Just been chatting with the young owner/manager of this cyber cafe. He asked me how Scotland compaed with Mumbai – it was impossible to answer, except to relate my feelings about the huge numbers of poor there. He too insists that India has it all but just can’t get it together because politicians here are corrupt and just don’t give a stuff. He says that because of this he feels as if he’s living in hell.

He agrees with what I was told earlier – that all police here are corrupt because they have to bribe their way into their jobs in the first place. If true, the only saving grace is that they’re armed with lathis, not firearms. Armed police, such as I’ve seen in Belfast, UK airports and the USA, scare the bejasus out of me – and now I’ve stopped to think about it, armed street-gangs (which exist in all those places) probably scare me more!

And yet this district is quite reminiscent of, say, the outer reaches of the modernised* Bull Ring area of Birmingham (once you factor in the crap road surfaces here). Plenty of high-tech, modern shops, educated/middle-class people.
*and in its way quite acceptable – it used to be eerily horrible.