Praise for Rana Dasgupta''s Capital "[An] unsparing portrait of moneyed Delhi, no telling detail seems to escape Dasgupta''s notice. His novelistic talents are matched by his skill at eliciting astonishing candor from his subjects. The best passages are incisive summaries of the human and environmental costs of the elite''s wealth and privilege and his persuasive predictions of crises yet to come. Dasgupta constantly seeks to upend conventional wisdom about Delhi, the murky circulation of its money, and the roots of its periodic outbursts of violence, making this one of the most worthwhile in a strong field of recent books about India''s free-market revolution and its unintended consequences." -- The New Yorker "[Dasgupta] mostly lets his subjects speak for themselves. The interviews at the core of the book are a cleverly tangential way to investigate a city that is among the world''s largest--about twenty-two million people live in and around Delhi--and has been made a microcosm of India by the hundreds of thousands who arrive each year as migrants. As we read of Delhi''s frantic modernization--from, among others, an outsourcing entrepreneur, a gay fashion designer, a property speculator, assorted tycoons, and the victims of medical scams that extract cash from the relatives of the dying--we trace Dasgupta''s personal journey from excited arrival in 2000 to disillusionment." -- Financial Times "[Dasgupta] offers a rich and troubling nonfiction examination of Delhi, his adoptive home and the site of some of globalization''s most dramatic transformations.

Yet what may be most interesting about contemporary Delhi, suggests Dasgupta, is that this packed and broken city represents the eventual future of much of the world." -- Booklist (starred review) "A grim picture of a city run by oligarchs and the ''new black-money elite,'' where success depends on ''influence, assets, and connections.'' This book is highly recommended for anyone looking for background information on Delhi. The author''s account of the downside of the post-1991 free market economy and the pursuit of self-interest above all serves as a cautionary tale, doing for Delhi what Suketu Mehta''s Maximum City accomplished for Mumbai." -- Library Journal (starred review) "A sincere, troubling look at India''s wrenching social and cultural changes." -- Kirkus Reviews "A vivid and haunting account . Dasgupta''s combination of reportage, political critique, and oral history is mordant rather than dyspeptic, sorrowful rather than castigatory. But what makes it more than a local study, what makes it so haunting, is that its textured, tart accounts of the privatization of public space, of the incestuous relationship between the political and business classes, of the precarity that renders daily life so fraught all apply as much to Britain and the west as they do to the Indian capital.

" -- The Guardian (London) "In his portrait of this hubris and its aftermath, Rana Dasgupta peels back the layers of denial with insight, humanity, and, at times, exquisitely beautiful writing. He exposes some festering wounds but succeeds in fascinating rather than repelling. [Dasgupta] brings insights that flow from compassion and understanding along with access to the clique nexus of politics and money." -- The Times (London) "Intense, lyrical, erudite, and powerful." -- The Observer (London) " Capital sets a scholarly and sympathetic tone . [Dasgupta''s] subjects are as varied as the city''s upper and lower classes, men and women, Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims; property magnates, money launderers, technology entrepreneurs, and activists working to uplift Delhi''s slum areas. A remarkable and exhaustive account of a primordial free-zone whose assets are being stripped by the wealthy." -- The Independent (London) "Compelling, often terrifying .

[Dasgupta''s] lyrical encounters with a wide range of modern Delhiites reveal a novelist''s ear and are beautifully sketched." -- The Telegraph (UK) "Lyrical and haunting." -- The International New York Times " Capital is constructed around a series of mesmerising interviews. Among many lively episodes in Dasgupta''s appropriately large, sprawling, and populous book is one describing the experience of driving in Delhi." -- The Spectator (London) "[Dasgupta] shows observational acuity worthy of Don DeLillo. [An] edgy, visionary masterpiece." -- South China Morning Post " Capital is a beautifully written study of a corrupt, violent, and traumatized city growing so fast it is almost unrecognizable to its own inhabitants. An astonishing tour de force by a major writer at the peak of his powers, it will do for Delhi what Suketu Mehta so memorably did for Bombay with Maximum City .

" --William Dalrymple, author of City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi PENGUIN BOOKS CAPITAL Rana Dasgupta won the 2010 Commonwealth Writers'' Prize for Best Book for his debut novel, Solo . He is also the author of a collection of urban folktales, Tokyo Cancelled , which was shortlisted for the 2005 John Llewllyn Rhys Prize. Capital is his first work of nonfiction. Born in Canterbury, England, in 1971, he now lives in Delhi. Note to the Reader This book would not exist were it not for the generosity of several Delhi residents who agreed to discuss with me their lives, thoughts and experiences. These were often intimate discussions, which is why I have changed all names (except of public figures), and, in some cases, other identifying details. I request readers to respect the candour of these people - who sometimes took personal risks to speak to me - and not to attempt either to identify them or, where it is known, to reveal their identity. In a place - and a world - where a person''s intellectual power is judged so much on the basis of their facility with the English language, I have chosen to make all characters in this book speak the same, standard, English so that their widely differing relationships to this language do not themselves become the issue.

In reality, English was the second or third language for many of these individuals, and they did not speak it in this standard way; others did not speak English at all, and our interviews were carried out in Hindi. (In these latter cases I had the assistance of an interpreter.) In Indian parlance, large amounts of money are measured in ''lakhs'' and ''crores''. A lakh is 100,000 rupees (Rs), or approximately US$2,000. A crore is 100 lakhs, or 10 million rupees: US$200,000. I have preserved these terms, which carry so much of the flavour of Indian financial discussion. In certain places in the world, a ''bungalow'' is a modest, even derisory, single-storey dwelling. In their colonial possessions, the British used this word to apply to the self-contained houses they built for their administrators, which were often, contrastingly, generous and grand.

This is the usage that persists in modern Delhi - whose British-era centre is full of such houses - and in this book. Capital is about the members of that rising, moneyed section of the Indian urban population who see themselves as the primary agents - and beneficiaries - of globalisation. It has become common to refer to these people as ''the new Indian middle class'', and I, too, employ this phrase. But while their lifestyle has come to bear some resemblance to that of the ''middle classes'' in Europe or America, the phrase sits uncomfortably with the Indian situation. At the time of writing, those Indians whose families earned more than Rs 500,000 [$10,000] per year represented less than 10 per cent of the population, which meant that ''middle-class'' accoutrements and ideas belonged, in the Indian context, to the elite. Since the Indian economy was being restructured around the spending power of this emerging class, and since this entailed conflicts over land and resources which often punished the much greater number of the country''s rural poor - many of whom earned closer to $500 per year - it is important to retain this sense that the interests of the Indian middle classes were not lowly or innocent. The phrase ''bourgeoisie'', in fact, which I also sometimes use, more accurately described their condition. At the same time, however, many of those who thought of themselves as ''middle class'' did so because they identified with the hard-working, socially constructive overtones of the phrase, and because they wished to differentiate themselves from another, even smaller, elite - far richer and more powerful than they: moguls from the political and business classes, many of whom they regarded as selfish, reckless and fundamentally destructive to society.

This distinction is also significant, which is why I generally follow the conventional terminology of ''middle classes'' and ''elites'' - even though the ''middle classes'' are not really in the ''middle'' at all. Landscape March is the prettiest month, bringing flawless blooms to the dour frangipanis - which are placed artfully around the compound, in pleasing congruity with the posted security guards, who wave me on as I drive up to the house. The day is done. Evening flowers have come into their own, and the air tides with scent. Ahead of me, under a velvet sky, the glass mansion glows like a giant yellow aquarium. I park my car according to instructions, and walk out along the low-lit paths. At every corner a guard awaits, and directs me to the next. They pass me on, the guards, one to another, with walkie-talkie co.