Abstract:
In 2006, officials of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai and the State of Maharashtra were beginning to implement a plan to improve the economic fortunes of the city. Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay, was India's richest city, with wealth based on trade, finance and filmmaking. But the city was also famous for its enormous slums, terrible traffic congestion, and poor infrastructure. And while India's economy had been growing rapidly since the late 1980s, Mumbai seems to be losing ground to other cities in India, such as Bangalore, and to other regional financial centers such as Shanghai and Dubai. The plan the city was considering would relax land use and rent control regulations and build new infrastructure in an effort to make Mumbai more affordable and livable.
Learning Objective:
The case is designed to support a discussion of the rationale for regulation and of the political economy of regulatory reform.
