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The space previously occupied by them is being hurriedly co-opted by the manifestations of the new economy. The city no longer allows any protected labour organization or indigenous enterprise in production. Along with de-formalizing labour, the economy has created a new middle class in the city.
This new middle class has to be distinguished from the earlier middle class because of its affording and consuming capabilities. This has become the most powerful group in the city where all productions are aimed towards luring its aspirations. Along with this new middle class, there exists another layer of the informal city. They exist simultaneously in the interstitials of the city. These may be the hawkers, the household maid or any kind of service labour who do not enjoy the infrastructure but serves the new consumer group. The polarization between these two sets, the new-middle class and the informal labour, is considerably increasing and sometimes shows violent consequences like the riots in the early 90s.

Along with these two distinct groups, there exist many other interlinked interest groups in the city like the state machinery, the NGOs, the political parties and the large corporate. The metropolis could be seen as a contested domain of these actors and agencies. The rapid urbanization overlapped with changes in the economy have manifested in several problematic urban issues, these include rapid informalisation of labour, derelict industrial lands, dilapidation of urban building and infrastructure, increasing traffic densities, increasing informal settlements and loss of urban heritage. However, the expected changes in improving the urban infrastructure in a city like Mumbai will not take place if the government and the citizens think incrementally. A change in mindset is the need of the hour. In this paper, we have tried to use the theory of constraint for improving the urban infrastructure. As the city of Mumbai represents most of the complexities pertaining to sources and application of funds, degree of stress on the existing system, the level of culture and diversity of the population, etc,, it is chosen for applying the concept of theory of constraints.

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* Contributed by -
R. Rajesh, PGDBA - 1st Year,
Kiron Kumar Varma, PGDBA - 2nd Year,
K. J. Somaiya Institute of Management Studies & Research, Mumbai.