Mumbai

Mumbai is perhaps the most global of India's megacities. Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay) is the commercial capital of India and features in global studies as a site of the transitions and several contradictions it presents. These transitions and contradictions, in turn, lend themselves to theoretical and conceptual debates and contestations.

The contradictions are evident. They present themselves visually through the presence of slums, which house about 60% of the city's population against a backdrop of high-rise luxury housing. Another visible contrast is the presence of the bustling informal economy, comprising street vendors, home-based enterprises, informal service providers, and unorganized small sector industries operating in the slums as compared to the increasing numbers of financial and other services that are viewed to be the future of the city. Every facet of life in Mumbai, from planning and built environment to services, is characterized by segmentation.

Segmentation has been ingrained into the city since its colonial history. The British created Mumbai in phases, as the empire established and consolidated itself in the country and went from mercantile to industrial capitalism and subsequently extended itself to creation of institutions and urban forms. Its economy moved from a base of trade and processing of raw cotton to a base of thriving composite mills within the city itself. This was accomplished through an engineering of population movements, use of land as incentive to drive social infrastructure creation, and creation of transport networks. The urban planning and governance were distinct in their coverage of Indian [Page 1196]and Western quarters, with the Indian city being a haphazard, overcrowded counterpart to the orderly Western city.

Mumbai in postindependence times continued to thrive economically on the base laid during the colonial era with an extension of its manufacturing base. However, the nature and intensity of segmentation gradually kept on increasing as formal planning and governance processes found themselves inadequate to the scale and nature of economic and population movements. Thus, segmentation began to be increasingly extended to the economic and political realm too, although the overall democratic rubric of governance meant that the city offered economic opportunities for migrants from different parts of the country and accommodated them, largely in informal housing. Segmentation was thus reflected in the withdrawal of the middle classes from political processes.

As the country began its pursuit of economic liberalization policies since 1991, dramatic shifts in the city have been experienced. These shifts have economic dimensions, with a movement from a primarily manufacturing economy to a service economy. They have political dimensions as seen through an expansion of ascendant middle-class activism for governance. There are cultural dimensions, with the city moving from an accommodative culture to a city that has experienced riots fueled by assertions of Hindu and Marathi (the local language of the province in which Mumbai is located) identity. Additionally, the vulnerability of the city to environmental and security threats has been experienced frequently in the past decade as the economic productivity of the city registered a rise.

These transitions have formed the basis of policies that view Mumbai as a growth engine for the provincial and national economy. Thus, corporate-citizen “visions” of Mumbai as a world-class city have been backed by provincial government task forces and by the national government, which has undertaken the development of Mumbai as an international financial center. There has thus been a massive influx of investment in the housing, transport, and other infrastructure of the city in the past decade. Policies capitalizing on market forces have also been extended to slums. A massive project of restructuring space in the city is thus in progress, which has profound implications for the poor, who have asserted their presence through informal processes and the politics of stealth.

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