Column | When I Think Of Viksit Delhi, I Am Reminded Of What Freedom Means For Different Members Of Society: Rekha Gupta

Every Independence Day, when our national flag rises above Delhi, I am reminded that freedom was never meant to end at the stroke of midnight in 1947. It must continually acquire deeper social and economic meaning, such as freedom from hunger and freedom from homelessness.

When I think of a Viksit Delhi, I am reminded of what freedom represents for different members of my society. Freedom represents a document that recognises a family’s residence in an unauthorised colony for the past 30 years. It represents being able to eat a healthy meal after a long day of labour as a construction worker. It represents going to Delhi University with a suitcase full of dreams and knowing that your birthplace does not limit your opportunities. It represents medical treatment for a senior citizen, without fear of exhausting your family’s savings due to illness. That is the freedom I envision for a Viksit Delhi.

Delhi has always been a city of arrival, built and enriched by generations who came from elsewhere and gradually made it their own. Modern Delhi cannot be understood without understanding migration.

After Partition, lakhs of displaced families arrived carrying little more than memories, skills and the courage to start again. They settled in Lajpat Nagar, Rajinder Nagar, Patel Nagar, Punjabi Bagh, Tilak Nagar and Jangpura, building shops, workshops, schools and enterprises that became part of the commercial and cultural life of post-Independence Delhi. In the decades since, workers, traders and families have arrived from across the nation—building our houses and roads, driving our buses and autos, staffing our hospitals and homes, hoping to give their children a better life than the one they left behind.

Delhi is also inseparable from neighbouring Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. Every morning, lakhs travel between Delhi, Gurgaon, Faridabad, Ghaziabad and Noida; families live on one side of an administrative boundary and work or study on the other. Our economy is part of one interconnected National Capital Region.

Then there are the generations of students attending universities such as Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Jamia Millia Islamia, among dozens of educational institutions. The money they pay in rent supports paying-guest households. The purchases they make help support hundreds of small businesses, including bookstores, coffee shops, food vendors and private coaching centres. The ideas and debates give Delhi its intellectual energy. Many return to their hometowns, while others remain in the city and go on to teach at schools and hospitals and start new businesses.

Therefore, modern-day Delhi is the result of migration. However, many of the same individuals who created Delhi were treated as temporary occupants rather than recognised as equal stakeholders in deciding the city’s future. The planning system assumes that migration is unexpected, while at the same time, much of our economy relies on hardworking and honest migrant workers, a permanent reliance. Therefore, responsible urban planning must begin with recognising that there will be continued movement towards opportunity, and governments should develop plans for these migrants before their deprivation becomes permanent.

Housing: More Than Shelter

Nothing captures a migrant family’s insecurity more than an unrecognised home. For decades, residents of Delhi’s unauthorised colonies lived in houses they could not mortgage, transfer or pass on to their children with confidence—a worker could help construct some of Delhi’s finest buildings and return each evening to a settlement the law itself refused to recognise.

Under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi ji, this injustice is being addressed. The decision to regularise 1,511 of Delhi’s 1,731 unauthorised colonies on an “as-is, where-is” basis removes the requirement for approved layout plans that had stalled recognition for years; through the SWAGAM portal, eligible property holders can now obtain conveyance deeds and authorisation slips. For a family in Sangam Vihar, Kirari or Karawal Nagar, this is not a change in land regulation—it is the assurance that their children can inherit a home built through a lifetime of savings. Legal recognition is being matched with civic development: we have allocated Rs 800 crore in the 2026-27 Budget for roads, drainage and lighting in these colonies, alongside development works across jhuggi settlements and Delhi’s villages.

However, the larger lesson for our nation is that housing policy can’t simply be about moving homes away from city centres and making access to necessities such as transportation difficult for those who can least afford it. Housing policy must also address security of tenure, affordability for both purchasing and renting and worker accommodation, all of which should be developed simultaneously with employment opportunities and transportation options. Our revised Transit-Oriented Development policy, covering roughly 207 square kilometres around Metro, railway and RRTS corridors, moves in that direction—enabling housing where mobility already exists.

Connecting People to Opportunity

A developed city should never require its citizens to spend hours of their lives stuck in a daily traffic jam. Transportation is not simply created to get vehicles moving faster, but to provide people access to employment opportunities, education and medical care, and enable them to connect seamlessly and conveniently. Delhi is rapidly expanding its Metro network, but infrastructure must work as a system; a station is only as useful as the last-mile bus, e-rickshaw or footpath that reaches it safely. Creating such an integrated transportation network requires cooperation between different state governments. Delhi cannot plan transport, air quality or housing in isolation from Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.

Clean mobility is essentially tied to public health. The government, under the Delhi Electric Vehicle Policy 2026, is investing over Rs 7,000 crore to support clean mobility initiatives. This investment provides broader benefits for citizens through purchase incentives, tax concessions and charging infrastructure. However, this transition to cleaner mobility must be fair. An auto-rickshaw driver or delivery person cannot be expected to absorb the costs associated with cleaner air themselves. There are purchase and scrapping incentives available to encourage families to lead this transition to cleaner mobility without having to pay for it.

Effective Urban Planning

In addition to providing housing and transit opportunities for migrants, we must provide them with employment and economic opportunities. Most migrants move to cities not to occupy physical space but to take part in the economic opportunities they offer. Many of Delhi’s businesses run through small factories, repair shops, street vendors and home-based operations that appear informal on paper but are essential in practice: a neighbourhood operates effectively if its vendors, electricians, tailors and domestic workers can afford to live nearby.

Responsible planning must protect these livelihoods rather than eradicate them in the name of redevelopment. Industrial areas need better roads, drainage and utilities so small units can operate safely; street-vending zones, skill centres and worker hostels deserve to be treated as part of urban planning, not afterthoughts. Food and health care are similarly important components of this type of infrastructure. Through Atal Canteens, a full meal is now available for Rs 5 near jhuggi clusters and working-class settlements. Similarly, through the rollout of Ayushman Bharat in Delhi, eligible families are provided with medical insurance coverage up to Rs 5 lakh under PM-JAY, in addition to another Rs 5 lakh in coverage from the Delhi government, bringing the total amount of medical insurance coverage for each family member up to Rs 10 lakh, so that a family no longer has to select between paying for medical treatment versus saving money. Young people, too, have a role in solving these problems. Through Delhi Next, over 2.5 lakh registrations showed how willing citizens are to contribute ideas on traffic, waste and waterlogging, with 60 civic-technology solutions now being piloted within government departments. The city of the future will not be built by the government alone, but in partnership with its own people.

Sustainability Is A Must

To Delhi residents, sustainability is not simply an environmental objective—it is the quality of the air a child breathes, the quantity of clean drinking water available to a household and whether a street floods during the rainy season. Our efforts include reducing the mountains of garbage in landfills throughout the city, developing science-based waste recycling processes, creating stronger systems for managing electronic waste and restoring and cleaning the Yamuna River—all of which cannot be addressed solely as engineering projects or government initiatives; they must become a civic commitment shared by the government and citizens.

Sustainability also has a cultural dimension. Chhath is no longer a festival at the margins of Delhi; it is part of the city’s identity, because the Purvanchali and Bihari communities who observe it are part of the city itself. Our government has developed 17 model ghats along the Yamuna, with proper access, sanitation and safety, a recognition, not concession, of that community’s contribution to the capital. When a city respects the language, food and faith of those who came to build it, migrants stop being treated as guests and become equal citizens.

Planning Ahead, Not Catching Up

India’s next wave of urbanisation will not unfold only in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru or Kolkata—much of it will be absorbed by Tier-II and Tier-III cities. These cities still have the chance to act before congestion and informal housing become irreversible: reserving land for affordable housing, building public transport before private-vehicle dependence sets in and protecting water bodies and drainage systems before they are lost to encroachment. The most expensive form of urban development is the one that arrives decades too late.

I have walked through some of Delhi’s narrowest lanes and seen families waiting for basic services. I have seen how getting a simple item, such as a streetlight installed, a health card issued, or property ownership documents issued, can improve the ease of living for an entire family. All these experiences have taught me that while urbanisation may involve technology and engineering, it is fundamentally a moral issue. On India’s Independence Day this year, we must measure the development of our cities by far more than just flyovers and expressways. We must evaluate them based on whether workers can live within walking distance from their job sites. Whether a student can find affordable housing. Whether a street vendor can earn without fear. And whether migrant families can begin calling their houses “home” at last. Delhi was built by people who arrived. A Viksit Delhi must be a city where everyone can say, without hesitation: “This city belongs to us, and we belong to Delhi.”

(Views expressed are personal)

Rekha Gupta Chief Minister, Delhi

(This story appeared in Outlook magazine’s August 31 issue, 'Whose Idea of India?', in which India’s noted public intellectuals, policymakers, cultural practitioners, political leaders, scholars and economists write in detail about the idea of India they believe can best secure the nation’s future as we celebrate 80 years of independence.)