India's public transport: Neglected, starved and sold; future uncertain

Like every crisis, the one at Elphinstone Road will also be used to delegitimise our public institutions and processes and attack the very conception of public goods

In recent decades, we have come to adopt a new attitude to city-making. It involves ignoring many important little things in pursuit of some worthless grand ones, naturalising scandalous urban inequities and acting in ways that undermine our own future.

Mumbai reacted with horror to the stampede at Elphinstone Road recently. The search for deeper roots of the tragedy takes us to the rapid transformation of Mumbai’s industrial heartland into highly concentrated and intensive commercial developments, that have significantly altered public transport use. It also takes us to the systematic neglect and degradation of urban public transport: as physical infrastructure, as