Insightful exposé

Maximum City by Suketu Mehta; Penguin Group; Price: Rs.395; 584 pp Although it debuted almost two years ago in India, this magnum opus penned by New York-based writer-journalist Suketu Mehta over a period of three years during which he relocated to the city of his youth, is still being discussed in the drawing rooms and social circuits of the chattering classes in Bombay, aka Mumbai, India’s richest city and its financial capital. Like the fiction bestsellerShantaram published in 2003 (reviewed on this page — EW February 2006) which it resonates in terms of content, Maximum City exposes the slimy underbelly of this resilient megalopolis which following open, continuous and uninterrupted loot, rape and plunder by its incorrigibly crooked politicians, mafia dons and amoral businessmen, is in a state of imminent collapse. For sheer diversity, population pressure and socio-economic iniquity, contemporary Mumbai is sui generis. Yet despite its mind-boggling civic management and infrastructure problems, variety and innovation continue to thrive in this city of gold which offers greater upward mobility than any other habitat in India. This is perhaps why over 300 citizens from the farthest corners of the country migrate to it every day. This is perhaps also why Mumbai attracts the attention of myriad social scientists, writers and civic biographers. But what distinguishes Maximum City is the insights and interpretations of a nostalgic prodigal son, who has modestly prospered in the Indian diaspora. With the benefit of historical memory and perspectives of several other cities worldwide, he is the rare insider and outsider who provides deep insights into the precipitous decline of this once charming city transformed into the world’s most competitive megalopolis in which acquisition of every ordinary convenience — residential space, water, electricity, transport, school admissions, cooking gas etc — is a primeval fangs-and-claw struggle. If ever there was a classic illustration of the high price that ill-considered, irresponsible policy formulation extracts from civic society, it is provided by contemporary Mumbai. Mehta is perhaps the first writer to highlight the critical linkage between the passage of the Bombay Rents, Hotel Rates and Lodging House Rates Control Act, 1947, popularly known as the Rent Act which froze all rents payable on housing at then prevailing rates, and the dire straits in which the city is mired today. Reaffirmed in 1948, the Rent Act compounds its original sin by permitting subordinate courts to determine ‘standard rent’ — routinely assessed at 6 percent return on outdated, standard costs of construction — payable by all occupants of dwelling units in the city. In effect this ill-conceived populist legislation which in 1971 was specifically enlarged to cover ‘licencees’ has driven all rented property off the market. The consequence is that half a century later, even as 400,000 flats in the city remain under lock and key (because their owners are afraid of standard rent fixation), 60 percent of the city’s population resides in squalid slums lacking the barest amenities of civilized existence. Indeed Mumbai is perhaps the only major city worldwide in which even highly paid business executives commute to work from…