Paper Short Abstract:

While navigating public spaces of Delhi, one unavoidably encounters Delhi Police’s barricades that populate most public spaces in India’s capital. In this paper, I follow the object of the police barricade for over a year, to produce an ethnographic account of policing and surveillance in the city.

Paper Abstract:

The Delhi Police’s barricades are movable metal structures, which collectively are one of the most visible fixtures in the city’s urban landscape. These barricades, painted in bright yellow to increase their visibility at night, along with red labelling that establishes their authority and legitimacy, throng the crowded capital and prominently occupy most of its public spaces.

Often these barricades can be found in long, endless queues, along the city’s roads. In Central Delhi, the political and administrative centre of India, these barricades placed in layers fortify the “VIP area”, guarding the gates of prominent government offices, the parliament, and official residences of India’s President, Prime Minister and many other political figures. Some of these barricades huddle around the city’s borders, observing, monitoring and guiding the traffic trickling into the city. In Delhi’s posh markets, several of these barricades join hands to create enclosures which withhold vehicles and roadside vendors alike. At protest sites like the Jantar Mantar, these metal structures come together to form an opaque and impenetrable wall, that creates a boundary separating the criminalised protester from the law-abiding resident. The barricades openly discriminate between the different people who cross their paths. They move for some, but stop others from moving.

In this paper, I follow the object of police barricades across Delhi for over a year. By centring my attention on the barricades, I reflect on policing and surveillance in the capital city (and indeed the whole country), and contemplate their impact on the freedoms of Indian citizens.