The Ministry Of Utmost Happiness

A baby has been abandoned in downtown Delhi:

She lay in a pool of light, under a column of swarming neon-lit mosquitoes, naked. Her skin was blue-black, sleek as a baby seal’s. She was wide awake, but perfectly quiet, unusual for someone so tiny. Perhaps, in those first short months of her life, she had already learned that tears, her tears at least, were futile (100).

Before continuing the baby’s story, the narrator describes the changes that have been taking place in the city. In an effort to modernize, Delhi has outlawed begging and “surplus people” (102)—poor residents who can’t afford the price hikes that come with modernization. Neighborhoods, villages, and forests are being torn down, and people are being displaced. Although the “people (who counted as people)” (103) are pleased with the new luxuries life in Delhi affords, the city is in crisis, and crowds of protesters of various types have gathered at an old observatory (Jantar Mantar) in downtown Delhi. One man in particular—a hunger striker who has “announced a fast to the death to realize his dream of a corruption-free India” (105)—has attracted the attention of the media and mobilized public support behind him, although his image will eventually be coopted by Hindu nationalists led by Gujarat ka Lalla—the Chief Minister of Gujarat at the time of the anti-Muslim riots.