On the world's Internet, Indians often like to compare their country's largest city, Mumbai, and China's largest city, Shanghai.
At the Indian forum, Indian netizens are also very keen to discuss the similarities and differences between the two major cities, estimating the time it will take Mumbai to catch up with Shanghai.
In fact, not only netizens, but also the Indian government often regards "Mumbai to catch up with Shanghai" as an important goal, and as early as 2005, it was ambitiously planning to replace Shanghai as Asia's financial center.
For example, former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made a bold statement in 2005: "Mumbai will change dramatically in a few years, and people will forget about Shanghai and only talk about Mumbai." ”
But as a Chinese, this is a bit inexplicable, because Shanghai has long been an internationally renowned metropolis, but now when it comes to Mumbai in India, if there is no map, I am afraid that nine out of ten Chinese do not know where it is.
So what does this Indian city actually look like?
Origin of "Mumbai"
Located in the middle of India's west coast, Mumbai is the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra, and the entire Mumbai metropolitan area has a population of over 25 million, ranking fourth in the world.
However, many people do not know that most of the area of Mumbai, which is now crowded, was still submerged in the sea two hundred years ago.
The original Mumbai was actually seven islands not far from the mainland, which had the fire of civilization very early under the influence of ancient Indian civilization.
Because of its position in the middle of the west coast, Mumbai has always been an important transit point for trade travel, and in 250 BC, ancient Greeks came here and took a name called "Hai Bo Da Ehia", which means "seven islands".
By the Age of Discovery, Mumbai was coveted by Western colonists for its outstanding location and was occupied by the Portuguese in 1534.
More than a hundred years later, because the Portuguese princess married the British king, the seven islands of Mumbai were given to the British as a dowry, thus entering a long period of British rule.
At this time, Britain was slowly moving towards a colonial power, so it attached great importance to the construction of colonies. As the first British port into South Asia, Mumbai received particularly good income, and later the headquarters of the famous East India Company was located in Mumbai.
The colonization of Mumbai began to grow rapidly, growing 5 times in 10 years, and the population continued to grow, gradually approaching the upper limit of the seven islands, so the British company began a large-scale land reclamation project in the early 19th century.
It took nearly 30 years to finally fill in seven islands, and the prototype of modern Mumbai was born.
Later, because of the opening of the Suez Canal, Mumbai's economy became even more prosperous, becoming the unquestionable central city of the entire west coast of South Asia, and in 1906, the population of Mumbai exceeded 1 million, which exceeded that of beijing at the same time and approached Shanghai.
Crowded metropolis
In the middle of the 20th century, India gained independence, although there was no Investment from the British, but Mumbai remained India's most important port and industrial area with the advantages accumulated by historical development.
Mumbai covers less than one-thousandth of India, but contributes 10% of the workers' jobs, 40% of the income tax and 60% of the tariffs, Mumbai also has a stock exchange, and the headquarters of various companies are mostly located in Mumbai.
In addition to economically outpacing other cities, Mumbai is also the cultural hub of India.
Chinese familiar Bollywood film factory is in Mumbai, where 600 to 800 films are shot every year, and most of India's major television and satellite networks, as well as major publishing houses, are headquartered in Mumbai.
These corporate investments have also made parts of Mumbai as tall as Shanghai, full of modern elements, and very cosmopolitan shelves.
In addition to these public facilities, the mansions built by the rich in Mumbai are also eye-opening.
For example, India's richest man, Mukesh Ambani, built a 173-meter, 27-storey mansion for himself in the center of Mumbai.
The building, called "Antira", took seven years to build, cost $1 billion, and once surpassed the Palace of Falsay, it suddenly became the largest and most expensive private residence in the world.
The building has a helipad, swimming pool, cinema, parking and has become a Mumbai landmark because of its exaggerated shape.
However, under the scene of the Mumbai metropolis dotted with Antira's buildings, what really belongs to ordinary residents is a large area of backward and dilapidated infrastructure and a large pile of "urban diseases".
As Menon, ceo of India's National Information Institute, put it: "[Officials] don't just look at Shanghai's high-rise buildings, but think about Shanghai's well-developed infrastructure." Only glass curtain walls, cement jungle, will not bring people a sense of happiness, must add good drinking water, electricity, residential housing, parking lots and so on. ”
So how bad is Mumbai's infrastructure?
We all know that modern cities are densely populated, so we must first consider the problem of hygiene, this "underground work" is not done well, and the buildings on the ground are magnificent.
In Mumbai, a person produces half a kilogram of garbage a day, and the entire city generates 4,000 tons of combustible garbage per day, and 5,000 tons of non-combustible garbage, which together is nearly 10,000 tons.
However, there are only 4 garbage disposal sites in Mumbai, which at most handle 6,000 tons of garbage, which cannot meet the daily garbage disposal needs, and finally leads to garbage all over the city, or dumping the ocean at will.
And Mumbai's sewage is as inexhaustible as garbage.
Mumbai's underground pipelines and sewage treatment plants have a very long history of construction, dating back to the beginning of the 20th century.
But then because the population swelled too fast, it has not been able to keep up with the actual demand level, and it has been an overburdened situation, which has led to most of the sewage being discharged directly into the sea without any treatment.
And Mumbai's problems are far more than that, other big cities don't have problems, other cities have problems it has more serious.
For example, in China's metropolis, many office workers are troubled by the long commute time, and in Mumbai, the traffic problem is even more complicated. In Shanghai, people only worry about traffic jams on the roads, while on the roads in Mumbai, there are people and houses.
This is because Mumbai has a huge gap between rich and poor, many poor people have no place to live at all, they have to go to sleep in public facilities such as buses, trains or parks at night, and many people do not care about noise and risk, and build simple houses very close to roads and railways.
This has led to a deteriorating environment in Mumbai, with many streets crowded and large slums growing wildly along traffic routes. If the road on both sides is crowded, then the car can only run at a turtle speed on such a narrow road, and the efficiency will be greatly reduced.
Mumbai's road construction is still seriously lagging behind, with only one north-south traffic artery in the city that connects the commercial center in the south with the airport in the north.
In addition, because the road is suffering from overloading, most of the roads are rough and potholed, and during the rainy season, they become countless puddles of large and small sizes.
Not to mention that there are all kinds of tricycles, motorcycles, and battery cars pouring into the road, making Mumbai's roads extremely congested.
The highway is like this, and the rail transit is not much better.
Even though rail transport has always been the most important mode of transportation in India, many tracks have fallen into disrepair due to insufficient investment, and the models are old and slow.
At the same time, because the daily frequency is small and there are many passengers, Indians do not have time to wait for the next "few people" when taking the intercity train, as long as the train arrives at the station, it is to climb to the roof of the train.
This directly led to the bombay train passengers, according to Indian scholars, during peak hours, the bombay train has reached more than double the maximum passenger capacity allowed by the design, known as the "super dense squeeze load".
How many people can there be? The one-square-meter floor of the carriage, the size of an ordinary dining table, can actually stand 14 to 16 passengers! And the whole train can stuff 4500 people!
For comparison, we can see that Chinese trains exceed 9 people per square meter, even if they are seriously overloaded, while a subway in first-tier cities is not at most 2,000 people at most during the peak period, and Mumbai trains are far beyond the imagination of Chinese in this regard.
And so many passengers are not all in the carriage, many people are hung outside the carriage, or sitting on the roof of the carriage, we joked about the Indian "hanging ticket" does reflect the actual situation of Mumbai trains.
But this way of riding is very dangerous, although Mumbai trains are not fast, but the roof is not fenced or seat belts, every turn or acceleration and deceleration will bring great risks, so in Mumbai, every year hundreds of people fall off the carriage and lose their lives.
There are no millionaires in the slums
Slumdog Millionaire is a famous Indian film that has won 8 Academy Awards, and the male protagonist of the film, Jamal, was born in the slums of Mumbai.
However, the movie is ultimately fictional, and the real slum dwellers do not have the opportunity and luck of Jamal, and most of them are just crammed into a tattered and dirty environment like ants, struggling to eat a mouthful of food.
In Mumbai, 60% of people live in slums, and one of the giant slums called Dharavi has a population of 3 million, which is also the largest slum in Asia.
There are objective reasons for the formation of slums, first of all, Mumbai's economy is relatively developed, attracting all of India's population to migrate to Mumbai.
However, the rapidly growing population has caused a shortage of urban housing, coupled with the hype of international companies, and the price of land and houses in Mumbai has been rising.
In 2006, Mumbai's house prices were the second highest in the world after London, and a 70-square-meter commercial apartment house sold for 500,000 to 1 million US dollars, far exceeding the purchasing power of most Indians.
What's more, even if the poor give up buying a house, high house prices will still affect people's lives.
Because house prices will drive up raw materials, which in turn will affect the entire market, push up inflation, and the result is that the cost of living in Mumbai is also very high.
In such a situation, Indians have to do their best just to fill their stomachs, and naturally they can no longer afford a comfortable, safe and hygienic living environment, and can only choose a slum with near zero cost.
Because slums cannot provide tax revenue, the status of residents is low, and they lack political power, the government has no interest in the construction of supporting facilities in slums.
This makes Mumbai's slums feel like they are in two very different worlds compared to those of the palatial commercial centers. In Mumbai's slums, an average of 1,300 people own a bus, 1 million people own 17 public toilets, and nearly half of the residents use public water pipes.
As mentioned earlier, six adults live in slums in Mumbai, but the slums are only 7% of Mumbai's, which makes the living environment even worse. In slums, more than 90% of people are crammed into houses under 20 square meters, and more than 40% have only houses under 10 square meters.
Slums are also constantly threatened by a lack of sanitation, water and electricity, a mess of circuits and widespread wooden buildings that make fires frequent.
In the rainy season, because the slums are mostly built in low-lying or tidal areas, they often suffer from floods, and when it rains or a high tide, the half-cut slums will be flooded.
Sympathetically, no matter how much fire or flood destroys slums again and again, after a while, the same rudimentary wooden-plated tin houses will be built in situ.
It's not because Indians forget the threat of fire and water, but because they have nowhere else to go.
The capital of violence
On the night of November 26, 2008, a group of masked terrorists stormed Mumbai's busiest railway station, Shivaji, armed with AK-47s and indiscriminately strafing the population present, while throwing grenades to create an explosion.
Dozens of people were killed on the spot, more people cried and screamed and fled in all directions, and the smell of blood and gunpowder filled the air, and this was not the end.
The attacks on the train station were accompanied by multiple teams of terrorists attacking 12 different locations in Mumbai, mostly Mumbai's landmarks and tourist attractions.
Two five-star hotels, the Mumbai Southern District Police Headquarters and the Karma Hospital were attacked indiscriminately by assault rifles and grenades, during which 50 Westerners were taken hostage.
Finally, under the action of the Indian military police, the incident ended after 3 days, and the entire terrorist attack killed at least 164 people and injured 308 people.
This is not the first time in Mumbai that such a terrorist attack has shocked the world, and almost every once in a while, similar incidents occur in Mumbai, causing thousands of casualties in a decade.
There are many reasons why Mumbai has suffered frequent terrorist attacks, the first of which is its significance as an international city, so terrorists believe that it will have a greater impact on its actions here.
In addition, Mumbai faces the Indian Ocean, is very close to the Middle East, and the poor coast guard system is full of loopholes, often making people take advantage of loopholes to go ashore without realizing it. After entering the city, the extremely crowded and chaotic environment has become an excellent shelter for terrorists to hide their movements.
And terrorist attacks are not the whole of Mumbai's violent haze, and all kinds of violent crimes are already part of Mumbai's daily life.
According to Mumbai police statistics, in 2018 alone, there were 1459 rape cases in Mumbai, more than a third of which involved underage women, and if the low status of Indian women is taken into account, many people are ashamed to call the police, the actual number will undoubtedly be higher.
In addition, because of the huge gap between the rich and the poor and the poor social order, all kinds of cases of theft, robbery, extortion, murder and other cases have emerged one after another, and violent groups of the underworld nature have almost established a stable symbiotic relationship with the government.
In Mumbai, the history of the underworld is almost as long as the modern history of Mumbai, because Mumbai is a big international port, trade activities are booming, so it has become a holy place for smuggling and drug trafficking, and the development of gangsters is very rapid, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in losses to Indian customs every year.
At the same time, because Mumbai's ordinary jobs are paid very low, many poor people are easily attracted by the rich remuneration of gangsters in order to make money, and are willing to be human "mules" to transport drugs. Some poor Indians can even participate in murder for just $60.
In addition to the participation of the poor, the Mumbai gangs are also very closely related to those in power.
This is because many public offices require elections, but campaigns require money and manpower, both of which are also quite abundant.
As a result, the gangs provide money to their favorite candidates to advertise and publicize the situation, and on the other hand, they send thugs to make trouble with competitors, or directly threaten voters to vote.
Mumbai gangs sometimes even send their own people to participate in elections, which makes it often possible for candidates to be exposed to criminal records in Mumbai's local elections.
In addition to supporting politicians, Mumbai gangsters will also use bribery to get through the police, originally the Indian police are asking for bribes, as long as they enter the police station, whether the defendant or the plaintiff will be slaughtered.
As little as a few pieces, as many as a few hundred, and the Indian police ask for dollars. This corrupt atmosphere makes Mumbai people dare to be angry, but it is a good thing for the gangsters.
Through this kind of up-down relationship, the gang makes the organization entangled and growing, and the dark tentacles can reach every dark corner of the city. Many poor people in Mumbai encounter conflicts, not to the government to seek a solution, but to the local gangs to see if there is a way.
On the whole, the gap between Mumbai and Shanghai cannot be measured by "how many years", because Mumbai's transportation, slums, gap between rich and poor, violent crime and many other problems cannot be solved by building more subways and building more public rental housing.
These problems are intertwined and intertwined, and because Mumbai is still expanding, the difficulty and cost of governance are rising, and even if the whole country wants to eliminate these problems, I don't know how much time it will take.
And for Mumbai, perhaps the biggest obstacle is not the difficulties that occur objectively, but the mentality of people who do not care.
As Indian scholars themselves have lamented: Blindness to the harsh surroundings is the most frustrating part of Indian culture and politics.
When everyone smokes, spits, or throws garbage out of the window at will in crowded spaces, their interest in rich and poor, educational injustice, and urban construction will no longer exist.
How to reverse this insensitive and indifferent attitude of the people is probably the primary problem to be solved in Mumbai and even in India as a whole.
Resources
CNKI; Shanghai and Mumbai; Luqiu Luwei; Shang Weekly; 2009(03);