Real estate developers are making too much money to even pretend to be bothered by the damage their projects are inflicting on the urban fabric, says Naresh Fernandes in his new biography of the city.

The Development Control Regulations of 1991 were aimed at remaking Bombay to meet the requirements of the volatile FIRE sector that had come to dominate New York and London, home to the world's leading Finance, Insurance and Real Estate firms.

Working on the assumption that manufacturing was a futile activity in the world-class city that Bombay's elites aspired to build, the DC rules attempted to reengineer the economy to foster the expansion of the service sector over traditional industries. The most dramatic provision of the rules permitted textile mills to sell the land on which they stood. This was a contentious stipulation. In 1991, despite the downsizing that followed the textile strike of 1982, the mills still employed 80,000 people. No one had devoted any thought to retraining them to find jobs in other sectors.

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Since Girangaon's fifty-four mills stretched out over 600 acres in the heart of the island city, this was the chance for the congested city to breathe again and house its poor in dignity. The noted architect Charles Correa was appointed to draw up an integrated plan for the neighbourhood, knitting together the individual plots of mill land, most of which were larger than ten acres, by creating new thoroughfares and widening existing roads.

But as always, there was the Bombay loophole. Mills wouldn't have to surrender any land for housing and parks if they sold less than 15 per cent of their plots and used the proceeds to modernize their machinery.