Visitors will see clean New Delhi streets ornamented with hundreds of thousands flowers. What they will not see are the hundreds of thousands of people who have been displaced.

The annual summit of the Group of 20 economies is the largest gathering of world leaders ever in New Delhi, with attendees including President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and others.

They will be greeted by some of the cleanest streets New Delhi has seen, ornamented by hundreds of thousands of lush flowers potted on freshly painted pavements. What they will not see are the hundreds of thousands of people who have been displaced, or the slums that have been flattened or obscured by temporary fences bearing the G20 summit’s logo and photos of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Modi’s government hopes the beautification project will help showcase the best of what the world’s most populous country has to offer, further cementing its position on the global stage.

Anything that might disrupt that effort is unwelcome.

  • magnetosphere English
    14•1 year ago

    Woah, woah, woah. Yes, the G20 is basically the Legion of Doom (if it was made entirely of Lex Luthor clones), but they usually at least try to slap a smiley face on their atrocities. Bulldozing homes is a little too on the nose, isn’t it, Modi?

    Authorities say they have also deployed several dozen people to mimic the sounds made by langurs so that the rhesus monkeys will be further convinced the cardboard animals are real.

    So… they hired people to walk around making langur noises? I want a detailed story specifically about this job. First, though, I need to hit Wikipedia and find out what a langur is.

    Edit: Oh, it’s this.