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Postcard from India
A recent trip to India gave me the opportunity to compare conditions on the ground with those in China, where I travel frequently. Crossing streets in New Delhi and Mumbai, I was reminded of what Chinese coastal cities were like 15 to 20 years ago: full of narrow streets, chaotic traffic, and old buildings mixed in with a lot of new construction. After years of continued fixed asset investments, China nowadays can boast much better infrastructure facilities than those in India. In India's case, the relatively lower investment in infrastructure has created a bottleneck in the economy at a time when growth is picking up substantially. However, this also means huge investment potential in areas including roads, bridges, power plants, airports and urban redevelopments projects. One thing that really caught my attention while driving through the city of Mumbai was the widespread existence of urban slums. It is estimated that more than half of the city's inhabitants reside in decayed housing. However, the local government has accelerated its slum redevelopment process in recent years, realizing that in order to become one of the major Asian financial hubs it has to eradicate its many urban slums. Under the redevelopment program, private developers are negotiating with slum dwellers as well as local government officials to renovate these shanties into modern apartment buildings, parks, schools, markets and clinics. Private developers say they will provide families with 225-square-foot apartments in exchange for their land. In recent years, an increasing number of property developers have joined in the slum redevelopment projects in Mumbai. I can imagine that in the next 10 years, the number of tenants in these dilapidated conditions will decline significantly. Regards,
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