Published on
November 11, 2008 in
Economy.
Tags: apartments in Mumbai, Arpita Singh, Emami Chisel Art gallery, Indian art prices, investment in art, J Swaminathan, MF Husain, Morarka Bungalow, Real estate, Sotheby's, Wealth Bulletin.
Got cash to spare? Always dreamt of owing a luxury duplex apartment? The time to buy, perhaps, is now when prices are at an all time low, reports Madhurima Nandy in Mint
Duplex apartments in a posh Mumbai neighbourhood that could cost Rs100 crore (1 crore=10 million) and offer stunning views of the Arabian Sea have failed to find a single buyer in eight months, reflecting the telling impact of a realty slowdown.
Morarka Bungalow on 29, Nepean Sea Road, in south Mumbai, not far from Altamount Road—recently tagged the world’s 10th most expensive street by Wealth Bulletin published by News Corp.—is being rebuilt from a palatial colonial bungalow into a high-rise. At Rs80,000 per sq. ft, each of the 12,000 sq. ft duplexes in the building would cost some Rs100 crore.
And, if your inclinations are more artistic, now is also the best time to invest in art as prices hit rock bottom, writes Aveek Datta in Mint
In among the first signs of a cooling in the art market, a high-profile auction of contemporary paintings in Kolkata on Saturday earned Rs4.7 crore for its organizers Emami Chisel Art gallery, one-third of original estimates of what the auction would bring in.
Around 50% of the 105 paintings on sale didn’t attract a single bidder.
The response, said Emami Chisel Art’s director and a buyer, is a sign that the general environment of economic uncertainty has affected the art market, too.
On Saturday, two paintings by India’s most famous painter M.F. Husain went for Rs40 lakh (1 lakh = 100,000) each, but two paintings by Arpita Singh and J. Swaminathan expected to attract the highest bids remained unsold.
Published on
October 9, 2008 in
Business.
Tags: Buildings, Cheap labour, Construction boom, Dubai, Economy, Exploitation, India, Labour, Labour camps, Migrant labour, Pakistan, Real estate, Sri Lanka, Workers' rights.
It is already home to the world’s glitziest buildings, man-made islands and mega-malls – now Dubai plans to build the tallest tower. But behind the dizzying construction boom is an army of migrant labourers from South Asia and elsewhere lured into a life of squalor and exploitation. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad reports in The Guardian:
Workers sleep on the street in Dubai. Photograph: Ghaith Abdul Ahad
I have left Dubai’s spiralling towers, man-made islands and mega-malls behind and driven through the desert to the outskirts of the neighbouring city of Abu Dhabi. Turn right before the Zaha Hadid bridge, and a few hundred metres takes you to the heart of Mousafah, a ghetto-like neighbourhood of camps hidden away from the eyes of tourists. It is just one of many areas around the Gulf set aside for an army of labourers building the icons of architecture that are mushrooming all over the region.
Behind the showers, in a yard paved with metal sheets, a line of men stands silently in front of grease-blackened pans, preparing their dinner. Sweat rolls down their heads and necks, their soaked shirts stuck to their backs. A heavy smell of spices and body odour fills the air.
Next to a heap of rubbish, a man holds a plate containing his meal: a few chillies, an onion and three tomatoes, to be fried with spices and eaten with a piece of bread.
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If you want to rent a flat in Mumbai, take care you don’t belong to that very worst minority: the single man. Aravind Adiga at the Guardian’s Comment is Free:
Shabana Azmi, an Indian actor, recently kicked up a stir by claiming that Muslims cannot easily buy homes in Mumbai. This may well be true: but as someone who recently looked for a place to rent in the city, I assure Azmi that there is a category of person even less wanted in this city than the Muslim. I belong to this category.
Mumbai’s real-estate market suffers from a perpetual shortage of good, affordable housing. Landlords are picky. The lack of any real anti-discrimination law in the city means that the rental market is a bigot’s paradise. Some landlords rent only to non-Muslims; some turn down Hindus; some permit only vegetarians in their flats. But almost none of them will gladly rent to a bachelor.
In the rest of the world, unmarried men are called by their proper, varied names – singleton, gay, divorced, celibate – but Indian society still lumps them into one Victorian-era category: the bachelor.
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