ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the idea of Mumbai as a world-class city, what it means and how it was conceived. It discusses the various trajectories of participation that exist and have been brought in by legal and other transformations that are underway. The chapter argues that when people talk about participation, people refer to the participation of citizens, and interrogates this idea of citizens and citizenship and what it encompasses. In Mumbai more than 60 per cent of the population resides in slums occupying just 6 per cent of the total land. One of the focus areas of the report was to reduce the slum population to 10 per cent by 2011. Infrastructure was another major focus area of the report which conjured up the imaginary of a world-class city, similar to Shanghai, London or New York.
