How the unfinished city of Lavasa became a nightmare for Indian banks

The Lavasa civic body is privately managed so residents have little access to its functioning or fund management

This onetime hilltop paradise is becoming for some a hell on earth.
 

The days of zero crime are over. Garbage collection is sporadic, so litter soils the man-made lake. Storefronts are vacant. Signs of neglect are everywhere: maintenance is late or nonexistent. And that’s for the construction already done. For the unfinished building works—i.e. most of it—there is little happening.
 

Two decades ago, then-billionaire Ajit Gulabchand envisioned something very different: a city called Lavasa modelled on the cotton-candy harbour of Italy’s Portofino, a four-hour drive from the slums and pollution that pervade so much of India’s financial capital of Mumbai.