"Nowhere is the architectural contrast starker and more jarring than in Mumbai. India is on its way to becoming a rich country, and Mumbai is its financial capital. Signs of wealth abound, from ubiquitous cranes to the mobile phones that every chai vendor carries. Fewer people seem to be living on the streets of downtown Mumbai than in midtown Manhattan. The good news is there’s a building boom under way. The bad news is, the results are appalling. Much of the new architecture is ugly, of course, straight from the Soviet-occupied-Poland school of design, but the construction is also shoddy. Buildings put up ten years ago are streaked with rust from exposed rebar, their concrete peeling apart in flakes. Even the newest blocks seem temporary or half-finished, as if nobody cared enough to complete the job. Not unlike post-invasion Baghdad, actually."