Numerous devices were installed to make people aware of the almost sacred character of this designated space. Banners, public address systems and vehicular and human "interceptors" were deployed to drive home the point that rules exist.

The concept of the Zero Tolerance Zone is based on the assumption that people are unaware of rules. That they have no idea that things like civic law govern the life of their city. At the heart of this creation therefore lies the belief that any city with an intrinsically intractable character can be transformed through bureaucratic decree into a law abiding, violation-free zone.

Anyone watching the foolhardy way people negotiate traffic would agree with the creators of The Zone and concede that no urban citizen knows civic rules. But that’s only part of the picture. What completes the picture is when those same reckless drivers or pedestrians are hauled up for violations. At that specific moment an urban Indian’s real knowledge of rules is revealed. And the real knowledge of rules is that they are not absolute.

For motorists in particular, and urban residents in general, rules do not have an omniscient existence. Unlike their belief in God who they feel is present everywhere and at all times (particularly during all-night "community"prayers held at street corners and neighbourhood parks) rules are things that come into being at the moment of an encounter. In other words, rules are event-based: they have no existence outside the momentary, beyond the immediate context of the encounter between policeman and violator.

Such an event-based understanding of rules doesn’t mean that people don’t think about rules. They do. They just have a different take on how rules are made. And once made, what happens to the rule.

If anyone closely observes an encounter between a speeding driver and a cop, they will immediately realise that they are watching a significant ritual. An initial period of silence, during which the cop has his thoughts hidden behind dark glasses while the speedster adopts a pose suggesting this whole exercise is uncalled for, is followed by the cop amplifying the nature of the violation.

The driver ad-opts a submissive stance as though accepting the cop’s verdict, while simultaneously working furiously to offer a counter view and convince the cop of the trifling nature of his error.

Since this negotiation is based entirely upon the audio-range, body-build, gender and political connections of the two persons immediately involved, the time taken is elastic and depends on the infinitely individual variations that are brought into play (and accepted to have been tabled) by both parties. The observer will know that a resolution is reached when the cop casually puts away his notebook, signalling a satisfactory conclusion.

The first thing to understand is that it is not a case of being hauled up, paying the fine and being issued a receipt. It’s not so simple precisely because something of immense relevance is happening. A rule is being made. On the spot. There are some conventions governing the rule.

But there is no fixed or absolute tenet. So each encounter is invested with the enormous consequence of a ritual through which a rule is produced. But once the ritual-encounter concludes, it signals the end of the rule. The rule, in effect, disappears.

This "encounter’’, or event-based understanding of the rule, is what the cops and innovators of the No Tolerance Zone have misunderstood. Because the other assumption inherent in The Zone is that it will serve as An Example. The Example is meant to have a permanent existence and live beyond the time and space within which it is currently demarcated. The Delhi police is hoping that all those who have passed through the Zone during this consecrated week will retain the memory of what they experienced and pass the message along.

Further, that the whole of Delhi will transform itself into a No Tolerance Zone. In fact, they hope that this new ‘zoned’ Delhi will go beyond its boundaries and become the paradigm for other cities.

This is a fantasy. Inured to countless "drives"that become events, urban residents have armed themselves with notoriously short memories. They will participate enthusiastically in drives; but once the drive is over, that’s it. What happens during the course of The Sanitation Drive, The Demolition Drive, The Anti-Adulteration Drive, (and all the assorted drives through which you and I have lived), vanishes when the Drive-as-Event concludes. Urban Indians refuse to burden themselves with Drive-laden memories.

So the belief that the No Tolerance Zone will drum home the point that rules have a permanent existence is baseless and doomed from the start.

However, the evaporation of the rule and event does leave a residue that inscribes itself upon urban life. In fact, the event-based impermanence of the rule leaves behind a permanent inscription upon the soul of cities like Delhi. It’s almost like an epitaph for a city which spells the death of a cooperative, integrated urbanism and the simultaneous birth of the Reign of the Individual.

Out of the vanished rule of law has emerged a new code that positions the individual as a total urban institution. People in most Indian cities have taken over the imperative functions of the state and created their own law. Delhi has gone one step further and usurped the functions of municipal authorities. Delhi’s citizens have taken over the task of equipping themselves with urban utilities like water from their own tube-wells, electricity from generators, personal security guards and sometimes even roads.

Every individual urban citizen is a war zone living within a unique political formation called Defensive Living. Combined with the politics of individually created rules, Defensive Living is the Example that Delhi has created and set for others to follow.

Of course, some people remain defenseless within this political war zone - but they cannot be citizens unless they can efficiently steal water or electricity and establish their own rule. If Hobbes walked into Delhi today he would be proud of us: because today we live by the pronouncements of a Hobbesian philosophy and have declared a War of All against All.