L egend has it that Muhammad bin Tughlaq was an erratic genius. One morning, on a whim, he decided to move his capital from Delhi to Daulatabad, in present-day Maharashtra, forcing his entire population to trudge hundreds of miles through dust and heat. Many perished along the way. His vision may have been ambitious, but history remembers him not for the grandeur, but for his dangerous detachment from reality.

Another legend endures: when told that the peasants had no bread, Marie Antoinette allegedly replied, “Let them eat cake.” True or not, the story endures because it captures that fatal distance — when power becomes deaf to reality.

Centuries later, echoes of that same imperial detachment seem to reverberate through the corridors of Lutyens’ Delhi. A stunning decree has been

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