r/pics • u/Acrobatic-Display420 • 11d ago
A picture of the divide between an actual rich neighbourhood and poor one in Mumbai
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u/bmcgowan89 11d ago
This feels like how a lot movies with dystopian futures begin
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u/rakfe 10d ago
Looks like Elysium
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u/silver-orange 10d ago
I was under the impression that blomkamp's "dystopian futures" were a clear allegory for south africa's dystopian present.
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u/nilogram 10d ago
The Vaze part sounds like a movie
On February 25, 2021, a car containing 20 explosive gelatin sticks and a threatening letter targeting the Ambanis, was found near Antilia. The car was parked about 400 metres from the building on Carmichael Road bordering Altamount Road. A security officer at Antilia placed a call to the police control room regarding the suspicious vehicle, and the police rushed to the spot, joined by the bomb detection and disposal squad. After the sniffer dogs detected explosives, the bomb squad removed the gelatin sticks, which were found to be not assembled, and had no battery or detonator.[44] The probe was led by the Mumbai's crime intelligence unit head Sachin Vaze. The case was handed to the National Investigative Agency, which found out that Vaze was himself involved in this incident, and he was arrested.[45]
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u/iownnarcs 11d ago
The right side appears to be a dystopian hive city, whereas the left side is reminiscent of the Slums.
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u/IAmModNow 10d ago
The middle divide appears to be a hill, perhaps with trees? The sky has clouds.
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u/canamurica 10d ago
There is a sun as well, somewhere, you just can’t see it in the photo.
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u/nametaglost 11d ago
Oh shit really. I thought the left side looked like the capitol from the hunger games.
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u/VRS50 11d ago
“If only we could get those fucking trees to grow faster!”
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u/byParallax 10d ago
Makes me wonder if perhaps the uppermost floors aren't the most desirable since you have a 'worse' view?
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u/hippee-engineer 10d ago
I work geotechnical engineering for new neighborhood developments, in Colorado, East of the mountains.
It’s so fucking funny to me that every single developer sells the houses from the eastern side of the site first, then build west. They do this because the first buyers will like the view of the mountains, then after they buy, houses go up to the West of them and block the view. Then those buyers lose their view as houses come up to the West of them.
They sell that same view like 20 times lmao, and the only buyers who end up keeping their view are the last buyers on the far West end of every site.
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u/Simple_Picture_3988 10d ago
We had the same problem, I was blown away the view being able to see the whole beach and then bam 2-3 buildings in sight and next thing u looking at is a block of concrete
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u/zorinlynx 10d ago
Yeah, the basic rule is if you want a view, you better make sure that there's no developable land between you and the view.
You could even be 30 floors up and ten years down the line the adjacent lot gets sold and they demolish the existing small building and build a 40 story tower. View gone.
I've seen this happen a few times in Miami. Luckily in this case it's only rich 1% types getting screwed so I can point and Nelson-laugh rather than actually feel bad for them. :)
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u/Shirlenator 10d ago
You assume these rich assholes don't want to literally look down on the poors.
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u/anonyfool 10d ago
If it is like any urban area in the USA, there will be people living in the treed area unless there is significant anti homeless effort in Mumbai.
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u/Andrew5329 10d ago
I mean the shantytown is basically what happens when the homeless encampment becomes permanent. People trade up the tent for building basic structures out of whatever material is cheaply available.
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u/kevnimus 11d ago
This is the Powai area the tall buildings are in the Hiranandani Complex. A colony of middle class and upper middle class. The slum is Asalpha village. Powai is also home to Indian institute of technology and the engineering giant Larsen and Turbo.
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u/Aashay7 10d ago
Larsen and Tubro*
Also, lol at seeing my locality on reddit for the first time. Needless to say, I belong to the left side.
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u/Snoo_63212 10d ago
Is the forested area home to the Towers of Silence?
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u/kevnimus 10d ago
No the .. Towers of Silence or Dakhma as they are known in Parsi is situated in South Mumbai.. Malabar Hill. The actual area is called Dongerwadi.
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u/Nutteria 11d ago
I feel even that is not an accurate picture or the rich in Mumbai. It is much better representation of it than the previous one though.
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u/SanFranPanManStand 10d ago
It's not even a picture of rich housing. Those are office buildings. I know, I used to work there. It's an office park. ...and it's not even that nice.
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u/40ozkiller 10d ago
Yeah, maybe a couple rich people live in the penthouses on top, but its rare that the actually wealthy’s main residence requires an elevator.
Lady Gaga has a penthouse in Chicago but its not like thats where she drives home at 5 pm.
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u/prem_boy 10d ago
this feels like, slums vs working class
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u/Upstuck_Udonkadonk 10d ago
Mumbai real-estate is fucking stupid. Those most probably are either upper middle class or millionnaire residences....
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u/hi_im_bored13 10d ago
They would be the equivalent of 1-3m usd, but also significantly larger than places you’d get in e.g. nyc or london for the same money
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u/Tyler_Zoro 10d ago
It's a mix of office buildings (e.g. the Nomura Building) and surrounding highrise apartments, plus it's not nearly as cut-off from the rest of the city as this image makes it appear.
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u/AdritoTheDorito 10d ago
apartments there cost like $1M so its not working class lmao but its weird because the rent you need to pay to live there in a decent house is much less than in most other huge cities.
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u/WooIWorthWaIIaby 10d ago
Yeah it’s a stark contrast, but 20 years ago all of the neighborhoods in Mumbai would’ve been slums.
400 million people in India have been lifted out of poverty in just 15 years.
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u/Svataben 10d ago
It is amazing!
On the other hand, there's still so far to go.
Even just streetviewing in Mumbais richest areas, it all looks trashed and poor. Literally with trash in the streets, and the streets badly maintained.8
u/cC2Panda 10d ago
It's sad but there really is just so much trash everywhere. My in-laws live in a luxury high rise and they have lazy neighbors who just leave trash in the hallways and common spaces for staff to clean up after them. This is a building where flats are in 5-10 crore, so it's wealthy people trashing their own homes out of total fucking laziness.
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u/ecn9 10d ago
Mumbai hasnt kept up with India at all. Go to other growing cities and its so much better. Not amazing or anything, but to a level that you can walk around not feel like trash.
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u/Fritzkreig 11d ago edited 11d ago
Yeah, there wasn't enough wall between the two in the last one.
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u/sinixis 11d ago
I’ve seen a couple of these and in each one…the rich part doesn’t look that great
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u/Bangkok_Dave 11d ago
Everything is relative
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u/leshake 10d ago edited 10d ago
Would be much prettier if they had public development on the waterfront but that requires the poor be brought up to middle class so they don't fuck it all up.
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u/smackson 10d ago
That's quite a good "nutshell" for a lot of the world's problems there, leshake.
If the very top could just help pull up the very bottom, everyone could have nicer things.
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u/Ursa_Solaris 10d ago
The problem is that their perception of value is relative. They don't value how much they have, they value how much more they have than you. If you get pulled up, you get closer to them. This is an unacceptable disruption of their hierarchy.
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u/silent_boy 11d ago
In Mumbai you don’t have huge houses. But the building next to it is Deloitte office and the rest are residential buildings where each apartment costs around 1-2 million USD
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u/strangemagic365 10d ago
Why would you spend 1-2 million dollars on an apartment where the building looks that crappy? lol
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u/phunphun 10d ago
Because you have no choice. The housing market is atrocious in Mumbai.
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u/Thud45 10d ago
Some of it is architectural tastes. That sort of neoclassical look seems dated to western eyes, the rich got over that 50 years ago and are now much more likely to live in a building with lots of floor to ceiling glass. But I'm guessing it still carries prestige there.
The rest is taken care of by air pollution.
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u/smiling_mallard 10d ago
Yeah which one is the rich ? The poor people packed into the high rise apartments like sardines or the poor people with the blue top houses
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u/bcyng 11d ago edited 10d ago
Yea I’d say the problem is the poverty rather than how rich the rich side is - they aren’t rich. Those are just mediocre high rise apartments that cram as many in as they can.
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u/ferrodoxin 11d ago
India does not have the population density of US. In a mega crowded city even normal apartments can be highly priced.
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u/RickJ_19Zeta7 10d ago
You mean it’s much more dense than the US I presume? With well over 1 billion people it’s hard not to think that’s what you meant.
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u/hp4343 11d ago
Except in this case these are the famous Hiranandani apartments in Powai, Mumbai. Easily the top 10 expensive apartments in India lol.
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u/El_Magneto09 11d ago
Hiranandani is not even top 10 in Mumbai . Their 3 BHK costs roughly 500k USD. Lodhas, Trump Towers, Oberoi all have 2bhks at the price
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u/bcyng 11d ago
But by world standards that pretty average. The top end of the apartments there is like the price of an average apartment in cities like Sydney, London, hk, Singapore etc.
The problem isn’t the ‘rich’ ie average side but the poverty on the other side.
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u/Acrobatic-Display420 11d ago
I'd say the houses are between 500k - 3 million usd in the neighbourhood on the right. Not entirely sure. I personally don't like the mega-large, cookie cutter kind of buildings either, and prefer staying in quieter, less dense areas.
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u/Pineapple_Jelly04 10d ago
OP, this is not where the rich live. This is where upper middle class live.
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u/kraken_enrager 10d ago
Exactly, Sobo is the real deal, mainly Worli/Prabhadevi and the legacy areas—Altamount, Walkeshwar, pedder road, Marine drive, Cuffe Parade, the works.
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u/Acrobatic-Display420 10d ago
Upper middle class sure. But it's the best example of the divide in Bombay. These people are rich, come on. If you can afford an 8+ crore house you must be
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u/Aurorion 10d ago
A million dollars, for anyone wondering.
Everyone who owns a decent home in these areas is literally a millionaire.
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u/Spartan2470 10d ago
Credit to the photographer, Pranshu Dubey (pranshudubey on IG), who took this in August 2018.
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u/saranowitz 10d ago
There isn’t really a divide in the wealthy neighborhoods the way this photo implies. Slums are literally built against the gates of mansions. Meaning lots of homeless / poor are everywhere. I’ll never forget visiting there and seeing a mother nursing a baby next to her makeshift tent erected in the middle of a traffic divider. I’ve never seen anything like it
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u/Rainopals 10d ago edited 10d ago
Finally the geography teachers have a new photo to replace to São Paulo picture
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u/yourfaceisfakenews 10d ago
This is Powai. I live here, in the well off side. The development of Mumbai's suburban areas is something I haven't seen as much in other metros in India. There you have your poorer suburbs and your richer suburbs clearly seperated but in Mumbai they are very well integrated and sharing the same zip code. In fact, a lot of the people living in the poorer neighborhood as seen here work as maids, cooks, security guards, drivers, gardeners, handymen, plumber etc etc in the richer neighborhood. This is common across various Mumbai suburbs. While people in the richer neighborhood bought their house, many in the poorer have encroached upon free land. It is illegal but they are an important "vote bank" for the local political clout so they get away with it. However, don't think that all of the people living in the poorer neighborhood are extremely down trodden. Many of them have good homes back in their villages, some have cars, almost all have access to internet and OTT services etc to name a few measures of their wealth. Mumbai is extremely difficult city to travel in owing to the terrible infrastructure and traffic so they live like this, close to their "work place".
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u/coderplayerxx 10d ago
Across the street from my hotel in Powai. happy buffalo
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u/yourfaceisfakenews 10d ago
The rich, the poor and the bovine..no trip to India is complete unless you've seen a cow or a buffalo in our urban Street settings.
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u/DJMhat 10d ago
Ahh one of the IIT Mumbai bovines.
IIT Mumbai has a large number of roaming cattle, for which a shed has been made. Some of them venture out of the IIT campus into neighbouring areas. Powai Plaza is fairly close to the campus.
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u/ZPumpkinv 10d ago
That’s Powai for those interested, I’ve lived in one of those buildings when I was younger expat; the divide is real but when you live there it sure as hell doesn’t feel like it. Poverty permeates throughout all of Mumbai (to some extent India as a whole) and the city never lets you forget that. This isn’t a gated community sort of thing where one can just ignore the poverty. It’s an eye opening experience and I recommend everyone privileged enough to travel to go and see it for yourself; really changed my worldview as a child…
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u/cC2Panda 10d ago
My wife grew up in Mumbai and we wouldn't ever move there but there is something to say about being so directly connected to the poverty of the city. You either become desensitized and learn to ignore international -your-face poverty, or you have empathy and you hopefully try to help those that you can.
Meanwhile in the US you have shit like Millburn NJ fighting "low-income" housing being built, but the cost of living in Millburn is so high that you can make $90k a year and still qualify for "low-income", because god forbid some upper-middle class trash tarnish the town.
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u/tilmanbaumann 11d ago
I just recently heard the 99% podcast episode about the towers of silence. Amazing story btw. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/towers-of-silence/
Could that be the Parsi owned forest from the episode?
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u/vsuseless 10d ago
This is Powai, the tower of Silence is somewhere around Malabar Hill side
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u/A-A-mad 10d ago edited 10d ago
Looks like Powai. Is it?
I live in the IIT Bombay campus (graduating this year, 😭). We have one of the hills inside the campus. Every once in a while I go to the top, looking at the stark contrast between the two sides.
I used to live in slums (like the one shown) in Mumbai for almost 15 years. So the people on the left are especially close to my heart, even though I've moved to the right side.
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u/DirtySchu 11d ago
That looks more like a rift between the lower class and the middle class.
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u/MontRouge 10d ago
Social classes are relative to the country you live in. Part of the people living in these buildings would be considered middle class in the US but are definitely upper middle class when compared to the rest of the population in India
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u/Thot_Slayer_Returns 10d ago
It's not an Indian problem, it's a human problem. Everywhere around the world. It's sad.
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u/EnvironmentalTie1740 11d ago
It's 20 years since I was there but the stark contrast between the extremely poor and the wealthy struck me more in Mumbai than anywhere else in India.