SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This chapter seeks to explore certain ideas around corruption, transparency, and community as they emanate from two different socioeconomic contexts. The first of these concerns the middle-class locality of what I will call New Gurgaon. In particular, my focus is on the privately developed DLF City—built by the Delhi Land and Finance (DLF) company—located in the district of Gurgaon that borders Delhi. Gurgaon is in the state of Haryana, located immediately south of the national capital, and a part of the National Capital Region (NCR). According to one report, the areas falling under the recently (2008) constituted Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon (MCG) (that includes DLF City as well as several other privately developed residential enclaves) contains around 1.2 million persons. However, residents’ groups (known locally as the residents’ welfare associations or RWAs) dispute this estimate, claiming the true figure to be closer to 2 million. RWAs suggested that the actual figure had been suppressed so that the “corrupt” corporation did not have to provision for the actual number of residents.