A new BJP government takes the oath of office in Delhi after 27 years. The perennial question remains: What does Delhi want? Delhi’s historical depth, spatial variety, economic energy and sociological diversity are extraordinary assets. It has outgrown its identity as simply the city of power and money. Delhi ignites so much interest because its successes and failures portend a possible future for India. Delhi is more like a middle-income country with a per capita income two-and-a-half times the national average; the central government directly has a stake in the city — perhaps it has too much stake. Delhi has all the mobilised power of modern democracy: Concentration of media and a thicket of institutions. What kind of future will this city build?

The challenge in answering this question is not just the cliched fact about Delhi: There is not one Delhi, there are many Delhis. So perhaps the starting point for thinking about governance is to not begin with a list of schemes, but the contradictions that Delhi must manage. In some ways, the political message of this election is a difficult one to read. Sheila Dikshit’s long reign over Delhi was sustained by a clear ideological frame — a modernist vision of Delhi, a decent procedural governance style, with a nod to pluralism. That vision has its shortcomings – the very middle-class modernism that sustained what was, by Indian standards, a relatively successful vision, revolted against it for the appearance of corruption, and that inchoate sense that something even better was possible. AAP combined that revolt with the concerns of the poor, marginalised by that........

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