by Aldo Grasso
About 60% of Mumbai’s population lives in slums and the southern part of this 22 million megacity could soon be inundated by the sea
Could the present of a megalopolis like Mumbai, which currently seems far and off our radar, become our near future? Let’s not hope it would be a disaster. The images of Human beings – The specter of Mumbai on our future, the documentary series by Pablo Trincia and Riccardo Spagnoli, produced for Sky TG24 by Chora Media, are chilling. Not just because the southern part of this megalopolis of 22 million people could be inundated by the sea as early as 2050, but because Mumbai is now surrounded by a sprawling slum, a landfill the size of Central Park and choked with carbon emissions the docs are like a countdown : How much time do we have until we end up like Mumbai?
My last memories of Mumbai, the old Bombay, are the images from the film “Slumdog Millionaire” by English director Danny Boyle: Jamal Malik, a very poor orphan from the city of Mumbai, tries his luck in the TV quiz show “Who wants to be a millionaire?” . The city wasn’t well done, but perhaps the film’s fairy tale sweetened everything. The reality is different: about 60% of Mumbai’s population lives in the slums, which number over a thousand if you look at the entire metropolitan area. Slums are dilapidated buildings that are easily damaged by atmospheric phenomena, housing is inadequate (Trincia enters shacks that house up to ten people), access to drinking water and sanitation is almost impossible, there are no sewers and toilets are located himself outdoors . Not to mention the transport. Trincia tries to get on one of those trains that run with open doors, they’re so overloaded: in fact, city trains carry about six million people a day and are three times the weight they were built to carry. Mumbai coming?
December 7, 2022 (change December 7, 2022 | 8:19 p.m.)
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