Know your City

Introduction New Delhi

Delhi is a city in transition. When speaking to people from Delhi they fall into two camps, they either love or hate the way the city is changing. There is no doubt that over the past ten years Delhi has modernized amazingly and is now on its way to being a typical cosmopolitan international standard city with all the facilities you would expect. But the price to pay is a certain loss of the feel of India due to globalization and the standardization of products and places. You can now visit McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Marks & Spencer, Benetton, Levi's, Reebok etc, just the same as any city in the world.

To a newcomer however, Delhi is still a wonderful mix of past and present, of India and the west merging, and can still provide a certain amount of culture shock and challenge, but maybe a little less so than previously. There is still the smell, pollution, slums and ubiquitous cows wandering the street but you now find this alongside the 5 star hotels, beautiful houses and world class restaurants.

Unofficial estimates of Delhi’s population run to 18 million with hundred of thousands a year coming from the rural areas to find work in the capital. This population represents almost a third of the population of the UK in an area the size of London.

Currently there is a huge amount of infrastructure modernization going on in Delhi as well as new buildings and improvement of transport. This is due to the city hosting the 2010 Commonwealth Games. Delhi has a world class Metro system that is being expanded to cover the suburbs and there are also plans to fully replace all 40,000 buses in the Union State with world class modern air suspension vehicles with windows and closing doors.

The usual guide books will give you a very good flavour of the huge number of monuments, forts, temples and attractions in Delhi, it still remains one of the most exciting gap year destinations with so much on offer.

History of the City

New Delhi is the civic and political centre of India whilst Mumbai (formerly Bombay) is the financial capital. As the name suggests it is not an old city, the British decided they wanted to move the capital from Kolkata and identified the land for New Delhi in the late 19th century to build a new capital for the country.
The city was designed to convey a certain grandeur with the intention of show casing the British Empire and its might and subsequently the buildings of New Delhi are very impressive in style, variety and character. The architect Lutyens designed the residential area where most of the government ministers and officers reside and he succeeded in creating a wonderful environment; tree lined, leafy and shaded, quiet, wide roads with stylized white airy bungalow residences in huge gardens which gives a complete contrast to everything one thinks about Delhi - a crowded, noisy and polluted city.

The Delhi everyone naturally thinks of is 'Old Delhi'. It adjoins New Delhi and is hundreds of years old as a city and as such has much more hustle and bustle, bazaars and historic monuments. This is definitely India! No gap year trip to Delhi is complete without a cycle rickshaw ride through Chandni Chowk, one of the biggest bazaars in India, followed by a trip to the Jama Masjid, one of the largest mosques in Asia and the Red Fort ,a beautiful palace where the Moghals ruled the city and their provinces until the British occupied India in the 17th century.

Amusingly, the British administration when they eventually moved in to their new city of New Delhi in the mid 1920's couldn't cope with the summer heat and would pack up everything from the government and corporation buildings. They then transported it all, desks, files and employees up to the hill station of Simla, a days travel away, for the whole of the summer season! The hill station has much more clement weather, much like a good English summer's day. With the invention of air conditioning units this is of course no longer necessary and Delhi works all year round!

Business in the City

There are some head offices of Corporate business in Delhi, particularly insurance and banking, however it really is the heart of government and therefore the city itself hosts all the ministerial departments for the country, usually in very grand buildings, throughout New Delhi. The new satellite cities springing up all round Delhi are where purpose built industrial and IT parks are located. Here you will find extremely modern infrastructure, huge shopping malls, cinema multiplexes and leisure facilities. Although these new towns are just outside Delhi they actually fall within the states of Haryana or Uttar Pradesh and so have different laws, taxes etc.

The general make up of businesses in Delhi are small and medium sized enterprises with a huge number of retail outlets from one man stands selling cigarettes or bananas to multi nationals like Benetton and Levis.

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Delhi has a semi-arid climate with high variation between summer and winter temperatures. Summers are long, from early April to October, with the monsoon season in between. During the summer season, the city faces extreme power and water shortages. The summer heat waves kill dozens each year. Winter starts in November and peaks in January and is notorious for its heavy fog, which often disrupts road, air and rail traffic.