Articles by Hepzi Anthony

Mumbai, the country's financial capital, is also home to Asia’s largest slum, with a majority of its citizens living in this and the many other slums that co-exist alongside the city’s many luxury skyscrapers. Over the years, successive state governments have announced many grandiose plans to replace these slums with low cost housing. But the slums, lacking in basic infrastructure and amenities like water and electricity continue to proliferate, even as huge numbers of luxury housing units remain unsold.  In fact, Greater Mumbai has the highest share of slum households in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR - 79% with 11,01,655…

Jyoti Aware, a municipal school teacher came to Mumbai in 2009 and since then has been staying in a rented house in Mumbai's northern suburb of Kandivali with her husband and two pre-teen children. Two years back, she purchased a house in Mira Road, a suburb outside Mumbai for Rs 30 lakh, since that was the only place where she could afford a house. However, she could not shift to the new house for that would increase her commute time four times, besides making it difficult for her children to continue in the same school. "The new house is far,…

Jyoti Aware, a municipal school teacher came to Mumbai in 2009 and since then has been staying in a rented house in Mumbai's northern suburb of Kandivali with her husband and two pre-teen children. Two years back, she purchased a house in Mira Road, a suburb outside Mumbai for Rs 30 lakh, since that was the only place where she could afford a house. However, she could not shift to the new house for that would increase her commute time four times, besides making it difficult for her children to continue in the same school. "The new house is far,…

Mumbai dons the mantle of being the congestion capital of the world. It was accorded this dubious acclaim by TomTom, a global traffic management technology services provider that tracks real-time congestion globally across 80 countries, putting Mumbai way ahead of developed cities like New York, London, Shanghai and 405 other cities. Mumbai's 8.6 lakh cars contribute to a vehicular density of 530 cars/km across its 2000 km of road network, putting it way ahead of even New Delhi (over 28,000 km road network), which has almost thrice the number of cars. Mumbai saw the number of private cars and two-wheelers…

Mumbai dons the mantle of being the congestion capital of the world. It was accorded this dubious acclaim by TomTom, a global traffic management technology services provider that tracks real-time congestion globally across 80 countries, putting Mumbai way ahead of developed cities like New York, London, Shanghai and 405 other cities. Mumbai's 8.6 lakh cars contribute to a vehicular density of 530 cars/km across its 2000 km of road network, putting it way ahead of even New Delhi (over 28,000 km road network), which has almost thrice the number of cars. Mumbai saw the number of private cars and two-wheelers…

Huge unsold housing inventory across 35 cities in the country is one of the key reasons for the Great Indian Economic slowdown, according to former chief economic adviser Arvind Subramaniam. In a working paper titled "India's great slowdown- What happened? What's the way out?", Arvind Subramaniam estimates that this vacant real estate inventory has locked up funds worth Rs 13 lakh crores, resulting in huge unpaid loans to banks. "While developers could in principle tempt buyers by reducing prices, they couldn't do that in practice because lower prices would have destroyed the (notional) value of the collateral that they pledged…

Huge unsold housing inventory across 35 cities in the country is one of the key reasons for the Great Indian Economic slowdown, according to former chief economic adviser Arvind Subramaniam. In a working paper titled "India's great slowdown- What happened? What's the way out?", Arvind Subramaniam estimates that this vacant real estate inventory has locked up funds worth Rs 13 lakh crores, resulting in huge unpaid loans to banks. "While developers could in principle tempt buyers by reducing prices, they couldn't do that in practice because lower prices would have destroyed the (notional) value of the collateral that they pledged…

Remember Arvind Desai ki Ajeeb Dastaan? In his very first film, eminent Bollywood film maker Saeed Mirza had showcased the view of the city from the upper deck of a double decker bus, wherein the characters stated that this was the best way to see the city of Mumbai. Many films like Shaan (an entire song was shot on a double decker bus) and even a much more recent hit, Ghajini (the Tamil version) had scenes in which these buses had provided the perfect backdrop. Unfortunately, very soon, scenes such as these will be the only place where you can…

Remember Arvind Desai ki Ajeeb Dastaan? In his very first film, eminent Bollywood film maker Saeed Mirza had showcased the view of the city from the upper deck of a double decker bus, wherein the characters stated that this was the best way to see the city of Mumbai. Many films like Shaan (an entire song was shot on a double decker bus) and even a much more recent hit, Ghajini (the Tamil version) had scenes in which these buses had provided the perfect backdrop. Unfortunately, very soon, scenes such as these will be the only place where you can…

The new chief minister of Maharashtra, Uddhav Thackeray may have granted interim stay pending review on the development of the Metro car shed inside the Aarey forest for now, but the battle to save Aarey – the 4.8 lakh trees that the forest is made up of --  is far from over.  Though work on tree cutting and the Metro car shed inside Aarey was already under a stay ordered by the Supreme Court since the en masse overnight cutting of over 2141 trees on October 5th, the state support for Aarey comes as a huge boost for the Save…