When the capital cried

Tomorrow there will be no 2009. But the memories will remain. The year that draws to a close today was one marked by trial and tumult. Here’s revisiting stories

Delhi doesn’t want a repeat of...xactly 364 days ago, on December 31, 2008, Delhi was both excited and nervous as it got ready to welcome 2009. A few months earlier, in September, a series of terror blasts had ripped through the city. In December, the Congress party led by Sheila Dikshit had returned to power for the third straight time. By January 1, 2009, security and development had become the buzzwords, especially with the need to speed up preparations for the Commonwealth Games of 2010.

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The year of the Ox as per the Chinese calendar, 2009 threw up many challenges and problems, and with such speedy consistency that it was not the people alone that gasped for relief, even the government felt a long hard pinch.

Unbearable cost of living
Price rise was one of the most stifling problems Delhiites faced in 2009. The cost of everything went up. And the government was often held responsible. In fact, the gloves of the Sheila Dikshit government were off soon after the elections were out of the way. This included the 7-0 sweep of the Lok Sabha elections by the Congress.
The government effected a slew of tough decisions that hugely undermined the monthly expenses of an average Delhiite. From food items to public transport fares, and essential services like power and water, Delhiites were made to pay more at every step.

By the end of May, the government had withdrawn the Rs 200-crore subsidy that had kept the power tariff stagnant since 2006. Delhiites were now required to pay between 25 and 55 paise more per unit if they consumed more than 200 units a month. An average one-AC home consumes around 600 units a month.

Water was another front that saw the government opting for a long pending revision of prices. Across the three distribution slabs, water got dearer between 57 and 160 per cent in November.

Milk was not far behind. Packaged milk producer Mother Dairy increased the prices of its two most popular milk variant. So, from November 1, Delhiites paid Rs 28 instead of Rs 26, and Rs 22 instead of Rs 21 for a one-litre polypack of full-cream and toned milk respectively.

Amul India also increased its milk and dairy product prices — first in May and then in September.

The kitchen was a casualty too and 2009 will probably be remembered as the year when sugar prices got bitter, and daal touched Rs 100 per kilo. Thanks to inadequate monsoon this year, the prices of pulses, rice, sugar and vegetables went through the roof. The fluctuations in the prices were too frequent and the rise — at times, surpassing 100 per cent — too wide to ignore.

Public transport also got more expensive. The fares of Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) and Blueline buses were hiked by 70 per cent in November. Next was the metro. The new fares — the minimum of Rs 8 and the maximum of Rs 30 — were implemented in November 2009, the month when Delhi Metro reached Noida. The fare of Delhi Metro feeder buses also increased.

Construction, metro image
Another remarkable feature of 2009 was how the Commonwealth Games projects turned the city into a virtual construction site. And the Metro, eager to complete construction on the 120-km Phase II network, was a giant contributor to dug-up roads, pesky barricades, annoying diversions and clogged traffic. The construction of new flyovers and underpasses also added to the chaos.

The close proximity of the construction sites to moving traffic resulted in accidents and even deaths. It was also the year that tarnished the clean image of the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation under managing director E. Sreedharan. Questions were raised after several accidents at metro construction sites.

Things almost went out of hand for DMRC in July 2009, when Sreedharan resigned after a section of an under-construction elevated corridor collapsed in Zamrudpur, near GK-I, killing six people. Sreedharan's resignation was, however, rejected. Now, with old subways being renovated and new ones being built at Connaught Place, next year is likely to be equally chaotic.

Transport hiccups
On the transport front, DTC’s new low-floor buses began to show signs of wear and tear and smoke and fire as the year drew to a close, embarrassing both the government and the DTC. The fleet of swanky low-floor air-conditioned (AC) and non-AC buses was bought by the government at an exorbitant price on the condition that manufacturers would maintain the fleet for the next 12 years. In a face-saving exercise, the government imposed a penalty of Rs 4 crore on the manufacturers and also ordered a thorough inspection of the entire fleet.

Eye on crime
The buses sputtered, but the wheels of crime rolled on. The kidnapping and murder of Jigeesha Ghosh (27), an IT executive, shocked not just Delhi but the entire nation. Jigeesha’s parents did not wait for the police to start the probe. They gathered Jigeesha’s credit card details from the bank, went to the shop in Sarojini Nagar where the accused had used their daughter's card and obtained the CCTV footage of the robbers, leading to their arrests. Investigations later revealed the accused were also involved in the murder of TV journalist Soumya Vishwanathan.

Crime in the city came back in focus thanks to a man educated in Doon School and London. Kobad Ghandy (63), a Naxal leader and member of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) politburo, was arrested in September. It was his background that gave the case additional media mileage. He belongs to an influential Parsi family in Mumbai and his late wife and “comrade”, Anuradha Shanbag, was the daughter of a coffee plantation owner.

The year that will end tomorrow sprung many surprises — some tragic, some disappointing, some that could have been avoided, some that were inevitable. But it could actually be the upcoming year that, in the larger scheme of things, emerge as the real bellwether of change.

A lot will depend on how well the Commonwealth Games in October is managed. If all goes well, it could become a major stepping stone for the city eager to join the big league of global capitals. The sores experienced this year could actually help the capital encounter the uncertainty of future with added self-confidence. As John le Carré said, you will be judged not by what you find but by what you go after. Nothing can be more true for Delhi and her 1.7 crore residents.

(Anchored by Manish Adhikary, with inputs from Vijaita Singh, Neelam Pandey, Avishek Dastidar and Nivedita Khandekar)