Sky-high rents have Mumbai residents living on the edge
Among the swanky skyscrapers of India’s financial capital Mumbai, hundreds of dangerously dilapidated buildings facing demolition are crowded with families risking their lives rather than braving impossibly high rents. When torrential monsoon rains lash the coastal city each year, some of the decrepit colonial-era buildings come crashing down — often with a heavy loss of life.
“It was like seeing a biscuit that crumbles after you put it in tea,” said office worker Vikram Kohli, recalling how he narrowly missed being killed when a four-storey building partially collapsed in July.
City authorities had red-flagged the centuryold building in the megacity’s bustling Grant Road area for repairs three years ago.
The government issued a “warning notice for evacuation” in June — but residents ignored it.
“No one vacated the premises”, the state housing authority said.
When the building collapsed, one passerby was killed, four were injured and the fire brigade had to rescue 13 people trapped inside.
Vaishnav Narvekar, who ran a simple cafe on the ground floor, said he had been “expecting” it to collapse — just not so quickly. It was the “worst feeling”, he said. But that is only one case among many in the densely populated city of about 20 million people. More than 13,000 buildings require “continuous repair” to stave off collapse, the state’s Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) said.
Of those, it lists nearly 850 buildings as being “dangerous and dilapidated” and “not recommended for repair”.
Many are apartment blocks packed with residents, suggesting more than a hundred thousand people could live in buildings at risk.
Scores are crushed to death each year when buildings collapse, their walls weakened by rainstorms which climate scientists say are increasing in intensity.
Mumbai, the home of glitzy Bollywood stars and billionaire business tycoons, is in the midst of a major infrastructure drive, including highways, metro lines and bridges.
But the government says its affordable housing budget is stretched, leaving many tenants determined to stay put in unsound dwellings.
“Where should we go if we left?” asked one tenant in the suburb of Ghatkopar, in a building listed as “dangerous”, asking not to be named for legal reasons. “Our lives are here.”