Bombay, the Cleveland of South Asia?

This Washington Post article, "Bombay Moves to Push Out the Poor," is very sad. Don't get me wrong. But two sentences made this seven-year resident of the Comeback City smile.

First (from a government official): "The city is decaying and needs to urgently reinvent itself into an efficient world-class city, like Shanghai and Cleveland did." This is not the comparison that Mayor Campbell and the city leaders use here in C-Town, not even when they discuss the city's "quiet crisis." I can just hear the mayor's tv commercials: "Cleveland--like Shanghai, but on Lake Erie." (Oh, that the economy here were as booming as Shanghai's. But without the repressive "Communist" government.)

Second (from a former resident of a cleared slum): "They say they want to turn this city into Shanghai," Badruddin said, referring to a multibillion-dollar government development program. "I don't know what the word Shanghai means, but it is an excuse to kick poor people in the stomach." No, sir, "Shanghai" means to make your city into a new Cleveland. Then, the state of Ohio can kick your poor people in the stomach.