In the heart of the capital, over a thousand families watched helplessly as bulldozers shattered their homes, reducing lifetimes of hope to dust. On the fringes of another metropolis, a factory explosion claimed the lives of migrant workers, men and women who had journeyed far in search of opportunity, only to find tragedy.
Few other metropolises saw simmering tensions over language and identity leading to vandalism; while in others, the so‑called “middle class” endures endless, rain‑choked traffic jams and polluted air, daily reminders of how fragile urban life can be. These aren’t isolated incidents; they reveal a deeper reality.
Every year, countless people leave their villages and small towns for the city, chasing the promise of work that rural life can no longer provide. But what is the cost of this migration?
For many, the financial burden is only the beginning. There’s the daily grind of physical exhaustion, the weight of cost of urban life, the anxiety of insecure jobs, and perhaps most profoundly, the ache of alienation, of always being an outsider in a city buckling under the weight of never-ending ambitions and limited infrastructure.
Yet amid crumbling facades, the city keeps selling dreams, fuelling the engines of power and profit for those in charge.