The (dis)Entanglements of the Design(ed)?

In 2006, the Delhi Urban Arts Commission (DUAC) along with the Lt. Governor of Delhi and the Government of Delhi instituted a “task-force” comprising “experts” (architects, urban designers, and municipal bodies) and “lay-folk” (local resident welfare associations and residents) to present a proposal for redeveloping Khirki “Urban Village.” For all actors involved, the stakes in this project were rather high - the State, the Residents of Khirki and the experts. Using ethnographic vignettes this paper unpacks this politics of the designs, to elaborate a “praxical present” within which expertise, experts, the State and the citizens all get (dis)entangled with each other through idioms that far exceed those of the Modern State, citizenship, individual and communitarian rights.