Every morning I step onto Mumbai’s streets hoping that nobody pays with their life for another preventable civic failure. That is an extraordinary thought to carry in a city that proudly calls itself the financial capital of India. Yet, as I pass ageing buildings, trees trapped in concrete, roads narrowed by encroachments, vehicles occupying every available inch of public space, and trains and buses carrying far more people than they were ever designed to, it no longer feels like an irrational fear.

I hope no ambulance has to battle through impossible lanes to save a life. I hope every citizen who leaves home returns safely by evening. These are the most basic promises any city owes its people. Spend enough years navigating this city and even an atheist may begin to believe that a higher power is working overtime to keep millions safe despite the failures of those entrusted with doing so.

A City Of Contradictions

Mumbai proudly calls itself the Maximum City. It has undoubtedly maximised enterprise, wealth, ambition and opportunity. Yet, beneath that glittering identity, it has become a Chalta-Hai City, where civic decay is tolerated, official indifference is normalised, and accountability arrives only after lives have been lost.

Walk through almost any suburb and the contradiction is impossible to ignore. The roads were laid many decades ago when the city’s movement probably depended largely on bicycles, bullock carts and the occasional motorcar. Today, those same lanes are expected to accommodate high-rise residential towers, school buses, ambulances, fire engines, delivery vehicles........

© Free Press Journal