Capital: A Portrait of Twenty - First Century Delhi

Through the novel, Rana Dasgupta expresses his thoughts over the changing trends in the capital and reveals the city with the eyes of its people. The novel portrays the capital of India, Delhi and how it has witnessed changes from early 1990’s to the present. The novel has showcased a contrast of the situation of Delhi in early 1990’s, when the city went through a tumult of destruction and creation as the slums and markets were burnt down and the homes of the people residing there were dashed into ruins and the agricultural lands of the farmers were confiscated by the business owners.

This British-Indian writer has scholarly and sympathetically narrated the lives of the people in the present day Delhi. Dasgupta meets Delhiites from villas, bars, offices, restaurants and where ever he found the need to be interacted with the people. He categorized his subjects as the upper class and the lower class, men and women, Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims; property magnates, money launderers, technology entrepreneurs and activists working to uplift Delhi's slum areas.
Capital narrates a stale Delhi which from being walled city turned into the world tells the story of Delhi's journey from walled city to world city. With immense fortunes, land grabs and cityscape changed the city beyond its recognition and the slow paced city took up its speed. The novel also throws light on the lives of the people of low, high and middle strata affects with these changes.
Dasgupta has done a marvelous job in narrating the city with perfect lyrics and empathy, taking up to a series of encounters with well known billionaires and bureaucrats, drug dealers and metal traders, slum dwellers and psychoanalysts – which thrust us into the city’s deadly and terrifying anecdote of capitalist revolution by turning into India's fastest- rising mega city, offering an astounding 'report from the global future'.