| The crime, the Covid, the politics and the potholes: Capital Letters — Keeping track of Delhi's week, one beat at a time, through the eyes and words of HT's reporters, with all the perspective, context and analysis you need. Good morning! In 1911, King George V, ascending the throne as the emperor of colonial India, announced that the country’s capital would be shifted from Calcutta, amid tension and strife in the eastern city. India, he announced, would be governed from New Delhi, a region within a larger city that would take roughly 20 years to build from the ground-up. Thousands of workers were employed, temporary rail lines built, hills flattened and the choicest materials used as the British gave shape to what they thought would be the administrative nerve centre of a crowning jewel of their vast empire. This, of course, wasn’t to be for very long, as India freed itself less than four decades later, appropriating every bit of brick and mortar for itself for the advancement of its people. But between 1911 and 1947, the British also built an edifice that would stand, ironically for them, as the heart of independent India’s vibrant democracy. From 1921 to 1927, Edward Lutyens and Herbert Baker set about carving out a magnificent structure on Raisina Hills, neighbouring what was formerly known as Viceroy’s House and the North and South administrative blocks. This building was to be the seat of the British legislators who governed colonial India. Instead, after 1947, the iconic Parliament complex became the site “where India’s politics has evolved in the post-Independence era”, writes Prashant Jha. On Sunday morning, India’s democracy moved to a new home, just next door, with the hope and promise of a new era ahead that will address the aspirations and anxieties of 1.4 billion people. Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the country’s new Parliament complex, built over three years, in an elaborate ceremony overseen by 21 religious leaders (known as Adheenams) from Tamil Nadu. The old Parliament House – the iconic circular structure whose perimeter has a seemingly endless loop of pillars, which have come to symbolise in many ways the buttresses of our democracy – has, over the past 100 or so years, tattooed itself into the country’s conscience as an enduring symbol of Delhi, as much as of India itself. Sunday’s inauguration marks the beginning of a new chapter in India’s history, as also Delhi’s, with the dreams of 20 million of its people pinned on the triangular building that will now seat the country’s legislators. However, the occasion was contested the moment it was announced, with a host of Opposition parties arguing that the complex should have been inaugurated by the President, not the Prime Minister. Leaders of the Opposition said that Modi’s helming of the event was in step with the BJP’s alleged attempts at decaying the country’s democratic institutions. BJP leaders, instead, hit back and said these parties were hurting these institutions and traditions by “politicising” the inauguration of the new building. Modi on Sunday also installed by the speaker’s seat in the new Lok Sabha a 5-ft-long sceptre or Sengol, which also emerged as the flagbearer of a political controversy. The Congress questioned the government’s assertion that it was used to symbolise the transfer of power at the moment of India’s Independence. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) dismissed the criticism saying the opposition party disliked Indian culture. And yet, the contested Sengol will silently watch over these pitched battles between governing and opposing groups as they unfold, in the new Parliament. The hope remains that the building will usher in positive change for the decades and centuries ahead, with the acrimony in political discourse settling in beneficial reform, in the new Parliament. | 
