Mumbai (Bombay) is the undisputed 'world city' in every sense. While it is a miniature cosmos of India, Mumbai is also perched precariously on the shores of the subcontinent, unlike the deeply ensconced Delhi or Kolkata, reflecting an extroversion and daring that are particularly its own. Since the late 19th century, its great Indian middle class, representing a social dynamic of Mumbai, has encouraged and embraced the fruits of consumption and globalisation, typically ignoring traditional state or cultural austerities. If this cosmos be true in its multitudinous humanity, in the glitter of a world city, in its dream-manufacturing centres such as Bollywood and various couture houses, so is the fact that half its population lives in slums and on sidewalks (grippingly rendered in Suketu Mehta's urban paean The Maximum City and Greg Roberts' para-autobiography Santaram). The equation is made further lopsided by the cores of power that are constituted by an invisible and visible conglomerate of developers, financiers and politicians who control one of the most expensive real estates in the world without a particular urban plan or vision.
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