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India Developing, but still a long way to go

View from Mumbai ATC tower
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Chennai metro
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Will this be called Chennai Express:chilli:
 
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This looks rather underwhelming, to be honest. Mumbai should manage a lot better than this.

India has scarce land and high population density. I agree that there should be more skyscrappers...mumbai has so many useless low rises that wastes precious amount of spaces.
 
This looks rather underwhelming, to be honest. Mumbai should manage a lot better than this.

The area in the pictures is part of mill land redevelopment. The gentrification of the whole place is underway, and in another 2 years or so, the difference will be apparent.
 
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Wow, what shots, thanks to HT, and thanks for posting mate.

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Gurgaon rapid metro

^^

This pic. gives a whole new meaning to 'dabbe-pe-dabba' ;). Metro over metro!

:offtopic: I didn't know Shah Rukh Khan aka SRK had over 11 $ 1 Billion hits !

SRK alone is a bigger industry then many Pakistani industry verticals.
For eg. the Adamjee's MCB Bank cap is $ 7 Billion. In another time,
SRK alone could start his own country :woot: .

Isha Ambani @ Yale introduces SRK.

 
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It takes a keen eye, steady feet and strong stomach to find one's way to the first-floor house of 45-year-old Farida Shethwala and her family in Ghari Chawl, one of the several decrepit localities in Bhendi Bazaar, South Mumbai. It's Friday and hawkers of the Jumma market yell themselves hoarse to draw shoppers. Two-wheelers speed recklessly in the narrow space between parked vehicles, their wheels plunging into pools of grey-green slush. "Mind your wallet," warns someone. A wobbly staircase leads to the 250-square-feet Shethwala home. On a wall stained by heavy seepage hangs a photograph of Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin, the spiritual and temporal head of the Dawoodi Bohra community, smiling gently into the distance. There are billowy curtains on the window and bare mattresses on the floor. These, says Shethwala, hide cracked tiles. Still, there is excitement in the household. That's because early next year, the Shethwalas will vacate the flat and move to transit camps at Anjirwadi or Ghodapdeo within Mazgaon, and after a few years, they hope to return to their new, and modern, flat in Bhendi Bazaar without paying a paisa for it. "We are sure the mohalla will be a thousand times nicer when we come back," Shethwala says.

The Shethwalas are amongst the intended beneficiaries of a not-for-profit project launched by the Saifee Burhani Upliftment Trust to redevelop the 16.5 acres of Bhendi Bazaar. The 250 buildings of the area which host 3,200 homes and 1,250 businesses and where 20,000 people live and work will give way to 17 towers with water-recycling and sewage-treatment plants. Homes will have attached bathrooms.

There will be landscaped open spaces; a 15-metre-wide road will run through the locality. The places of worship, such as the Saifee and Handiwala mosques, will remain untouched. So far, 1,200 families have signed up to relocate.

The one-million-strong Bohras are industrious and generally well-to-do. Most are traders settled in western India or in the United States, United Kingdom, Africa and West Asia. The urbane community generates a GDP (gross domestic product) of $4 billion and enjoys 100 per cent literacy, according to reports. Women wear colourfulridas and men wear skullcaps woven in white and gold. The community is close-knit, bound by unflinching allegiance to the Syedna. It was, therefore, a matter of common concern that Bhendi Bazaar, also known as Bohri Mohalla, offered less-than-sanitary living conditions to community members who account for 70 per cent of the area's population. Many families live in spaces smaller than 300 square feet.

The place is in desperate need of renewal. Mounds of trash sit in the scanty gaps between structures. Walking on the quaint, narrow roads is a nightmare for pedestrians. Children are not sent out to play and the elderly, like Shethwala's mother, Fiza, do not venture out except for prayers. Cab drivers in South Mumbai scowl at those who want to be dropped inside the lanes. "People," says Amin Patel, the local legislator who belongs to the Congress, "have started associating the name Bhendi Bazaar with a ghetto." It was not always so. The Bohras came to Mumbai from Gujarat during the 18th century. They traded in hardware and lived near Mohammed Ali Road. After the Great Fire of 1803, the British had organised the locality, known as Bhendi Bazaar, into neat grids and blocks which are less perceptible today because of encroachment and neglect.
 

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