Modern cities in India such as Delhi are a cesspool of inequalities and disparities that are deeply tied to the class-caste nexus. These aspects manifest themselves starkly on its roads, made apparent by identifying those who utilise its infrastructure, while dictating its design, and those who are systematically left out. The automobile owning classes of Delhi have a monopoly over the city’s land, water and air, extracting and exploiting for their needs and comforts, while the poor are left to bear the brunt of the ecological degradation that comes with it. The bourgeois class’s systematic collusion with the state is also visible in its environmentalism, through which it controls the narrative of legitimacy. The social and ecological consequences of these processes stand as evidence of the crisis that neoliberal India is facing at present.
