India, July 17 -- Consider these 4pm scenes from a Wednesday afternoon. Mounds of gravel are spilling onto the footpath. Long metal sariyas are lying along the ground, as sweating labourers bend over them on a rainless monsoon afternoon. Yellow cement sacks and stacks of bricks occupy space meant for pedestrians. A bench sits marooned among bricks and rubble. And no passerby appears surprised.

Over the years, almost every visit to Central Delhi's Meharchand Market feels as though it is undergoing some or the other sort of renovation, and no one knows when it will end. Here, this shutter has come down forever; there that shutter has risen with a fresh facade. Blue tin sheets conceal one building; another building stands behind scaffolding...