Mumbai LEDC Presentation

Mumbai Script
History of Mumbai
To understand the urban developments that have occurred within Mumbai we must first look briefly at the history of the City. Mumbai was originally made up of just a small amount of fishing villages. This was until 1662 when it colonised by the British as part of their expansion of the empire. As a result of this, Mumbai became a port used by Europeans due to it being the closest proximity to the subcontinent. This increase in activity led to a subsequent jump in the amount of the trade around Mumbai and thus the area became majorly industrialized. The British pulled out of Mumbai following the war due to an inability to be able to afford to keep running the city. They left it with vastly improved banking and insurance as well as other trades which were taking off. However over the last 100 years this advance in industries has led to a increase in population to 18.4 million, bringing with it the issue of overcrowding and subsequently a large amount of poverty.
Positive outcomes of growth
Mumbai has now become the financial centre of India, with its GDP growing at a phenomenal rate. The result of this is that in 2005, Mumbai was ranked 37th in the world for highest GDP of a city at approximately $126 billion, a vast amount considering this is a lesser economically developed country. This financial can be seen in the fact that Mumbai alone contributes a total of 6.16% of GDP for India. This makes Mumbai one of the highest GDP contributing cities in the world in terms of how much it contributes to its country. To represent this huge amount of GDP we can look at the income per capita which is 3 times more than the national average, at $7,900. Further to this, the education within has been vastly improved. There has been more education for students provided as is seen with the 10+2+3/4 plan in which students are put into 10 years of schooling before enlisting in college for two years. At college they will choose to study one of three streams of options, these are science, commerce or arts. From this they will then either take a degree in their chosen field or move onto to take a professional degree in something such as law. This has introduced a huge amount of stability within Mumbai and also educates people for the future ergo ensuring their employment prospects are as fruitful as possible.
Negative Outcomes
The increase in overcrowding has led to the creation of mass slums such as Dharavi on the outskirts of the city. These slums are built upon privately owned land and therefore are often destroyed by the owners of the land in order to put new developments on the ground. This overcrowding has led to 54% of the population of Mumbai living within slums with another 30% living in chawls as well as on footpaths. This leaves only around 16% of people leaving in apartments in Mumbai. In addition to this, pollution is a major problem within as can be seen with the figures on the powerpoint. In addition to this, a major wealth gap has opened up in recent times. This is due to the super rich's wealth shooting up, the poor have remained in much the same economic state. The number of billionaires within Mumbai have increased by 44 people from the two back in 1999. This has led to the GDP contribution of billionaires going from 1% to 12%. This wealth gap can also be seen in terms of the average person in Mumbai living on less then two dollars a day. Some of the richest people in Mumbai will earn over 100 times that a minute.
Solutions
In terms of the Dharavi slum, a stratgery of redeveloping the slum has been proposed by a private firm. Whilst this would bring more employment prospects to the area, it would mean that the firm would have to create alternative housing for those who have to be resettled. This rehousing scheme is currently 40km from the city centre and thus doesn’t appear a viable solution to the situation. With all of this also comes the responsibility of creating an improved infrastructure as well as the education system for these slum dwellers. As we can see from the presentation this has both positive and negatives (Read from the slide).
In terms of pollution, there is yet to be a single govt. scheme introduced to try and combat this major issue that is only increasing. As a result many private companies are trying to reduce their pollution through new ventilation systems in houses and cars as well as free services on cars to keep them running as cleanly as possible. Having said this, there are no incentives for Mumbai resident to take on board these initiatives and thus they have had no real influence on pollution as of yet.