Have Mumbai, Delhi swapped characters?

Until a decade and a half ago, Mumbai was the Indian city to live in. It was easy enough to come up with reasons to do so: only here can you start with absolutely nothing and achieve virtually anything; only here can a woman commute alone at night; even the mafia has a heart of gold; people from all sections of society are friendly and civil; and so on. And, oh yes, there was the cliche; that 'the city never sleeps'.
Today, Mumbai increasingly seems a pale shadow of the city as we knew it, leave alone the city that it once was according to old-timers' tales. What's worse, in some ways, Mumbai is increasingly coming to resemble Delhi as it used to be.
Delhi has many things going for it, chiefly the massive budgetary support it gets and its status as the seat of political power. But while institutions, images and ideas do contribute to a city's growth, they do not make the city; it's the people who inhabit a city — and their deeds — that do so. It's the people who lend a city its character, give it its soul. On that count, what does the Mumbai you see tell you?
Before we get to that, let's look at some of the things that used to define Delhi. It was seen as a brutally violent place where you could be shot dead for no reason, a city that had scant respect for women, where road rage was a casual, everyday affair. Delhi, in short, reeked of power and money.
Disturbingly, some of these descriptions seem to apply to Mumbai today.
Think of the Amboli murders, where two men were killed for doing the right thing, or the chilling Kurar quadruple murders, the increasing violence against women, especially on our fabled suburban railways, the chaos on our roads, and, finally, the rot of power and money... can you miss the 'Jaanta hain main kaun hoon?' air seeping into the city's breath like the mountain chill that wafts down from the Himalayas — be it in the jagged-edged flags or the red beacons on our car roofs.
Quite ironically, Delhi, on the other hand, has gone from one positive change to another, as if it had gently inserted a straw into Mumbai's heart and surreptitiously sucked the soul out of it. As Mumbai has become increasingly indisciplined and lawless, Delhi seems to have discovered civilisation.
There is something about the manner in which people queue up for their Metro rides, turn down the volume, and behave themselves on the trains. As for the 'unsafe-for-women' status, a few months ago, I was on the last train to Rithala — farther from Delhi than Virar is from Mumbai — and counted about 40 women out of a total of about 120 passengers. Ten of them were accompanied by male companions; the rest were on their own.
On Delhi's outer and inner ring roads, the rough equivalent of Mumbai's Western and Eastern Express Highways, motorists generally follow the rules and traffic moves smoothly without cops on the prowl looking to rip off the next harried officer-goer who jumped the amber signal. Heck, cars even stop at red lights late at night.
And when it comes to art, something the two cities have sparred about forever, when was the last time you saw a gallery being ransacked or an exhibition being banned in Delhi?
Of course, despite all the positive signals, Delhi is still not the Mumbai of decades past. Women are still unsafe and the city continues to reek of power and money. But is that reason enough to deny that Mumbai has degenerated?