City Which Could Dare To Be Great

It is not simply that it is much easier to get things done there, that the work ethic is stronger, that entrepreneurs are more enterprising and less fettered by venal bureaucracy. Much more than all this, Mumbai has real human warmth as a city. There is something about the light in Mumbai, especially in the early evening, which makes it genuinely beautiful. True, it is not blessed with too many green places. But the streets are full of people calmly going about their business with a comfortable feeling of belonging.

A city like Mumbai naturally contains the full panoply of existence, from the meanest to the most luxurious. It has suffered the tragedies of communal rioting, of victimisation of the disadvantaged, of homelessness, terrorist violence and gangland murders. As in many places in India, normal life is precarious, subject to daily disruption. Still, its citizens not only possess more humour and joie de vivre than those of other places, but also a more common-sense, straightforward approach to both work and play.

 

Mumbai could take its place among the truly great cities of the world, like New York, Hong Kong or London. New York attracts the fierce devotion of its inhabitants in spite of its dangers, its high stress levels and their perpetual jumpiness. It has the same fellow-feeling in the face of adversity, the same chasm between rich and poor. Hong Kong's citizens may be more skittish because of its transfer of sovereignty, but they have built an astonishingly affluent and ever-developing city from small beginnings. The odds seem to be on Hong Kong's prosperity and pride enduring this year's arms-length takeover by Beijing.

To rank with them, Mumbai would have to attract a huge amount of investment over and above what has been poured into its real estate. It needs tunnels or waterside highways, as in Hong Kong. It needs a vastly improved train system so that commuters do not have to spend so many hours getting to work and home again. It needs to expand across the water, with the appropriate means of transportation provided. Already a huge place in terms of population, it needs to budget for the even greater numbers which would be attracted by its development. This almost certainly means additional sales of government land.

In fact, foreign investors say that Maharashtra has declined in relative attractiveness, in large part due to the problems faced by the Enron power project. Tamil Nadu and Gujarat are the hot places these days. This only emphasises the new competitiveness of India and its increasing diversity as a result of a lighter hand from Delhi