I went for a walk in a market in South Delhi. I had visited this market many times, had wandered around aimlessly for hours, had admired goods placed on display windows, had observed the crowds. Occasionally I would enter a shop, and would listen to the sales pitches of people trying to sell me gold jewelery, designer shoes, beauty lotions, microwaves, diamond rings, houses, ready made kitchens, silk saris and perfumes.

When you enter a shop with ten rupees in your pocket and five hundred in your bank account it becomes a completely fascinating experience to hear a sales guy talk like you are undecided about a thing and his presentation will make all the difference. After a few visits I was able to figure their modus operandi. They would carefully watch what you are looking at, say you are looking at a knife set, after a while someone from the sales team would accost you and would start explaining about the product, then depending upon your looks, who’s with you at that moment, and how much interest you show in a particular thing, he will make a sales pitch. Elaborating about the features of that kitchen knife, how is it blunt at the top, the decision to make this knife blunt was made after a study, you know, it’s more safe that way, and it has platinum mixed with steel for that extra durability, however if you are looking for a complete kitchen knife set let me recommend you this one from Germany, and before you would know why you are feeling so happy today you would have ordered an entire ready made kitchen from Hacker. I think these people have a way of knowing whether a person is a potential consumer or an uninterested window shopper, for often the sales person will have the last word and I would leave the showroom feeling shallow. It became a game of sorts to test how much time could I survive in a shop faking an interest in a surplus sweeter dump to designer gold carved, and very exclusive with limited edition, cigar holders.

But this time it was different. I had a very clear idea as to why I will roam today and what exactly will I be looking for. I thought it will interesting to see how notions of security and surveillance gets organized in a market place. How and specifically in what forms does showroom/shop owners choose to use/display the security assemblage? How do the people involved in this process like security guards reflect about their work?

During the nineteen sixties the place use to fall outside the city limits. Till eighties the market had a few grocery stores and some outlets selling machine parts. After eighties, fueled by the boom in the consumer sector the market began to flourish. In late nineties most of the shops were taken over or were converted to showrooms. The bazaar had thirty-eight spaces designated as shops but on the last count there were fifty showrooms selling everything from imported leather products to broom sticks.

The market is constructed in the shape of the letter L. Two service roads link the market to the main inner ring road. The space along the vertical extension of L is used for parking. The place has a vibrant street economy. Vendors selling pan, magazines, balloons, tea, newspapers, stationary items like pen etc stand along side the columns of the corridor and solicit people with their wares.

I began surveying from the lower end of this L shaped place. Dividing the security/surveillance apparatus broadly into manual and technological categories and specifically into armed/unarmed guards, CCTV/metal detector/heat sensors. On the last count I found that forty-one showrooms had guards of which six outlets had employed armed personnel. Twenty-three shops had CCTV cameras and two metal detectors and heat sensors also in addition to armed security and CCTV.

Later I went and talked to the president of the shop owners association. He said earlier there was no security except in some jewelery shops, in late nineties an incident occurred, which triggered this security scene. An employee was caught stealing sarees from a showroom. He was beaten up badly and handed over to the police but the shop owners became cautious, this was the first incident to have happened in last thirty years and hiring up of guards became a mandatory feature in this market from then on.

That day as I went around the bazaar observing and noting I saw a posse of policemen accompanying a man. He was an official with the municipal corporation in charge of demolitions. He went around the market destroying all the temporary shops of street vendors, of course everyone knew about the raid, so most of the people were gone, except some unlucky ones, like this tea stall owner whose utensils, cash box, prayer box, mats, a make shift tent, some stools- his entire investment was run over by a bulldozer. A jewelry showroom’s air conditioner vent was smashed. And some guards taking care of the parking were cautioned to not to allow cars to be parked outside the land allotted for parking.

The market has rules of its own. Like street salesmen accosting and pestering consumers are not allowed to roam on weekdays. I met a guy selling cookery books. Three hundred recipes of delicious Mughlai food. He was having a tough time. He was caught twice already in the week and was let of after a warning. His friend from the same agency didn’t have the same luck though. This guy’s friend gave a bribe of two hundred rupees to a guard to let him work for three hours, the guard took the money and disappeared. The salesman was caught and beaten up.

I asked him aren’t you afraid of being caught. He said no because this time he is doing a completely legal business, he had paid the supervisor of the security firm a sum of thousand rupees to do business here for three hours every day for a week.

Jewelery shops were the most surveiled spaces with cameras on ceilings camouflaged as spot lights, armed guards and all. I came across a small corner fake jewelery and gift shop. The owner had put across a notice board with a disclaimer stating that the shop has CCTV cameras hidden all over the place and he would not be liable for any un-eventuality, in case any consumer is caught stealing. I roamed around the place for half an hour looking at all sorts of unwieldy places to find a hidden camera. I couldn't find one. Finally, I went to owner and asked, why has he put up a board when the cameras were already lodged inside the shop.. He said, that installing CCTV cameras were becoming a costly investment, so he devised a strategy. Actually there weren't any cameras, but according to the owner, people have started behaving responsibly since he had put on that notice.