ABSTRACT
Delhi Land and Finance (DLF) Cyber City was part of DLF City, a privately developed township built by India's largest real estate developer. This private township, which at one time claimed to be Asia's largest, was divided into five incremental phases of residential, commercial and office space spread out over some 3500 acres. Its disjointed and unevenly developed enclaves constituted what was increasingly called New Gurgaon. This chapter looks how the new visibility of the urban elite/middle classes exists in relations of distant proximity and proximate distance with local politics in Gurgaon. But the results of these elite urban enclaves have been far from 'showcase' worthy. The week-long 'Gurgaon collapsing' series, which addressed different facets of infrastructure in turn, served to amplify the voice of the Qutab Enclave protestors, often foregrounding the inherent tensions between 'First-World' dreams and 'Third-World' realities in Gurgaon.
