Understanding the “economics of slums” is central to Anup Malani’s research. A health and development economist and law professor at the University of Chicago Law School, Malani has long been curious about the bastis of Mumbai. As the founder of a social impact fellowship, the International Innovation Corps, he initiated a “short-lived project” in the slums of the city, along with the Tata Trust. Later, he started a non-profit to think about English education in slums, to improve the vocational prospects of its residents. “That failed also...,” he tells us over a video call. “I realised that before you act, maybe you need to know [the ground reality]. So I started an extensive ethnographic research project to understand why people move to slums, how these informal settlements function, and how does one improve the lives of people there.”

The project, initiated by the Tata Centre for Development at the University of Chicago and International Innovation Corps, began in 2016 across 24 slums in seven cities of India, including six slum pockets in Mumbai. It is now nearly complete with research papers and a documentary titled, Basti, on the anvil. “Apart from gathering data, we also did a lot of quantitative work, which included looking at satellite images.” How does one do that? Go to Google Earth, find an existing slum—preferably a new one that has emerged over the last 15 years—and spend some time looking at it, including how it was, many years in the past, he says. “What you’ll find is dramatic growth. You will notice two things happen. Firstly, the area will fill out, as people move in. The second thing you’ll see is that very rapidly, the quality of homes there, improves. To get a sense of whether or not that’s a lot of growth, just think about your life. How much has your building improved in the last 10 years? Have you seen the kind of improvement that goes from living in a tent to owning a concrete structure?” he asks us. “My guess is that most people have not experienced that kind of growth. We usually measure growth in terms of income, but that only leads to increase in consumption; our actual status doesn’t change dramatically.”