New Delhi, Aug. 31 -- A woman in a Greater Noida housing society, in full public view, ranted at security guards in language so laced with casteist, classist and racist contempt that the episode seemed to belong to another India. Yet it happened in one of the gleaming residential enclaves of the National Capital Region - a landscape of high-rise towers, manicured avenues, clubhouses, security gates and aspirational lifestyles. There was something more disturbing about the episode than merely one person's bad behaviour. It exposed a fault line running through the new NCR: what happens when material mobility advances faster than social civility?
The outer fringes of Delhi-NCR are among the most visible manifestations of an India in transition. Places that were once villages, agricultural fields and peri-urban settlements have become apartment clusters, gated communities, commercial districts and satellite cities. People come here for perfectly understandable reasons. Delhi and its surrounding cities offer employment, education, healthcare, institutions, connectivity and opportunity. For a young professional, middle-class family, entrepreneur or employee, a flat in a modern condominium may represent years of savings, EMIs and sacrifice. For many, having such a home, whether owned or rented, is the tangible result of hard work and the desire for a better life.
For another set of families, the story is different but equally tied to the transformation of the region. Agricultural land that once sustained farming communities has been acquired or sold as the city expanded. Some land-owning families have become investors, landlords or entrepreneurs; others have simply exchanged an agrarian livelihood for a place in the new urban economy. And then there are the millions who make these new cities function without necessarily sharing in their prosperity - for example, security guards, domestic workers, drivers, cleaners, construction workers, delivery personnel and maintenance staff.
Behind the gates of the modern NCR condominium lies, therefore, a remarkable social experiment. The rich and the not-so-rich live cheek by jowl. The person who owns the penthouse and the person who guards its entrance may inhabit the same physical complex, yet occupy radically different positions in its social hierarchy.
The distinction between the haves and the have-nots is usually measured in income, property, cars, square footage, education or purchasing power. But there is another distinction that wealth cannot purchase: the distinction between dignity and indignity, between civility and vulgarity, between self-respect and entitlement.
A security guard may earn a modest salary and live in circumstances vastly removed from those of the residents he protects. That does not make him lesser as a human being. Conversely, owning a luxury apartment does not confer nobility. A large home is not evidence of a large character. A premium car does not come with a licence for humiliation. A substantial bank balance cannot purchase manners at the gate.
For generations, Indians were taught that education, employment, enterprise, savings and hard work could enable a family to rise. That promise is one of the great achievements of urbanisation and economic liberalisation. The first generation acquires land; the next builds a house; the next moves into a condominium. A family that once worried about subsistence may now worry about school fees, club memberships and property prices. There is nothing shameful about this aspiration. The desire to live better is one of the great engines of development. But prosperity carries a moral hazard.
The newly affluent can sometimes mistake the privileges acquired through economic mobility for evidence of inherent superiority. That is where prosperity can curdle into entitlement. And entitlement has an especially ugly vocabulary in India. It can express itself through caste, contempt for someone's occupation, the assumption that a uniform denotes inferiority, or the belief that money confers the right to shout, threaten and humiliate.
The irony is that genuine social confidence rarely needs such demonstrations. The truly secure person does not need to humiliate the waiter to establish status. The accomplished person does not need to remind the guard that he is poor. The person comfortable with his own dignity has little incentive to strip another person of theirs. Civility is one of the few forms of equality available in an unequal society.
A guard may not be able to match a resident's income, property or social capital. But resident and guard can still meet as human beings - with a greeting, a request rather than an order, an explanation rather than an insult, and disagreement without degradation. That is not charity. It is civilisation.
The Greater Noida episode should, therefore, be understood as something larger than a social-media spectacle or another "society fight" video. It should make us ask what kind of cities we are building. Are we merely constructing taller buildings, wider roads, shopping malls and gated enclaves? Or are we creating urban citizens capable of living with people unlike themselves?
Because the new NCR will become increasingly diverse and increasingly unequal at the same time. Its apartments will contain professionals, entrepreneurs, bureaucrats, retirees, migrants and families whose fortunes have been made in radically different ways. Its service economy will depend upon people from villages and small towns, speaking different languages and coming from different communities.
The same elevator may carry a millionaire and a delivery worker. The same road may carry a luxury SUV and a bicycle. The same gate may be crossed daily by residents and those employed to serve them. Urbanisation does not erase social hierarchies. It brings them into closer proximity. The challenge of a modern city is, therefore, not simply to accommodate inequality, but to prevent inequality from becoming humiliation.
This is where Viksit Bharat must acquire a meaning beyond infrastructure and GDP. A developed country is not merely one with expressways, airports, high-rises and smart cities. It is one in which the ordinary citizen understands that another person's occupation does not determine his worth. Development must produce a culture in which the security guard is not an obstacle at the gate but a fellow citizen performing an essential service; where the domestic worker is not invisible; where the delivery rider is not disposable; and where the driver is not expected to absorb abuse because he needs the salary.
Most importantly, those who have succeeded economically must understand that success increases one's responsibilities to society rather than one's licence to demean it. The real divide in these new cities, therefore, is not simply between the rich and the poor. It is between those who understand dignity and those who don't.
The true test of the new NCR will not be the height of its towers. It will be what happens at the gates. Because no gated community, however grand, can protect anyone from this simple truth: the guard can possess dignity. The billionaire can lose it. And neither comes with an income bracket.
Views expressed are personal. The writer is a former Lt Governor of Andaman and Nicobar & Puducherry
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.