Capital Cities


As someone who grew up in Delhi, I didn’t realize how pampered the city is until I went to a small town university. It also hit me how bitter people there felt about cities like Delhi that hogged everything (money, resources, infrastructure, connectivity etc).

It’s the same where I live now: Bangalore. Other parts of Karnataka feel the same way about Bangalore as being a pampered city. To make matters worse, Bangalore is full of non-Kannadigas who can’t and won’t even bother to associate with anything Kannadiga (I am guilty of the same).

The Americans chose to be different on this count: they built a new capital that didn’t fall in any state. In fact that was necessary because none of the founding states trusted the capital to be in any other state! Which is why it’s called Washington DC, a federal district, not part of any state. (Later the Australians, Candiands and New Zealanders too decided to make an obscure city their capital for similar reasons).

The Americans even went a step further: Washington DC has no senators, and only a non-voting member of the House of Representatives. Kind of ironic that a country that was founded on the principle of “No taxation without representation” is now a country where some of the capital city’s citizens voice their protest via the slogan on their car: “Taxation without representation”!

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