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Shaban, A. (2019). Mumbai. In The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies, A. M. Orum (Ed.).
doi:10.1002/9781118568446.eurs0207
Mumbai
ABDUL SHABAN
Tata Institute of Social Sciences, India
For over 200 years, Mumbai – Mumbai Island
district and Mumbai Suburban district – has
been the most important industrial and
commercial city of India. The city has also
been called the city of dreams, businessmen,
and entrepreneurs because of its flourishing
“Bollywood” movie industry, financial sector,
and commercial enterprises. Bollywood has,
over the years, helped carve out a distinct
(pan)Indian identity both within and outside
India and is a major rallying and unifying
aspect for the Indian diaspora. As well as its
glitter, the city has also been well known for
its underworld, which till recently indirectly
ruled the city.
Mumbai is also a socially divided city, the
divide running deep along religious, caste,
regional, and class lines. Along with the rise
and fall of the underworld, the city has also
seen the rise and fall of political extremism
and parochial movements. These have often
not only threatened the city’s economy but
also torn the city’s social fabric, generating
cities within the city and creating forced
ghettoization of certain religious and caste
groups. Housing in the city has been a dream
far out of reach of most people due to rising
real estate prices, and as a result they are
forced to live in its megaslums.
HISTORY
Mumbai city has a rich and varied history. The
present city island was once an archipelago of
seven small islands. The refilling of creeks and
swamps has created today’s integrated Island
The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies. Edited by Anthony Orum.
© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118568446.eurs0207
of Mumbai. Currently the administrative
geographical area of the city is 437 square
kilometers. Another peculiarity of this city is
that Sanjay Gandhi National Park (area 103
square kilometers) is located within the city
administrative area and provides a contrast to
the concrete jungle and traffic with its dense
evergreen forest and wildlife – in particular,
its leopards, deer, and birds.
The name Mumbai is derived from the
city’s patron deity, the Mother Goddess
Mumba Devi, worshipped by the island’s
original inhabitants, the Kolis, who were
fisherfolk (Census of India 1996). From
the ninth to the mid-twentieth century, the
island city was variously ruled by Hindu
rulers and Muslim rulers, and colonized by
the Portuguese and the British. In the ninth
century, the islands came under the rule of
the Shilahara dynasty, but fell to the Muzaf-
farid dynasty of Gujarat in the fourteenth
century (Government of Maharashtra 1986).
By the mid-sixteenth century, the islands had
passed from the Muslim rulers of Gujarat to
the Portuguese (Census of India 1996). Up
until 1995, the name of the city was Bombay;
thereafter it was changed to Mumbai by the
state government.
The Portuguese established their presence
in the city of seven islands in 1534. In 1661,
the seven islands were ceded to Charles II of
England as part of the dowry of Catherine
of Braganza. Later, in 1668, the islands were
leased by the king to the British East India
Company. The British started land-filling
and draining the marshlands, and the city,
with its name anglicized to Bombay, was
turned into a presidency town in 1684. The
development of Bombay as a modern port
attracted migrant workers from across India.
In the nineteenth century, the city emerged
2 M UM BA I
as an important center of international com-
merce, industry, and culture (Kosambi 1986).
In the early twentieth century, it became an
important center for politics and a strong
base of the Indian independence movement.
After India’s independence, the concentra-
tion of industrial, commercial, and financial
activity in the city strengthened and that
led to the exponential growth in population
of the city through increased in-migration.
After Independence in 1947, the city was the
seat of the government of the state of Bombay
(a conglomeration of many princely states
and Bombay Province). In 1960, the state of
Bombay was split into the states of Maharash-
tra and Gujarat on a linguistic basis, with the
former retaining Bombay city as its capital.
DEMOGRAPHY AND HOUSING
The population of the city has grown signif-
icantly over the years: from 0.9 million in
1901 to 3.0 million in 1951 and 12.4 million
in 2011. The last four intercensal decades
have shown a consistent declining trend in
population growth rate in the city; the least
growth rate of the population in the city was
observed during the decade 2001–2011, that
is, 0.4 percent per annum. It is noteworthy
that this growth rate is the lowest growth
rate after the 1921–1931 period, when the
population growth rate was only 0.1 percent
in the city due to various epidemics. The
increased population in Mumbai district led
to the spread of population in the suburban
areas of the city, and since 1921 the Suburban
district has experienced a higher growth
rate than the Island city district. During
2001–2011, the annual compound growth
rate of population in the Island city district
was negative, −0.6 percent per annum, while
in the Suburban district it was 0.8 percent per
annum. The population density of the city
currently is about 28,472 persons per square
kilometer.
Mumbai attracts a large number of
migrants from different parts of the country
as well as from abroad. However, over the
years, the share of the migrant population
in the city has declined. As per the Census
of India 1961, 64.2 percent of the total city
population was born outside the city, but in
1971 this group of the population constituted
only 56.5 percent of the total population.
The share further declined to 37.2 percent in
1991 but increased to 43.3 percent in 2001.
Notwithstanding this, except in 1991, the
number of migrants in the city has consis-
tently risen over the years, from 2.6 million
in 1961 to 5.2 million in 1971.
Though not very large in terms of per-
centage, in absolute terms the city also has
substantial presence of persons of foreign
origin. The share of people from Pakistan,
Bangladesh, and Nepal is significant in this
regard. Many of these migrants coming to the
city have made it their home.
The city is home to all major religious
communities in the world. However, repre-
sentation of some religious communities is
very small in terms of share in total popu-
lation. As per the Census of 2011, Hindus
constitute 66.0 percent of the total popu-
lation followed by Muslims (20.7 percent),
Buddhists (4.9 percent), Jains (4.1 percent),
Christians (3.3 percent), Sikhs (0.5 percent),
followers of other religions (0.4 percent), and
those not stating any religion (0.3 percent).
A growing population and lack of land
have created considerable housing and shel-
ter issues in the city. House prices in the
city have grown enormously over the years
and have risen beyond the reach of the
lower classes. The ratio between the index
number of earning of factory workers in
Maharashtra and the price of residential flats
in Mumbai has risen considerably over the
years. Notwithstanding the rise in income

of factory workers, the comparatively higher
rise in real estate prices has dashed the hopes
of the working class of ever owning a house.
During 2003 and 2010, the prices of real estate
in the city appreciated 3:1 relative to the wages
of the workers. This shows that wages are not
keeping pace with the rise in real estate prices.
Slum-dwellers and those working at the lower
end of the informal sector spectrum can now
only dream about owning a house in the city.
For this section of the population, average
family earnings remain at only about Rs.
5,000 per month (at 2007–2008 prices) – that
is, about $100 per month – and many of
them work well below poverty wages (Jain
and Shaban 2009; Sujata and Shaban 2008;
Sharma et al. 2008; Shaban 2010). This forces
them to squat on public land and trade their
goods through hawking and vending. As
per the Census of 2001, about 54 percent of
Mumbai’s population were living in slums,
while the Census of 2011 showed about 41.3
percent of the population in slums.
The slums in the city not only house a large
section of the marginalized groups but also
are the industrial districts of the city. For
instance, Dharavi, Mankhurd, Govandi, and
Sonapur slums are informal sector manu-
facturing hubs and employ thousands of the
people living in those slums. These slums are
spaces of microenterprises. For those living
in the slums, their house is not only their
home but also their place of work, store, and
office; to women, it provides flexibility in
working and of working hours while taking
care of children, cooking, and feeling safe in
their own home.
THE ECONOMY
Mumbai is known as the financial and com-
mercial capital of India. In September 2010,
the city accounted for 20 percent ($210
billion) of bank deposits, and 24 percent
M UM BA I 3
($183 billion) of total bank advances in the
country. It dealt with $752 billion (61 percent
of the total of India) trading in equities (cash
market) (Financial Technologies Knowl-
edge Management Company 2011). The
city contributed to several innovations in
the financial market of India and is the
center of stock market culture; financial
market regulation; spot, futures, and other
derivatives trading; electronic and online
trading; national stock exchanges (National
Stock Exchange, Bombay Stock Exchange,
Metropolitan Stock Exchange of India);
credit rating agencies (Credit Rating and
Information Services of India Ltd [CRISIL],
Credit Analysis and Research Ltd [CARE]);
spot market for agricultural commodities
(National Spot Exchange Ltd [NSEL]), and
many others. The stock market capitalization
in the city during 2005–2010 tripled from
$553 billion to $1,631 billion and turnover
of the stock market rose from $314 billion
to $801 billion. The stock markets also
cater to nearly 1,700 foreign institutional
investors (Financial Technologies Knowledge
Management Company 2011).
In March 2016, the budget of the city was
Rs. 370.5 billion. The per capita income in
2010 was almost three times of the all-India
average – that is, Rs. 125,506 in comparison to
the all-India average of Rs. 44,345. However,
other estimates show that per capita income
(PPP) in 2009 was $7,200, that is, Rs. 486,000
(Financial Technologies Knowledge Manage-
ment Company 2011).
Mumbai makes a significant contribution
relative to its population size (about 1 percent
of the total population). It contributed about
3.14 percent to the all-India gross domestic
product in 2006/2007. The Mumbai region
contributes 33 percent of income tax, 60
percent of customs duty, and 20 percent
of central excise tax collections of India,
while it handles 40 percent of India’s foreign
trade and Rs. 400 billion (US$590 million)
4 M UM BA I
in corporate taxes (Swaminathan and Goyal
2006).
There has been a definite change in
Mumbai’s economic structure and the employ-
ment opportunities the city offers. One of
the major changes visible from the available
data is the deindustrialization of the city.
The employment opportunities in the city’s
manufacturing sector have declined con-
siderably and this has mainly been due to
the textile industries moving out of central
Mumbai. The city was known for its textile
industry until the 1980s, but as a result of
the rapid transition that took place in the
mid-1980s, by the 1990s most of the tex-
tile industries had closed. The industrial
land has been redeveloped and, through
gentrification, has now been put to com-
mercial and residential use (Figure 1). This
has obviously had a negative impact on
employment in the manufacturing sector.
One can understand this from the fact that
the total number of establishments in the
manufacturing and repair sector was 71,411
in 1980 and by 1998 had declined to 59,433.
This affected employment in the sector which
declined from 791,120 in 1980 to 468,409 in
1998. However, other sectors like wholesale
and retail, restaurant and hotel, finance,
insurance, real estate and related business
services, and communication, social, and
personal services have experienced a high
growth in the number of establishments and
employment. Thus, these sectors have more
than compensated for the jobs lost due to
decline in the manufacturing sector. The total
employment in the city was 2,199,451 in
1980, which increased to 2,625,748 in 1998
(Shaban 2010).
THE CREATIVE INDUSTRIES
AND BOLLYWOOD
Mumbai is a major cultural center in the
South Asian region and that fact has often not
found its proper place in writing on the city.
The religious, ethnic, and linguistic diversity
of the city offers enormous cultural assets
for its growth and development. Among the
cultural and creative industries in Mumbai
(and thus in India), the cluster of film and
media companies (television, music, adver-
tising, publishing, etc.) known as Bollywood
has been very significant and has played
an important role in promoting regional
and national culture. A total of 13,311 films
(3,781 celluloid and 9,530 videos) were cer-
tified in 2010, most of which were produced
in Bollywood. This is almost double that pro-
duced in the United States (Lorenzen 2007).
Bollywood, with an estimated 3.6 billion
tickets sold globally in 2001 (compared to
Hollywood’s 2.6 billion), is arguably one of
the world’s most prolific cultural clusters
(Kripalani and Grover 2002; Lorenzen 2007).
Mumbai’s Bollywood has become a global
marker of Indian culture and modernity, and
its audience has grown in South Asian and
Arab countries, and in Southeast Asia, and is
shaping many cultural practices around it in
countries of these regions. Bollywood films
are popular in the Middle East, Central Asia,
Africa, and Latin America. However, nowa-
days about 60 percent of overseas revenues
come from the USA and Europe (Mehta
2005).
A DIVIDED CITY: VIOLENCE, BLASTS,
AND SEGREGATION
The cityscape of Mumbai is fractured along
the lines of class, caste, religion, and region.
The class-based grouping has found its spatial
expression largely for the Hindus. The higher
classes of other religious groups mainly live
in enclaves (as in the case of Parsis and Jains)
or ghettos (as in the case of Muslims) of their
own religious communities. The lack of civic
 Ruby Mills
Kohinoor Mills
Dadar
Kilometre Kohinoor Mills
Gold Mohur Mills
0 2 4 8 Standard Mills Crown Mills Tata Mills
Elphinstone Mills
Bhoiwada Spring Mills R.A.K. Marg
Textile Manufacturing Company Jupiter Mills
Bombay Dyeing
Paragon Mills
Worli Victoria Mills Wadala
Vandana Dyeing Bombay Textile Mills
Woollen & Textile Industries Globe Mills
Gonil Silk Mills
N.M. Joshi Marg
Shri Ram Mills
Dawn Mills
DC Silk Mills Somester Silk Mills Standard Mill
Poddar Mills Matulya Mills India United Mills Amer Mills
BR Mills
Jucaso Silk Mills Piramal Mills Morarjee Textile Mills
Jalan Mills Bajoha Textiles
GRW Mills Bharat Mills Bombay Dyeing
Jivana Silk Mills Kalachawki
Phoenix Mills Jam Mills
Raghuvanshi Mills
Mafatlal Mills Finlay Mills Swan Mills
Ambika Mills Bombay Textile Mills

Stacum Mills Poddar Mills Western India Mills Kilometre

Dovlay Textile Mills
Tardeo Apollo Mills 0 0.5 1
Eidee Veive
Bombay Mills
Sewree
Agripada Byculla
Simplex Mills Cotton Mills
Mafatlal Mills

Modern Mills Devidayal Mills

Hindoostan Mills

Mills Legend

Khatau Mills Silk Textile Mills

Cotton textile Mills
Nagpada Old Atlas Mills Cotton Textile Mills
Silk, Woollen and Dyeing Mills J.J. Marg

Figure 1 Locations of textile mills in Mumbai, which have largely closed down. Note: Location of mills is based on addresses given in the Eicher City Map
of Mumbai 2003 (source: author)
6 M UM BA I
amenities, dilapidated housing, and a worsen-
ing physical environment along with the fear
of riots and danger to life has forced Muslims
to live in selected areas. Dongri, Pydhonie,
Nagpada, Byculla, Mazgaon, Mahim, Bharat
Nagar, Behrampada, Jogeshwari, Millat
Nagar, Kurla, Sonapur–Bhandup, Govandi,
Cheeta Camp, and Kidwai Nagar (Wadala
East) are examples of areas where there is a
high concentration of Muslims. This concen-
tration has emerged because of the growing
conflict between Muslims and Hindus and
discrimination in housing and job markets
against Muslims in the city.
The city is also significantly divided along
caste lines. Lower castes, being largely lower
class, struggle for housing in the city while
others face subtler caste-based discrimination
in slums of higher castes and residential areas.
This forces them to ghettoize. The major area
of concentration of dalits – the terms “dalit”
and “SC” (scheduled caste) are used inter-
changeably in this entry – is in the eastern
suburbs of the city (Chembur, Pant Nagar,
Tilak Nagar, Ramabai Colony, Shivaji Nagar,
and Deonar) where their share in the total
population ranges from 5 to 15 percent. Other
major concentrations of dalits are found in
Dharavi, N.M. Joshi Marg, Agripada–Byculla,
Mulund, Chuna Bhatti–Koliwada, and Samta
Nagar. In central Mumbai, dalits are generally
concentrated in some 33 labor camps and
Bombay Development Directorate (BDD)
chawls.
The lack of effective governance and rising
religious fundamentalism has also made
Mumbai a battlefield for religious extremists
and the underworld. They have often been
involved in bombings in the city, destroying
its multicultural fabric. From 1928 to 2008,
a total of 84 major Hindu–Muslim riots took
place in the city. Total reported deaths in the
riots were 1,870, while 9,463 were injured,
according to newspaper records, and a total of
238 days were lost in riots. During the period
1992–2012 there were nine major bombing
and extremist attacks in the city, killing 687
persons and injuring 2,167, besides destroy-
ing property worth millions of rupees in the
rioting. Among the nine incidents, the worst
bomb blast was in 1992, which killed a total
of 257 persons and injured about 713.
THE POLICE AND UNDERWORLD
Mumbai, along with its glitter and night-life,
has also been known for its underworld
and gangsters. Some of the major dons
who emerged in the city are Karim Lala
(involved in gambling and liquor smuggling),
Haj Mastan (smuggling and extortion),
Varadarajan (running liquor dens), Arun
Gawli (extortion and smuggling), Amar Naik
(extortion and smuggling), Chhota Rajan
(smuggling, extortion, and killing), Dawood
Ibrahim (extortion, smuggling, and killing),
Shakeel (extortion, smuggling, and killing
and an associate of Dawood Ibrahim).
The profile of the underworld dons in the
city shows that most of them come from
poor and marginalized communities living
in unhygienic and failing physical and social
environments. The period from the early
1970s to early 1990s was the worst for the
city in terms of gangsterism. The conserva-
tive economic policy at that time led to the
proliferation of illegal trade by the gangs.
Further, the rapidly declining employment
opportunities during the 1980s due to the
closure of the textile mills provided an oppor-
tunity for the gangsters to recruit new faces.
The infamous gangs like D-gang, Amar Naik
gang, Chhota Rajan gang, Manchekar gang,
Abu Salem gang, and female dons (known
as bahenas or sisters) like Archana Sharma,
Priya Rajput, Laxmi Soni, Shamim Paul,
Kajal Meghnani, Tabassum, Pallavai Jadhav,
Rubina, and Shushila, emerged in the 1980s
and 1990s. However, after the serial bomb

blasts in 1993, the gangs split on religious
lines, and efforts by the city police to rein
in the underworld led to the elimination of
many gangs from the city landscape. Many of
the dons were shot dead by the police.
Mumbai has been a city of hope and
despair, dreams and dread. While it acts as
a place of hope for thousands of migrants
and attracts them to its bright lights, many
perish there, dying unnatural deaths working
in its unhygienic working environments
and living in shantytowns on the margins
of the city. The city has also seen significant
political, industrial, and religious violence.
It was a battleground between the textile
mill trade unions and the mill owners dur-
ing the 1960s–1980s; it has also suffered
enormously from political violence orga-
nized by Shiv Sena and later by Maharashtra
Nav Nirman Sena. Religious extremists
from within and without the country have
also chosen the city for terrorizing bomb
blasts and gun attacks, killing hundreds of
innocent citizens. Despite all this, Mumbai
very much remains a resilient city and has
bounced back to normalcy quickly after each
crisis.
SEE ALSO: Accumulation by Dispossession;
Agglomeration; Cities in Developing
Countries; City of Culture; Colonial Cities;
Creative City; Creative Class; Displacement;
Fear and the City; Housing; Spatial Inequality;
Spatial Justice; Urban Governance; Urban
Inequalities; Urban Renewal
REFERENCES
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book of Greater Mumbai 1991, Series-14, Part
XII–A & B. Mumbai: Directorate of Census
Operations.
Financial Technologies Knowledge Management
Company Limited. 2011. “Mumbai, the Finan-
cial Capital of India.” Knowledge for Market,
2(6): May 18.
M UM BA I 7
Government of Maharashtra. 1986. Maharash-
tra State Gazetteers: Greater Bombay District.
Mumbai: Gazetteers Department.
Jain, Ranu, and Abdul Shaban. 2009.
Socio-Economic and Educational Status of
Muslims in Mumbai. Report submitted to
Maharashtra State Minorities Commission,
Government of Maharashtra, Mumbai.
Kosambi, Meera. 1986. Bombay in Transition:
Growth and Social Ecology of a Colonial
City 1880–1980. Stockholm: Almqvist &
Wiksell.
Kripalani, Manjeet, and Ron Grover. 2002. “Bolly-
wood: Can New Money Create a World-Class
Film Industry in India?” Business Week, Asian
edition, December. Accessed January 12, 2016,
at www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/
02_48/b3810013.htm.
Lorenzen, Mark. 2007. “Internationalization vs.
Globalization of the Film Industry.” Industry
and Innovation, 14(4): 349–357.
Mehta, Suketu. 2005. “Lights, Camera, India [Wel-
come to Bollywood].” National Geographic,
207(2): 52–69.
Shaban, Abdul. 2010. Mumbai: Political Econ-
omy of Crime and Space. Hyderabad: Orient
Blackswan.
Sharma, R. N., K. Sita, M. Vyas, M. Jha, and A.
Shaban. 2008. Impact Assessment of Resettlement
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Sujata, S., and A. Shaban. 2008. Human–
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Swaminathan, R., and Jaya Goyal. 2006. Mumbai
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FURTHER READING
Bjorkman, Lisa. 2015. Pipe Politics, Contested
Waters: Embedded Infrastructures of Millennial
Mumbai. Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan.
Census of India. 2001. Primary Census Abstract,
Maharashtra. Mumbai: Directorate of Census
Operations.
D’Monte, Darryl. 2005. Ripping the Fabric: The
Decline of Mumbai and Its Mills. New Delhi:
Oxford University Press.
 8 M UM BA I
Hansen, Thomas Blom. 2001. Wages of Violence:
Naming and Identity in Postcolonial Bombay.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Mehta, Suketu. 2004. Maximum City: Bombay Lost
and Found. New Delhi: Penguin Viking.
Patel, Sujata, and Alice Thorner, eds. 1995.
Bombay: Metaphor for Modern India. New
Delhi: Oxford University Press.
View publication stats
Shaban, Abdul. 2008. “Ghettoisation, Crime and
Punishment in Mumbai.” Economic and Political
Weekly, 43(33): 68–73.
Shaban, Abdul, ed. 2012. Lives of Muslims in India:
Politics, Exclusion and Violence. New Delhi:
Routledge.