-The Indian Express Maharashtra govt rolls out new plan for slum-free Mumbai Mumbai: The Maharashtra government on Thursday rolled out a new plan to take Mumbai towards a slum-free status. Under this plan, over 18 lakh slum dwellers residing in slum tenements, that came up between 2000 and 2011, have now been guaranteed a replacement house. However, it will not be for free. All these residents would need to pay for the...

-The Times of India Mumbai: Sumit Kulkarni puts on a surgical mask before entering the sprawling Annabhau Sathe Nagar slum in Mankhurd along with his team, equipped with wi-fi enabled tablets and high-resolution cameras, on a sultry afternoon recently. In a maze of narrow passages filled with a nauseating odour, gutter water and muck flow through the tightly-packed shanties. But Kulkarni and his young colleagues trudge along, knocking on every tin shed...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: As many as 229 of the 480 apartments meant to rehabilitate slum families were sold in the open market by a builder redeveloping a large slum redevelopment project in Goregaon west. Despite stop work notices by the authorities in 2007, some of the buildings on the 13-acre plot near the Goregaon bus depot, were built in violation of the coastal development zone (CRZ) norms. The Slum Rehabilitation Authority...

Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto turned classical capitalism on its head with his trickle-up theory: that if you create wealth at the bottom of the pyramid, it will find its way up. de Soto, president of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy, speaks to The Indian Express Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta on NDTV’s Walk the Talk on the need for the poor to be able to participate in the global economy...