In the course of SEWA's five decades, India has rapidly urbanized, with over half a billion people, or 35% of its population, living in cities. The maps below illustrate the spread of India's urban footprint only capture part of the story, belying density, height and variegation.

More than 40% of Mumbai's 21 million inhabitants live in informal housing. Their slum dwellings reside in close proximity to gleaming towers of new wealth, whose privileged inhabitants generate and perpetuate informal employment in their homes and offices. Those that are building contemporary India's soaring skylines are among the poorest, are often migrants, and can hardly aspire to a permanent roof of their own. Their workplaces have few provisions to protect their health. In the absence of drinking water and sanitation facilities at construction sites in the nation's capital, extreme heat waves in the summer of 2024 drove many migrant workers in Delhi back to their hometowns.