The Ruin of Mumbai

The height restrictions and rent control are overstated.

If they were a blocker to slum redevelopment, then similar cities like Delhi (or even neighboring Thane and Navi Mumbai, or nearby Pune) would be equally as decrepit, which they are not.

The major issue is land procurement and failure to minimize encroachment.

India, being a democracy, is limited by public demands. As cities became economic growth engines, a lot of people migrated, but were unable to get housing, and then autarkic India had (and in a lot of cases, still has) socialist style "Development Authorities" manage housing construction within the Tier 1 cities.

The development authorities were notorious slow at developing new property, so migrants were forced to encroach land and build slums.

As the first generation of slum dwellers succeeded economically, they began moving out of the slums, but rented out the slum property to newer migrants, and kept a hold on the slum properties waiting for a government to eventually legalize those slum holdings and transfer the land rights to the "basti" owner (this kind of transfer has happened before - most recently in Odisha, Delhi, and Punjab).

Unlike in China, India's democracy (no matter how flawed it is) prevents severely underfunded urban local governments from preventing this encroachment, and politicians actually liked this, as slum dwellers formed voting blocks, and would de facto collateralize their land to grey market financial institutions, which themselves worked under the auspices of those local politicans.

And finally, slum dwellers would organize and place political minefields. There's a reason why tiny temples, mosques, and other religious institutions dot urban India - they aren't just for veneration but also tools to prevent demolitions, as dwellers can rally around protecting the temple or mosque from being demolished (along with the neighborhood), and politicians would have to back down, as Indian elections are won on extremely small margins.

This economics of encroachment occurs in similar developing country like Brazil, Phillipines, and Vietnam as well as former developing economics like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.

Slum dwellers are not idiots - just poor. They know they land they are on is worth millions, and most governments are not going to use force to kick them out, and if they do, they WILL fight back. The land they encroached is the closest thing they have to a nest egg.

Rent control and Height restrictions aren't enforced in India.

Property contract disputes in India follow the principle of "Jiski lathi, uski bhains" (might makes right // That cow belongs to the guy with the bamboo or iron rod).

The landlord or the tenent can enforce their ideal level of rent based on who can force the other to comply, and civil courts have decades long backlogs so nothing will get done - property disputes make up the majority of cases in India.

As a Mumbaiker, I would also like to provide a bit of context that may not be obvious (but unfortunately isn't surprising) - the BMC (Municipal Corporation) is considered quite ineffective/corrupt/lazy by most citizens, despite being the richest municipal body in the world (with a budget of ₹59,954 crore this year, which I tried to convert to USD but I can't keep track of all zeros). Every year there are numerous deaths especially during heavy rain in monsoon, from potholes flipping bikers to the river not being desilted. There are valid arguments (eg lots of pollution in the river) but the end result isn't pretty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brihanmumbai_Municipal_Corpora... has more info including controversies.

Also, regarding housing specifically, due to a perpetual population growth and inflation, many buildings sit empty because builders know that people will cave in, even if property is temporarily overpriced and no one is buying them in the short term. Additionally legal disputes often block up other buildings, resulting in large dilapidated buildings sitting in the middle of busy/high-value areas but providing no benefit.

₹59,954 crore is roughly USD $7.2 billion.

> the BMC (Municipal Corporation) is considered quite ineffective/corrupt/lazy by most citizens, despite being the richest municipal body in the world

Well when one divide total budget by population per person won't be much. Economist and even politicians mentioned as much that Indian tax revenues per person are 1/20th of first world but regardless they do think they deserve facilities comparable to developed nations.