Workers perch on the scaffolding of a high-rise development in India. Massive population growth since independence in 1947 has provoked a boom in infrastructure. India now holds 950 million people, one-sixth of the world’s total. An increasing number are middle-class residents of such “concrete colonies.”
(Text adapted from and photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, “India: Fifty Years of Independence,” May 1997, National Geographic magazine)