Mumbai woes overflowing, promises haven’t been kept
Arecent Mercer Global survey has shown that Mumbai, India’s financial capital, is one of the more expensive cities in the world for expatriates and the most expensive in the country. This is principally because the city is a combination of seven islands. The combined island of 603.4sqkm for a population of 22 million is small, therefore housing is very expensive. Secondly transport infrastructures is archaic and has not developed in line with the growing needs of the city. The suburban rail network transports 7.5 million passengers daily, which is about the size of the population of many countries. The Metro rail project has not commenced and is entangled in technical snags and bureaucratic bungling. Thirdly, slums are all pervading, 50 per cent of the population of the city lives in them, occupying vast tracts of land.
The government has to decongest Mumbai city and develop it simultaneously. No more office or residential building should be permitted within the city. A new city has to come up between Mumbai and Pune town. All further construction should be on this new stretch of land. If the local government is unable to manage this project, it should hand it over to the Tata Group, which has done a fantastic job with Jamshedpur (Tatanagar) as a planned city.
Prime Minister Modi had promised 100 new cities in India in 2014. So I voted for him. However, even the locations or the blueprints of the 100 cities have yet to see the light of the day. I am disillusioned.
My advice to new expatriates to Mumbai, is to ensure that the remuneration packages are in line with the cost of living and to build a inflation factor of 10 to 12 per cent per annum at the retail level. Moreover, expatriates should ensure that educational and medical costs for the family are met by the company, for they too keep rising every year. Mumbai is on the way to becoming a hardship posting for expatriates due to the declining quality of air. Hence expatriates should seek extra allowances for postings in the city.