Housing in Mumbai, India An LEDC city

Mumbai (Bombay)

Bollywood Dharavi CBD Sanjay Gandhi Nagar Slum Community (now) Sanjay Gandhi Nagar Slum Community (original site)

A impressive city with high rise apartments overlooking the sea A impressive city with high rise apartments overlooking the sea. The wealthy live here. Housing can e as expensive as central Manhattan or London.

Traffic congestion – the daily grind for the wealthy commuter in a Mercedes or Lexus alongside the scooter or taxi.

The city has some very wealthy diamond dealers The city has some very wealthy diamond dealers. Who enjoy the cheap cost of living.

For the poor countryside dwellers migration is sometimes the only solution when their own communities can no longer support them. This woman from Rajasthan is part of a group heading for sugar cane plantations in Maharashtra, India. She may end up in Mumbai.

New arrivals arrive by train each day … along with millions of daily commuters from the suburbs.

What does ‘saathi’ do? Volunteers meet all trains arriving at Mumbai Central Station and remove any vulnerable children found travelling alone to a safe place. Temporary night shelters are provided for small groups of teenage girls. A day centre provides skills training for orphaned street kids.

Different kinds of pavement dwellers. New migrants end up here.

Mahila Milan Women Together A self help group of pavement women.

Making the building blocks in Mumbai. Self build schemes with Mahila Milan Mahila Milan run long term savings schemes. They also lend small amounts of credit to members.

The rail network carries 6.5 million people daily Children living by the tracks were in constant peril For more than 30 years she has lived only five feet away from the railway tracks near Mahim railway station in central Bombay. She will be shifting, with her husband and two children to Vashi - about 25 kms from Bombay.

There in Vashi modest but fairly pleasant 225 sq feet apartments have been built in newly constructed high-rise buildings. Subsidised housing has replaced some of the shanty towns Probably no city with as huge a population – around 14 million – has as many homeless people: 55% by official count.

SPARC has helped the government relocate 16,000 of some 22,000 slum families living along the railway tracks to implement the World Bank-funded Mumbai Urban Transport Project (MUTP). The Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC), An N.G.O.

An aerial view of Dharavi – Asia’s biggest slum? 1 million people.

Thousands of businesses flourish in Dharavi Thousands of businesses flourish in Dharavi. Selling earthern lamps is one of them. While these lamps bring light to thousands of people during Diwali, the festival of lights, those who make the lamps remain in darkness.

Dharavi – shop selling leather goods The sheer resourcefulness of its residents has made Dharavi one of Mumbai's more prosperous slum colonies

One of the dirty lanes in Dharavi, Asia's largest slum.

The livelihood of the potters of Kumbharwada in Dharavi will be under threat if the State government plans to redevelop the area.