I visited Mumbai in April and thought that I’d share some observations with you. On my first morning, it was 35 degrees centigrade, and with the rainy season approaching, the air was thick and felt ready to burst. A smoggy haze hung over the city, suffocating me as I sat in endless traffic jams or queued behind red lights.

Mumbai is constantly changing and Aasim, my driver and part-time guide, was quick to point out the new developments: a high rise set of apartment buildings; a half-constructed overpass; a new addition to the already cramped skyline.

Unlike my taxi, Mumbai is a town on the move. It is one of the fastest growing cities on the planet, having grown from 10 million people in 1991 to 18 million. The McKinsey Global Institute Report forecasts the population to reach a massive 33 million by 2030, approximately four times that of Greater London today.

Urban Infrastructure Poses A Challenge, To Say The Least

Traffic congestion is just one of the problems caused by its over-expansion. The city is clogged with people of all walks of life, many of them flooding in from the countryside all over India as the country undergoes a quick and chaotic process of urbanisation. Aasim is one of these migrants. He is aged 30 with a wife and young child and has come from a village in the state of Orissa (North East India) to Mumbai. He plans to work for a few years, earn good money, and then return with ‘enough for everything we need’. Aasim does not want to stay in Mumbai any longer than he has to. Life expectancy of Mumbaikers is low, he tells me; just 57 – around seven years lower than that of other Indians. The pollution takes its toll. Ranked among the 10 most polluted cities in the world, a day walking around the city is said to inflict the same damage as smoking two and a half packets of cigarettes (although how this is calculated I have no idea!). Ten per cent of people in the most polluted areas suffer from asthma.

The pavements are just as chaotic as the roads, with street hawkers selling juice and cigarettes, families camped out on pavements, people rushing by, others lingering; there seems to be too many people with too little space. One vendor was selling an array of books, magazines and newspapers. A headline in India’s main financial daily screams ‘Congested Mumbai to choke further’ and highlights the city’s ‘overstretched’ water supply and transportation services. That the infrastructure requires development and money has not gone unnoticed or ignored: the Indian government recently promised US$500 billion over the next few years. There are opportunities aplenty for developers and construction and engineering firms. My trip from the airport to hotel the previous evening took me over a new eight-lane bridge which has reduced time from the town’s upmaket Bandra district to Worli from 40 to just seven minutes. A new monorail network is due to open in 2011.

A Walk Through Dharavi

Despite the government’s efforts, however, for the moment Mumbai is still chaotic. And yet, in a strange, haphazard way, it works. Everywhere there are signs of industry, entrepreneurship and growth. Aasim drove me into the town’s sprawling slum, Dharavi, home to one million people and famed for its depiction in Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire. Aasim pointed out a shop front, laden with empty water bottles and spilling with bags of neat strips of plastic. This is a bottle recycling store, he told me. People take in used containers in exchange for a rupee (about one and a half pence). Everywhere I stepped there were clay pots baking in the sun, ready for sale in the city’s markets. Down the narrow alleys, there were men producing everything from fabrics and clothes to metals and oil. Dharavi is home to an estimated 15,000 single-room factories, each no more than a few square feet in size.

This is a billion dollar economy, my guide told me. It’s a big sum, though it equates to little over £700 per person a year. For all its endeavours, Dharavi is desperately poor. Conditions, though improving, are still a far, far cry from the terraced apartment blocks of the city’s richer districts barely a kilometre down the road. There is just one toilet per 15,000 residents, no public hospital, and only a handful of municipal schools. Furthermore, open sewers filled with human and industrial waste leave residents prone to a cocktail of diseases including cholera, typhoid, and malaria.

Things are changing. The city’s authorities, embarrassed into action by the publicity from the 2008 Oscar winner, have hatched plans to relocate some 57,000 families to a 30 million square foot new development across the city. Out of sight; out of mind. The 40% of Mumbai’s residents estimated to be living in unofficial housing highlight the scale of India’s urban poverty, interfering with the nation’s image as a modern, growing economy: a BRIC nation ready to assert itself on the global stage. The slum’s population have been opponents of the scheme, however, preferring to remain in their homes, free from government interference and bureaucracy.

Winners And Losers

En route home, Aasim took me via the smart Breach Candy area and Altamount Road where Mukesh Ambani is building his billion-dollar skyscraper home. Ambani, one of the richest men in the world having inherited Reliance, India’s largest private company, is harnessing the combined flashiness of all of Bollywood in the 27-storey home that will boast 400,000 square feet of living area, six floors of parking space, and three helicopter pads.

Ambani is one of the winners from India’s growth story. With forecast GDP growth of around 8% in 2010, India battled through the economic downturn relatively unscathed. Yet, rapid growth comes at a cost. With inflation currently running at around 10% y-o-y and food price inflation soaring above 20% after recent droughts, the Reserve Bank of India has unleashed a series of money tightening measures since January to cool fears that the economy is overheating. Most recently, the Reverse Repo Rate was raised to 3.75% with banks required to hold more cash in reserve. Further action is expected at the July monetary policy meeting.

Returning towards South Mumbai, back to the Gateway of India, the landing place for British governors and other distinguished personages in a bygone era, my attention was caught by yet more street vendors.

From a scruffy man sitting with charcoal burning at his side I bought some roasted peanuts, served in used fax paper. I asked him where it’s good to get a drink. He wobbled his head, beamed at me, and pointed across the road to the five-star Taj Palace Hotel and says, ‘It’s very good there’.