For a city that hopes to follow Delhi’s growth trajectory, Mumbai is only all too eager to soak in everything that a three-time chief minister “passionately in love with Delhi” has to offer. So when Sheila Dikshit came to Express Adda in Mumbai for a freewheeling chat, an exchange of notes on the successes and failures of the two cities was inevitable. “The 19th century belonged to Calcutta, 20th to Mumbai and 21st belongs to Delhi,” Dikshit said. “Not so many years ago, everyone in Delhi wanted the city to be like Mumbai,” she recalled. “There is always this feeling that Delhi is India’s capital, therefore it is India’s showpiece. So unless you make it the best, the image of India won’t change either,” the chief minister told a gathering of the cream of intelligent Mumbai, many of whom are frequent visitors to the capital, and owe allegiance both to the national and the financial capital. Uday Shankar, CEO, Star India, who co-hosted the Adda along with Shekhar Gupta, Editor-in-Chief, The Express Group, at the Olive Bar & Kitchen, described Delhi as his “natural habitat” and Mumbai as his “adapted habitat”. Mumbai as a city loves to run down Delhi, Shankar said; it is, however, now awed by Delhi’s transformation, while Mumbai itself has remained “a story of all the potential it is determined not to live up to”. Introducing Dikshit as “an old style politician who runs a very modern government”, Gupta said she was “the only CM in the country who is identified with the transformation of the city”. Be it the giant strides the capital has made in shifting to the cleaner CNG fuel or in connecting the entire city by the 192-km (set to go up to 320 km soon) Metro network, Dikshit has rewritten the growth story of Delhi in a way perhaps no other CM has, he said. Dikshit conceded, however, that the problem of transport is far from being solved in a city that has 70 lakh cars in addition to thousand of buses and taxis out on its roads. She referred to her lost battle to implement the dedicated Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor after it had completing 12 km in Delhi. “The people against it (BRT) are the car owners; the pedestrians, buswallahs and cyclists, who are 80 per cent of the users, have been very happy but no one cares about their voices,” Dikshit said, responding to Shankar who referred to the political backlash that seemed to hit every time she took a decision in the interest of the community but against certain individual interests. The conversation also turned to how for Delhi, sharing power with the federal government can be both a boon and a burden. “Very few know that the Delhi state government has no hold over two things that are the currency of power in India: land and police. While land comes under DDA (Delhi Development Authority) that reports to the union urban development ministry, the Delhi Police reports to the union home ministry,” Gupta said. Dikshit said it was “very disturbing, hurting and painful to hear that you are not only the capital of India but also the rape capital of India”. She stressed on the responsibility of both the society and families to ensure safety of women — especially in cases such as that of Baby Falak, where the perpetrators are from within the family. The chief minister conceded, however, the failure of Delhi to ensure a sense of security in women, unlike in cities such as Mumbai or Ahmedabad. “We are trying but not succeeding as much as we should,” she said. Making an argument for the need for more city states like Delhi for better urban management, she said, “We have reached the point where cities need special attention because more and more people from rural areas are moving to urban areas.” Pointing to the constraints faced by Nitish Kumar who can’t just concentrate on Patna or Prithviraj Chavan who cannot look after only Mumbai, Dikshit said, “Prithviraj Chavan looks after Maharashtra, I look after Delhi. He has a huge rural belt where agriculture is the priority. In Delhi, agriculture is one per cent. I am primarily an urban face.” Dikshit rounded off the discussion by borrowing from author Mark Tully’s famous refrain about India, saying “There are no full stops in Delhi.” “Delhi constantly needs to grow, its affluence is both a matter of pride and worry. The only answer is we must build more cities so people don’t have to migrate to our cities. Five lakh people come to Delhi every year; kahaan rahenge, kitna paani istemaal karenge, kahaan se bijli paida hogi, kitni sadakein laayenge, kitne buses karenge, kahaan pe garbage le kar jaayenge?” The need to plan many more mega-cities as part of a vision for the next 20 years was urgent, Dikshit said.