https://countercurrents.org/2022/03/what-kind-of-swachh-bharat-and-modernisation-are-we-creating/
Mumbai is now becoming dirty and ugly because of the rich. Formerly slum dwellers were made the scapegoat. But increasingly it is now clear that the rich are responsible for the mess and they too are realising this.
Look at any average street, the margins are littered with dust laden, abandoned dirty motor cars. The police and the municipal corporation have no clue to what to do with them. They have the powers to auction them but they just do not want to act.
The glass and cement structures are monotonous, prosaic, drab and the whole purpose of living in a modern city is being defeated. They present a dull façade, all that you see at the entrance are blank walls behind which there are car parking areas. You have to struggle to find human beings here in the building. There can be no community life on such a street, only utter sense of alienation.
In Mumbai people displaced from their dwellings and their land taken away for infrastructure are being housed in high rises where the poor find it very difficult to pay maintenance. So the lifts go out of order and life becomes difficult, they also are now far away from their source of livelihood.
By Vidyadhar Date
12/03/2022