A tale of two cities

I’m a well-fed, well-educated and healthy western woman. So walking alone in the middle of scorching hot, smelling of rotten meat and crowded Old Delhi on India's Independence Day doesn't make me exactly inconspicuous. Indeed, I've been 'checked out' more than anywhere in my short lifetime and it is definitely not the sort of attention I would like to attract.

You see, Old Delhi is the poorest part of this 15 mln people city. You won't be able to walk for 2 metres without being treated as a source of income for the tired rickshaw drivers, the street children (who if they don't get the required amount of money might have their limbs cut off by their masters), the beggars and the shopkeepers (mostly all sorts of textiles and artefacts) around the place. Around 4/5ths of all Delhi workers are illegal, working on the black market - and most of them are here. Wandering there at 9am to see the celebration of the 1947 Independence Day, I felt truly scared.

That same evening, we went to see Aisha - a Bollywood comedy based on Jane Austen’s “Emma” where pretty actresses wear too much make up, flash around in designer clothes and have none of the modesty displayed in the local Indian women. Yes, there are many Ultra High-Net Worth people in Delhi, living behind grand tree fences. There is also the coveted growing middle class professionals -the IT and call centre workers, who earning 12-14,000 rupees per week (9,000 pounds p.a.) can secure a comfortable lifestyle.

So on the first day of Study India Delhi presented to myself as a city of extremes, of those who have and of those who have not. And who is to blame for these extremes? "The British and the rich" raved a local humanitarian activists who did a lecture on sustainable development. Problems with Delhi's river? The bloody British colonial engineers. The division between the poor and the rich? The British materialist culture. The developing tragedy of displacing 220,000 Indians for the incoming commonwealth games? The rich who don't want to see the poor on their doorstep. I, a right-wing capitalist, took time to digest his thought-provoking arguments, mostly because I felt deeply uncomfortable with everything he was saying. I felt like a target, so I figured it out: he didn't point out at all to corrupt government, he didn't even offer solutions - he was just very good at pointing at the problem, but not really at solving it.

A person who seemed to offer a better solution and response to the problem was Mike Knowles, a University of Arts London fellow who set up a design consultancy and an upholstery factory here in India. Mike points to the caste system as the reason for the divisions and he is here to create jobs through his factory production. He pointed out John Ruskin's "Unto his Life" and talked about the importance of moral leadership - a thing forgotten in the current financial crisis. Mike is an impressive guy - he has been selling his furniture to John Lewis and has last year been nominated for ELLE outdoors awards. His life is a testament to how to help India's poorest.

It is clear that Study India Delhi programme gives us a lot of food for thought: besides the sightseeing visits, we had lectures on India's HE system (and its incredible expansion), on India's sustainability problem, on India’s approach to disability and on the viability of UK-India relationship. I'm so glad for this - it really does put the whole City job, studying at Oxford and all my day-to-day life in perspective, realising how little these people have. It's been also refreshing to be here with people from different Universities (from Coventry, through KCL to LSE) and who will choose different career paths (work with young people, diplomacy) and see their completely different interpretation of events.

The food is quite repetitive (thank god I'm not allergic to curry!) but it feels good to have a fresh, cooked meal for you everyday, goodbye Pret Salads and Sainsbury's tasteless vegetables. So I'm eating quite a lot of fish and chicken (Tikka or Tandoori), lentils,cooked vegetable salad, vegetable sauces (daal), eggs and fruit for breakfast and some rice with every meal to neutralise the spices.

Overall, the first week proved to be both challenging and inspiring – and I can’t wait to see what the second one will bring.

By Marta Szczerba