BOMBAY, 10 September 2005 — Residents of a 90-year-old tenement with cracked walls and bowed door frames in an industrial wasteland of India’s financial capital panicked when a mild earthquake shook their home eight months ago. Following floods that weakened the building further in late July, the state government told them last week it was time to leave the “extremely dangerous” building and head for rooms in so-called transit camps within seven days.

“There are at least 28 to 29 extremely dangerous buildings where 900 families reside which will have to be vacated definitely in the next seven days,” Vilasrao Deshmukh, chief minister of Maharashtra state, of which Bombay is the capital, said last week.

But the residents say the idea of leaving the decrepit, bamboo-propped building patched with cardboard and tin in one of the world’s most expensive cities for real estate is not an option and they will fight to stay. “Let them come. We will see, they cannot evict us forcibly,” resident Baburao Jagdale said, as other residents chimed in.

“There is no question of shifting out. I know it is dangerous ... but we have been living here and will continue to do so,” said homemaker Jayanti Amre. Their apprehension is understandable. The transit camps, mainly 20,000 small rooms at safer buildings, are spread across the city and suburbs. But only 450 rooms are now vacant, an official at Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority said.

While the rooms, which cost about $4.20 to $5.80 a month in a city where many earn far less than a dollar a day, are supposed to be temporary, the cash-strapped government has reneged on past promises to find better shelters.

At the current residence called Botawala Chawl, the rent is 100 rupees ($2.27) every three months. There is no limit on the number of years a person can stay in a transit camp and many families end up spending decades waiting for new homes. In the case of the dangerous buildings identified, the state government has already said it does not have the money to rebuild them.

“The cost for reconstruction is estimated at 3 billion rupees ($68 million). The government will have to arrive at how to raise the money required,” state housing secretary N. Rama Rao told reporters last week. As India’s largest city with almost 20 million people and thousands streaming in from rural India every month in search of work, housing demand far outstrips supply.

The city is already home to Asia’s largest slum, called Dharavi, and middle-class residents regularly call on politicians to round up people who sleep on the streets and to demolish squatter camps. Perched on a peninsula jutting into the Arabian Sea, Bombay and adjoining suburbs span 438 square kilometers (169 square miles) with a population density of slightly more 45,000 people per square kilometer.

It is the fifth most densely populated city in the world behind Hong Kong, Lagos, Dhaka and Jakarta, according to the United Nations website. Vast swathes of Bombay were inundated after the heaviest monsoon rains recorded in India lashed the city last month, claiming more than 400 lives.

The rains also weakened building foundations leading to the collapse of three residential complexes that killed more than a dozen people in August.