A CITY IN CRISIS

Mumbai has India’s largest number of coronavirus cases. What will it take to get the country’s economic capital back on its feet?

- KIRAN D. TARE with M.G. Arun

Suryakant Jadhav, 49, who works in a hardware shop, cannot hold back tears as he talks about the pall of fear hanging over Jijamata Nagar, a poor neighbourhood in South Mumbai’s Worli. Two of Jadhav’s neighbours have died of COVID-19. “They were being treated but did not survive,” he says.

The 68,400 square metre neighbourhood is a patchwork weave of 4,500 single-storey houses. Before the pandemic struck, residents had been offered the hope of prosperity—two influential developers wanted to develop the settlement. Residents were told their homes, some as small as 10x12 feet, could fetch up to Rs 70 lakh. That’s enough to buy a 600 square foot flat in suburbs like Malad. In the past few weeks, however, those dreams have evaporated. Jijamata Nagar is a COVID-19 hotspot, a containment zone that has been sealed off. The locality is part of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC’s) ‘G-South’ ward, which includes Jijamata Nagar, Worli Koliwada and BDD chawl. Over 1,000 COVID-19 cases have been reported from this area, as have more than 50 deaths. This pandemic hotspot sits in the middle of India’s business capital, where gleaming skyscrapers punch upwards into the sky like bar charts.