New Delhi’s Connaught
Place is home to the fourth-most expensive office space in the
world, ahead of such usual suspects as New York and Tokyo.
The occupancy cost in
Connaught Place is Rs.18000 per square foot according to
an annual survey released by global real estate service firm Cushman &
Wakefield. Renamed Rajiv Chowk
after the former Indian prime minister who was assassinated in 1991, Delhi’s
central business district houses many banks, media companies and insurance
companies, which contribute to the demand for modern office space. (The Reuters
Delhi bureau is here too)
Originally named after
the Duke of Connaught, the third son of Queen Victoria, the district also
enjoys easy access to the Delhi metro. It is also a social leveller, attracting
people of all ages and backgrounds from business executives and foreign
tourists to college students, middle-class families and drug addicts. They come
here for shopping, eating out or just lazing around.
But what do people like
me see when they exit the metro? Buildings are hidden behind rows of
scaffolding. Bulldozers that invaded the district nearly a decade ago under the
pretext of restoration work languish there now.
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