Seems like quite the stretch just to blame it on zoning. Gurugram was particularly bad but the other places around New Delhi I visited weren't much better.

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kaycey2022 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Blaming it on “culture” makes me feel good about myself and my in-group.

	▲	alephnerd 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's not a culture thing though. The ethnic groups and castes that dominates Gurgaon and Delhi local government also dominates local government in the Chandigarh Capital Region (CCR) as well as other urban agglomerations in Haryana such as Karnal and Kurkushetra which are all much better managed than Gurgaon. The key difference is zoning is nowhere near as screwy in those metros compared to Gurgaon. Gurgaon's urbanization in 1990s to 2010s was completely unplanned. It was the literal Wild West. Same with Bangalore compared to other large metros in Karnataka like Mangalore and Mysore.

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alephnerd 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Much of Delhi isn't zoned as a city either but as villages (in Delhi they are called Lal Doras) [0]. Most of the hostels and hotels backpackers stay in when visiting Delhi are located in these lal doras.

Additionally, the local government and the federal government have been at loggerheads for over decade because it's municipal government was ruled by the BJP but it's state government was ruled by the opposition (AAP), so both attempted to undermine the other.

Delhi NCR and Bangalore are two of the worst managed metropolitan areas in India from a local government perspective because of overlapping jurisdictions and extremely wonky zoning. Of course, those are the two Indian cities most HNers historically ended up visiting.

That said, it's highly likely most non-Desi HNers haven't visited India since 2020 because most businesses now send Indian Americans directly to India and India was never a strong tourism market aside from diaspora.

[0] - https://theprint.in/ground-reports/lal-dora-villages-delhi-h...

	▲	7 hours ago \| parent [-]
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