Our watchman Munna reports to work at 5 am sharp, two hours before duty. It’s not a conscientious habit, merely a practical one, which spares him the wait in the toilet queue back ‘home’: 150 sq in a city slum that houses his family for a monthly rental of Rs 1,500, exactly half Munna’s salary.

Unfair? Well, tough. After all, there are 7.5 million like our watchman in Mumbai, people who don’t deserve our pity. They squat on public land, filch water and power from us bona fide, tax-paying citizens, and turn our city into a sewer. If Mumbai even hopes to become like Shanghai — ah, that embodiment of civic splendour! — we need to get rid of them. Quick.

There’s just one niggling problem. The figure 7.5 million constitutes more than half this city’s vote bank, not something politicians can afford to sniff at. Save or withdraw, that’s a tricky question for any visionary government.

Fortunately, a Robinhoodesque little plan miraculously promises to do both. The plot: hand over all slums to Mumbai’s brave, brash builders who will construct forty lakh 225 sq ft tenements in low-cost high-rises, free of charge for every slum family. In return, they will be ‘gifted’ an equal amount of the surplus floor space for lucrative commercial development. Meanwhile, the government gets to do what it does best: turn a social responsibility (building low cost housing) into a money spinner (real estate).

But in a city where a square foot of land is figuratively worth its weight in gold, it is also expected to generate 33 lakh crore worth of business — about thirty times the budget for the Mumbai Makeover. So no wonder the state government has stepped in to, uh, help.

... contd.