The name of Bombay (Mumbai) commonly evokes, for a French public, images of slums. The success of movies like Slumdog Millionaire (2008) feeds this imagination, through spectacular scenes supposed to take place in the district of Dharavi, considered the largest slum in Asia. Less well known is the intense greed to which Dharavi has been subject for two decades by real estate developers and big capitalist groups close to the Hindu nationalist party in power in the country. Under the cover of little-known “revolution” projects, these large groups are trying to monopolize this land ideally located in the heart of the peninsula.
Because real estate is a big source of profits in Bombay. With the implementation, at the beginning of the 1990s, of neoliberal economic policies, the tertiary sector and in particular financial capitalism developed considerably, leading to the increase of inequalities within the urban population. This new influx of capital towards the most favored categories has therefore resulted in strong real estate speculation. In the space of a few years, prices multiplied by five or six in the sector, raising Bombay to the rank of the most expensive metropolis in the world in 1996. The older low-rise buildings began to be demolished to make way for huge concrete and glass towers that house luxury housing. This process profoundly changed the appearance of the city, as well as the environmental impact of its buildings, since these new buildings depend entirely on air conditioning during the hot season.
A legacy of colonial capitalism
At the same time, the most precarious populations continue to crowd into the slums. At the beginning of the 2000s, almost half of the inhabitants, or from 5 to 6 million people, lived in this type of space that occupied 6% of the city’s surface.
Although it has been accentuated by the implementation of the neoliberal policies of the 90s, this violent contrast is also the legacy of a longer history that it is useful to review to think about the present singularities. A place of minor settlements during the pre-colonial period, the city of Bombay really took off during the second half of the 19th century.e century, under the joint effect of the dynamism of its port that became one of the main cogs of British colonial capitalism and the development of a cotton textile industry financed mainly by Indian capital.