Mumbai: Aftertaste

In the most conspicuous sign yet of India's unprecedented prosperity, the country's richest man, Mukesh Ambani, is building a new home in the financial hub of Mumbai: a 60-storey palace with helipad, health club and six floors of car parking. The building, named Antilla after a mythical island, will have a total floor area greater than Versailles and be home for Mr Ambani, his mother, wife, three children and 600 full-time staff.

Draped in hanging gardens, the building will have a floor for a home theatre, a glass-fronted apartment for guests, and a two-storey health club. As the ceilings are three times as high as a normal building's, the 173m tower will only have 27 floors. With property prices rocketing, the building is already worth more than £500m. It is expected to ready for the Ambanis to move in next year. The family currently live in a 14-storey building, Sea Wind. Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Group is India's largest private company, with interests in oil, retail and biotechnology. The 50-year-old became the country's first rupee trillionaire this week, taking his net worth to £14bn.

Urban planners say Mr Mukesh's home is part of a global rush for tall buildings that has seen skyscrapers spring up in Dubai, Shanghai and Seoul. In India, planning rules and a historic antipathy to unrestrained materialism has meant that this race to touch the sky has largely bypassed the cities, which are more notable for their shanty towns and dilapidated housing stock. But experts say the next wave of skyscraper proposals could come in India. (source: India's richest man builds 60-storey home, Thursday May 31, 2007, The Guardian, UK)

During my visit in Mumbai, at the entrance of a newly renovated shopping mall, a teenager was wearing a T-shirt with swastika sign. I asked him if he knows what that symbol means. He replied ‘yes, Hitler; we have democracy in India so I can do whatever I want’.

This is Mumbai today. Well-off citizens disrespect and abuse democracy. And Mumbai is a city that allows this to happen.