Slums

All along the rails. Next to the sidewalks. Contiguous to the Airport. On the sea-face. Near posh societies. Mumbai is dotted with slums, so much so that while landing when you looked down, for a second, you thought the pilot has got you to some place else. Come on, don't you know 65% of the Mumbai's population stays in slums. Most of these slums are illegal and the slum-dwellers guilty of law-breaking.

How did they manage? Easy. They came, they saw and they settled down. How convenient! All they did was put asbestos roofs over some wooden planks which they flicked from some construction site. And they have a place in South Mumbai while a typical Mumbaikar travels 100 kms a day in sub-human locals just because he can't afford to stay in South Mumbai.

No wonder then... Looking outside the locals is avoidable. There’s perennial traffic congestion – for roads can't be widened. Runway expansion work can’t take off – as land clearing is a sticky issue. Real estate gets lower valuations (actually this one isn't as bad!) And all this because of these illegal colonies. Because of people who shouldn't be there at the first place.

But come to think of it... At some point of time - Partition, Mughal Invasion, before Civilization - someone did exactly the same thing. He came, he saw, he settled down. Because when God created Earth, He forgot to leave a copy of the land records* with the registrar office.

This raises a very fundamental question - Can anyone own Land more than he/ she can own the Air or the Sky?

Or look at it this way. Just because we were born to well-off parents and they were not, doesn't mean that we will even deny them a quarter-decent place to live! These incongruities need to go. And we just can't leave it to the market forces…

No, I ain’t saying they are right;
But neither are we.
They are illegal;
But we are unfair.
Which one is worse,
You decide.

* To make up for that, Government decided to play God and carried out land reforms in the 1950s, which in essence were land scams.