Health in Indian slums: inside Mumbai’s busiest public hospital | Guardian Sustainable Business Mumbai’s busiest public medical centre, Sion Hospital, stands as a defining landmark on the southeast border of one of the city’s most well-known slums. Until the 1970s, Dharavi was an afterthought outpost in a peninsula city. A period of rapid migration and urbanisation pushed the city’s population northward and migrants from all over India settled there. The area became a residential and productive hub of the informal economy – pottery, recycling, food processing, leather-making, garment industries lived and worked in the one-kilometre area. Today, anywhere from 600,000 to a million (no good figures exist) people squeeze into the tiny plot of land in matchbox-like homes that have struggled to receive even the most basic services. The medical centre, Sion Hospital, opened in 1947 and has had to deal with unprecedented and unexpected growth and a range of health issues that accompany the extremely poor living conditions of local residents.
The dysfunctional megacity: why Dhaka is bursting at the sewers | Cities After decades cleaning the sewers of Dhaka, Bangladesh’s crowded capital, Sujon Lal Routh has seen plenty of misery. But the tragedy of 2008 was the worst. After a day of heavy rainfall left the streets flooded – as usual – seven workers were assigned to clear a blocked manhole in Rampura, in the centre of the city. Bystanders smashed the road open with hammers and shovels. During Bangladesh’s relentless monsoon season, Dhaka is submerged several times a month. On the sides of the roads, in the blinding rain, the ragtag army of sewer cleaners goes to work. According to UN Habitat, Dhaka is the world’s most crowded city. Too many people, too few resources Overpopulation is usually defined as the state of having more people in one place that can live there comfortably, or more than the resources available can cater for. Cities can be densely populated without being overpopulated. Overpopulation happens when a city grows faster than it can be managed. ‘I’m forced to do this job’
Only 3% of UK adults feel ashamed at wasting food, poll finds | Business Only 3% of UK householders think there is a stigma attached to wasting food, while many try to save money by switching off lights or turning down the heating, instead of reducing food waste, according to a report. The Sainsbury’s survey of food waste habits shows that the vast majority of people fail to see the value of watching out for food waste, compared with other money-saving habits that have become second nature. According to the poll of more than 5,000 UK adults, 74% of householders actively turn lights off when they leave a room and 55% turn down the heating. Collectively, these changes would save £305 a year, less than half of the £700 a typical family wastes on food that goes uneaten and is thrown away. In January, Sainsbury’s launched a partnership with the town of Swadlincote in Derbyshire, where it is spending £1m to cut food waste by trialling new technology. “Wasting food has become so normal, there is now no stigma attached to throwing food away.
How Rwanda’s Capital Became an African Tech Leader – Member Feature Stories “There are a few fundamentals you have to understand. Firstly, our country is the same size as the U.S. state of Maryland, but our population is around 12 million people. Secondly, we have no natural resources — no oil or gold or anything else that countries benefit from,” explains Claudette Irere, director general at Rwanda’s Ministry of Youth and Information and Communication Technology. “This means the only way for us to move forward and to build our future is to empower people and make good use of technology. Rwanda is beginning to leapfrog developed countries in fundamental areas such as smart city infrastructure, vocational training, and strategic foreign investment. When President Kagame emerged as Rwanda’s de facto leader, he set out his ambition to transform the country from one of Africa’s poorest nations into a leading knowledge economy by 2020. “Urbanization is becoming more of a challenge for things like traffic and public transportation.
Dharavi Slum - A Look Inside India's Largest Slum Out the 21 million people that live in Mumbai, a whopping 62% (or ~13 million people) live in the various slums around the city. Most of these slum dwellers survive on less than $1USD per day and spend their entire days working long hours in the blistering sun, using rivers as toilets, sleeping on sidewalks and scraping to find shelter under bridges. This is the real Mumbai. When I was in Bombay, I took a 3 hour guided walking tour of the biggest slum in Asia and one of the largest in the world. It’s called Dharavi. You may already be familiar with it from the movie Slumdog Millionaire, because this was the exact slum that Jamal (the main character) lived in and much of the movie was shot here. Seeing live unfold inside of Dharavi was the most eye-opening and real experience that I’ve had throughout all of my travels. The walking tour, put on by Reality Tours, was very well organized. What surprised me the most about Dharavi was how incredibly organized the slum was. My Lesson Learned
Trump will personally save up to $15m under tax bill, analysis finds Donald Trump and six members of his inner circle will be big winners of the Republicans’ vast tax overhaul, with the president personally benefiting from a tax cut of up to $15m a year, research shows. The US president chalked up his first big legislative win on Wednesday with the $1.5tn bill, the most sweeping revamp of the tax code in three decades, slashing taxes for corporations and the wealthy and dealing the heaviest blow yet to Obamacare. But analysis by a leading Washington thinktank, the Center for American Progress (CAP), finds that changes to business rules will save Trump roughly $11m to $15m per year, while an amendment to the estate tax – the tax on the transfer of an estate of a deceased person – would potentially save his heirs $4.5m. Under current law, the first $11.2m of a couple’s estate’s value is excluded from taxation, and any amount above this is taxed at a 40% rate. In addition, the biggest element of the tax bill benefitting the wealthy is the corporate tax cut.
South Asia | Mumbai's slum solution? Mukesh Mehta wears a crisp shirt and tie as he picks his way past makeshift shacks and stinking open gutters in Dharavi, Asia's largest slum. Dharavi is a dense labyrinth of dirt roads in the centre of India's biggest and most economically important city, Mumbai (Bombay). Estimates of its population size vary but it is likely that up to a million people live in these crowded lanes. But now the slum faces complete demolition under an audacious plan designed by Mr Mehta. As a wealthy architect turned property tycoon, Mr Mehta makes an unlikely development visionary. His scheme is unique because it uses India's surging private sector to develop slums, instead of relying on government funds or international aid. But will it offer a fair deal to the urban poor? Win-win solution "I'm not ashamed or embarrassed that I'm going to make money out of it," Mr Mehta told me late last year. He explained that the urge to turn a profit is what drives the scheme forward. Theoretically at least, everyone wins.
Capitalism 101 - The NIB click 2x Imperialism, suffering, and violence are a feature, not a flaw. by Satwik Gade and Manasi Karthik Posted Yesterday Rise and Shine. The World is Doomed. The Nib, delivered to your inbox every AM. 'Mumbai is on the verge of imploding' | Cities It used to be India’s urban showpiece. Today, its sceptre and crown have fallen down and, in a phase of cynical destruction masquerading as “development”, Mumbai has become a metaphor for urban blight. Consider these statistics. Around 7.5 million commuters cram themselves into local trains every day and the fledgling metro and monorail are unlikely to make a perceptible difference in the near future. There are 700,000 cars on the road and the authorities indirectly encourage private vehicle ownership by adding flyovers and expressways, instead of building or speeding up mass rapid transit systems. Toxic nitric oxide and nitrogen oxide levels stand at 252 microgrammes per cubic metre (mcg/m3) more than three times the safe limit of 80 mcg/m3. There’s less than 0.03 acres of open space per 1,000 people. There are 12.7 million people jammed into the 480 sq km that comprise today’s Greater Mumbai, that’s 20,680 people per sq km. As a consequence, every sixth Mumbaikar lives in a slum.
Is the minimum wage worth less now than 50 years ago? Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., took to Twitter recently to tout her support for a $15 minimum wage. In the tweet, Smith wrote that "one of the proudest things I did" as lieutenant governor serving under Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton was helping to raise Minnesota’s state minimum wage to $9.50 an hour. "Now, I’m proud to back a bill to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2024," she wrote, referring to a measure introduced by Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Patty Murray, D-Wash. Currently, the federal minimum wage is $7.25, though states can set higher levels if they wish — and a majority do, from a small amount more than the federal level to $11.50 in Washington state. In a threaded tweet, Smith gave some historical perspective on the minimum wage: "The federal minimum wage hasn’t been raised in a nearly a decade. The federal minimum wage hasn’t been raised in a nearly a decade. We wondered if Smith was correct, so we looked at the data. Back in 1968, the minimum wage was set at $1.60. U.S.
Dharavi Slum Asia's largest slum, Dharavi, lies on prime property right in the middle of India's financial capital, Mumbai (Bombay). It is home to more than a million people. Many are second-generation residents, whose parents moved in years ago. Today's Dharavi bears no resemblance to the fishing village it once was. A city within a city, it is one unending stretch of narrow dirty lanes, open sewers and cramped huts. In a city where house rents are among the highest in the world, Dharavi provides a cheap and affordable option to those who move to Mumbai to earn their living. Rents here can be as low as 185 rupees ($4/£2.20) per month. Even in the smallest of rooms, there is usually a cooking gas stove and continuous electricity. Many residents have a small colour television with a cable connection that ensures they can catch up with their favourite soaps. Most of these products are made in tiny manufacturing units spread across the slum and are sold in domestic as well as international markets.
Environmental Catastrophe is Coming. The Rich Will Be Just Fine. They’ve got private protection from ever-more-frequent natural disasters. But who will pay the price? by Maria Stoian