In this episode of Book Shook, The Wire’s editor Seema Chishti is joined by Sidharth Bhatia, the author of Mumbai: A Million Islands, to discuss Mumbai of the past, its journey of change, its people, their dreams versus their reality and the increasing tendency of pushing its people to the margins of the city, in place of slums, having luxury buildings and a twisted sense of what ‘development’ means.
On the question of the relation of Mumbai with its working class, Bhatia mentioned, “Our relation with the working class now is very transactional. There is no entity called the working class left anymore. The working class is the service working class.”
by Seema Chishti
13/02/2026