India, Aug. 15 -- On a recent muggy afternoon, 55-year-old Meenabai Govind Limbole sat on the edge of a footpath along Powai Plaza, watching the traffic crawl by. A plastic sheet hung limply over the tin frame she now calls home - her second shelter for over a year.

"They already broke our homes of 30 years," she said, her voice steady but her eyes moist. "Now they want us off the footpaths too?"

Meenabai is among 50-60 families still clinging to life on the pavements around Jai Bhim Nagar, a slum cluster razed by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) in June 2024. The basti once sheltered around 650 low-wage, working-class households, many of them migrants from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, and Odisha. Most belon...