This story is pretty much too depressing to report on, but here we go. Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail, the young boy who starred in Slumdog Millionaire as the young Dev Patel, has just had his family “home” destroyed by the Indian government. The home consisted of a miniscule shack in the slums of Mumbai, and it was one of dozens of homes demolished by the government.

As Mumbai builds up and becomes a more economically progressive city, the local and national government is taking back a lot of land that many slum dwellers are, in effect, squatting on. The slum dwellers don’t own the land, and it hasn’t been given to them by the government, they simply lived on the land for so many years because no one really wanted to develop it commercially. That’s not the case anymore, as urban sprawl expands Mumbai’s city lines. I’m not saying it’s right or that I understand, I’m just saying this is what has happened.
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