Khan Market is where trendy Delhites hobnob with their contemporaries, peruse chic apparel boutiques and visit upmarket cocktail bars.  

It wasn’t long before we stumbled across sophisticated Indians, young and old, with some dressed up for a night on the town and others enjoying some light evening shopping.

Student Monisha Swarkare, 23, and air stewardess, Aju Sureswadle, 23, said they would not be voting for Indian PM Narendra Modi at the 2024 Lok Sabha election.

The young women, dressed for Khan Market’s lavish bistros, said they felt able to be “more expressive” in India than in the past. 

Culture was becoming more Westernised in India, Monisha argued, with people learning more about the outside world. 

She said people are now “seeing things from a different perspective” and this was positive because it meant they were becoming more open-minded. 

She said: “When it comes to employment, which is a major drawback in India, things seem to be getting better and there are more jobs.”

But her friend Aju made her dislike of the nation’s PM clear. 

“Nobody likes Modi,” she said. “I don’t want him to win because he is a gangster.”

When asked why she described Mr Modi in this way, she said it was because her father had told her so. 

She said: “When it comes to politics, it is about the people of the nation first.

“But ever since the British days, it tends to be whoever in power becomes corrupt.”

She admitted: “Modi is doing good things, corruption is just a part of politics.”

Meanwhile, 65-year-old private sector employee Rajiv Chopra out on his evening stroll said: “Modi is a thief.” 

When probed further on exactly what Modi had stolen he said: “Modi makes promises then refuses to keep them.” 

He went on to complain about Modi’s sweeping welfare reforms depriving people his age of government handouts, such as tax-payer subsidised railway fares.

And 20-year-old student Arjun Singh Nain from Chandigarh, Punjab, who studies financial science in Mumbai, was visiting his sister Anahad Nain, 22, an interior designer living in Delhi.   

He said: “I’m intrigued by the elections because democracy in India is an interesting aspect of our lives. 

“Everybody talks about it. It is a conversation around our dinner tables.

“But I’m not too happy about the election right now. I’m not too happy with the person in power and I’m not happy with the alternatives.

“Modi is there because of a lack of options – he is the best option we currently have.

“He is there because all the others are thieves. Everyone else is corrupt. He is also corrupt. But he is smarter with his corruption.”

But he said Modi’s fraudulence was not comparable with the seven-decade-long litany of dishonesty under Congress rule because the BJP leader was “smarter with the way he steals the money”.

Referring to the previous Indian administration, he admitted: “Modi is much better than the Congress establishment.

“The Congress establishment was not interested in developing us.”

He pointed to Modi being tough on China, delivering much-need infrastructure projects and rolling out 24-hour electricity for Indian farmers as evidence of New India’s trajectory of progress.

Arjun’s sister Anahad said: “We are from the Sikh community, so we are a minority in the country.”

But she claimed to have never faced discrimination in her homeland thanks to India’s overriding sense of pluralistic values. 

She concluded by saying as a young woman, she felt greatly empowered and respected in the last five years.

During our time in Khan Market, liberals claimed Modi was everything from a “corrupt gangster” to a money-grabbing conman.

But there was one glaring takeaway. 

No one could deny the meaningful changes turbocharging New India’s unstoppable rise.