a city, just another very big city. A city that has set out on a journey to find the world."
Rana: Your article reminds me of how Miami is undergoing the same transformation [i.e.: Evictions, Sales of Houses to Special Interest Groups].
www.vhemt.org is the answer, rising populations are not sustainable, we need fewer people
The rise in property prices is a global phenomenon. Too much money sloshing around the world banks has driven up asset prices everywhere.
The accumulation of wealth is merely illusionary and I fear a lot of the progress being made, especially by rapidly developing countries, will slide back when the world credit bubble bursts. Credit tightening has already brought down property prices in the US and Australia. The UK is just about to topple and now China and India are making the same moves...
For further info see: