Beyond the Brand

By Lakshmi P. Nair

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I have learned that you never encounter the same person twice, not even within yourself. Whether this change is good or bad cannot be settled through simplistic, black-and-white thinking. I have been on a journey, and I am still on one. Watching millions migrate toward me, drawn by possibility, and then hear the very same people complain about the values and compromises they must adopt to live here, is something that I have grown accustomed to. Perhaps the grass really does look greener on the other side, until you step onto it. And yet, no one likes to admit that this greenness is manufactured, that it is watered by inequality. How am I expected to absorb aspirations endlessly but never allowed to question who gets to aspire comfortably and who must earn their right to exist? And perhaps that is why I hesitate to call myself welcoming. Because every time I open my gates, I also tighten my grip. 

Last winter in Kogilu, bulldozers tore through Fakir Colony and Waseem Layout at dawn, leaving hundreds homeless overnight in the name of clearing encroachments. Homes vanished with no warning, and families were thrust into uncertainty while politicians argued over motives and blame. People called it law and order. Others called it Bulldozer Raj disguised as civic action. Regardless of the lens one chooses, the outcome remains the same: panic, displacement, and a city divided. I watched families gather broken doors and cooking vessels from the rubble, and I wondered who gets to call this governance and who must live with its aftermath. I am told this is development. I am never asked who develops and who disappears. People protested, of course. They always do. Residents blocked roads in Varthur and Bellandur, holding placards about taxes paid and services denied. They said, “We pay tax, we vote, where are our rights?” Even the governance remains unsettled. Plans to split the city into multiple municipal corporations are presented as efficiency and reform. But there is a lot of anxiety beneath it. The redrawing of power and the quiet reshaping of political advantage are way too overt for one to not notice. On the outskirts, farmers protest land acquisition and refuse to surrender fields for future skylines that they will never inhabit. What unsettles me most is not the protest itself, but who gets the luxury to protest and who must negotiate quietly. Anger sounds different when it comes from gated communities than when it rises from informal settlements. Some grievances are amplified by media, policy meetings, and press conferences; others dissolve into silence because they are inconvenient. 

I have started to believe that I make it easier for some people to belong than others. Those who arrive with the ‘right’ language, education, and money learn the rules quickly. Others stay trapped in informal settlements, never being able to get out of the cycle. What is the significance of the label “cosmopolitan” when I have so little agency over what I become? Although the label sounds progressive and inclusive, the decisions that transform me are rarely made from within. They are taken at a distance by policymakers, planners, and elites, through a bird’s-eye view that flattens lived realities into maps and projections. Those who decide for me, do not really experience me. They do not walk long stretches without footpaths, wait for unreliable public transport, or constantly calculate rent against survival. The decisions come from a place of ignorance and lack of knowledge. My identity itself is in the hands of the elites. A city cannot call itself cosmopolitan when it is planned from above and lived only from below.