Decaying Mumbai

India's financial capital fails its citizens

The tragic stampede at the Elphinstone Road station on the Mumbai commuter rail network is another reminder, although none was needed, that India’s financial capital is failing its citizens. Cities such as Mumbai should be engines of growth, but they will not live up to their potential if people who live there are subject to conditions that gave rise to the stampede in which 23 people died on a crowded footbridge. What is worse is that the responsibility for this disaster is easy to evade, given the confused chains of authority that govern India’s cities and their infrastructure. There has