India, April 6 -- It's simple arithmetic but the answer is staggering: 75,000 minus 8,000 equals 67,000 - the gap the BMC must bridge to get some of Mumbai's key infrastructure projects off the ground. The 67,000 refers to apartment units for project affected persons (PAPs), who must be rehabilitated for these big-ticket projects to roll.

The numbers come from a PAP survey undertaken by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) in 2023; there's been no follow-up since. According to the survey, around 75,000 households across Mumbai were in the path of major projects such as the Goregaon Mulund Link Road (GMLR), new flyovers and bridges that needed to be rebuilt, and smaller projects such as the widening of roads, rivers or nallas, and...