Ber Sarai

Ber Sarai is a small neighborhood located between Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and the IIT Delhi area in the South of New Delhi, India. The closest road is an undivided wide road that forms the link between the "Outer Ring Road" and other areas of Outer Delhi such as Vasant Kunj. As this road forms a conduit, it sees heavy vehicular traffic in both directions. With in a 5 mile radius lie such places as NCERT, Munirka, Ram Krishna Puram, Jiya Sarai, Yusuf Sarai, Hauz Khas, Safdurjung Enclave, Malviya Nagar, Green Park, DLTA and Vasant Vihar. It is approximately 45 minutes by car from the Indira Gandhi International Airport.

The neighborhood actually has two distinct portions: Ber Sarai Village and Ber Sarai Delhi Development Authority (DDA) Flats. The village, which is much larger in area, is the home of wealthy Jats (and several poorer families as well) that own most of the land and also own and operate some private buses on the roads of Delhi. The DDA Flats house middle class families. The village shares a wall with the hostel area of IIT Delhi and is, in present form, an amazingly dense collection of houses with various mom-and-pop shops sandwiched all over the place. Over the years, the houses have increased in height and density, and have seen more and more students renting rooms. They are either studying in the nearby universities, or preparing for entrance examinations of engineering, medical or civil services exams. The presence of the almost-legendary bookshop called Jawahar Book Depot and several coaching institutes definitely helps. Partly because of this, and partly because of the heavy vehicular traffic, a shopping complex has sprung up since 2000 that is the home of bookstores, restaurants, and "photostat" shops. Before the shopping complex came to being, the only shop worthy of mention close to the road was a modest restaurant by the name of "Kerala Tea Stall", which, amazingly, still enjoys widespread patronage from the local youth, thanks to its famous inexpensive south Indian preparations, and beverages such as tea, coffee and sodas.

When the DDA Flats were first built in the 1970s, they were 102 Flats, numbered 1 to 34, each having three floors, marked A, B and C. A small shared lawn (called "park" in this part of the world) is in the center of these flats. These flats are privately owned, and are all two bedroom flats on either side of a small "verandah" and each having a small "balcony". Flats on the ground floor ("A") have a 15x15 "aangan", those on the middle floor ("B") have a slightly smaller "terrace" and those on the upper floor ("C") have none of these, but supposedly own the area on the top (which houses water tanks). This area has always been the happy ground for children for flying kites. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, perhaps because of the rapid rise in middle class incomes and the high property prices owing to its enviable location, several flat owners have worked feverishly on expanding the area of their flats. Most have made additional rooms, either covering their "aangan" or "terrace" to convert into a room, or making an additional floor (!) on top. This unchecked growth has resulted in what looks like, in today's era, an ugly patchwork of apartments of all shapes and sizes. The community which was once a happy meeting ground of diverse middle classes as well as the nearby village occupants has all but broken down. The park, once a happy cricket playground for kids and relaxing area for adults, has been reduced to an unattended overgrowth of bushes. The narrow roads that also saw many a game of tennis-ball cricket, or other Indian games of kho-kho or pithoo have become congested with parked cars, as the small garage assigned to each flat in the 1970s, good enough for just a two-wheeled cycle, gets inadequate for the ubiquitous cars. The situation is so bad that it is almost impossible to wade through the jungle of cars on a Sunday when most people are home. These flats are symbolic of the inadequacy of the creaking infrastructure of most of Delhi's middle class neighborhoods.

The Ber Sarai neighborhood comes in the "Outer Delhi" electoral constituency of Delhi. This constituency has been the battleground of two candidates over the years: Sajjan Kumar of Congress I and Sahib Singh Verma of BJP.