Bombay's Rain Check

Everywhere you go, you hear the kind of talk that brought Mohammed Afzad's family to Bombay: India will be the next China; if you're looking to the future, you've got to be in India. As the nation's business capital, Bombay is a crucible of such hopes, drawing families like Afzad's, which came to the city's northern slum of Saki Naka 15 years ago. Living 10 to a two-bedroom shanty, they had television, electricity and a telephone, and a foothold in India's city of opportunity. "It was a good place," says Afzad, age 14. "We stayed put here."

And...