bombay impression #01
streaming movie 01:08″

Fifty years ago, if you wanted to see where the action was in India, you went to the villages. Today, you go to the cities. What makes Bombay overpopulated is the impoverishment of the countryside, so that a young man with dreams in his head will take the first train to Bombay to live on the footpath. If you fix the problems of the villages, you fix as a happy side-effect, the problems of the cities.

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bombay impression #02
streaming movie 00:54″

The growth of a megacity is an Asian phenomenon. Why do Asians like to live in cities? Some parts of central Bombay have a population density of one million people per square mile. This is the highest number of individuals massed together at any spot in the world. Two-thirds of the city’s residents are crowded into just 5 per cent of the total area, while the richer or more rent-protected one-third monopolize the remaining 95 per cent.

Suketu Mehta — Bombay lost & found