Mumbai is yet to learn lessons from the 2005 deluge and is staring at another monsoon crisis
The Maximum City has taken to its moniker rather seriously. For monsoon after monsoon, it tries to beat its own record of maximum woes. And with the heaviest rainfall in over a decade, over 20 people have been killed in rain-related incidents in India’s commercial capital and aspirant world city. With reports of wall collapses, submergence of cars, drowning, flooded tracks and airports being forced to shut down operations for almost 48 hours, the State Government was forced to declare an emergency shutdown to avoid anymore loss of lives. And as fire brigade and National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF) teams are going out on an arm and a leg to avoid human disasters, it is clear that no lessons have been learnt from the great deluge and floods of 2005. Meanwhile, the only thing that helpless Mumbaikars have got used to is unlimited patience and endurance of what has become an annual dirge. Severe rains are expected over the next few days and it looks like the city has to factor in “monsoon shutdowns” in its calendar. And no amount of dark age fatalism, attributing disaster to the forces of nature, micro-climate, climate change-induced extreme weather events, can be an excuse in today’s urban cultures guided by predictive technologies and preparedness. So it is utterly ridiculous of the Shiv Sena to blame all the suffering on the unprecedented nature of the monsoon or the encroachers who, it claimed, had built houses and illegal extensions on sewers. “What happened is an accident,” one of its leaders claimed outrageously.
The problem is Mumbai’s crisis is being replicated along India’s coastal hubs, the Chennai floods being the latest example. Clearly urban planning templates are stuck in time and are not being rejigged or modified to factor in persistent concerns of a severely stressed infrastructure. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has consistently failed in its efforts to prevent flooding, be it desilting existing drainage outlets or making sure they are functional in the first place. With slapping rains and high tide in the sea, the rainwater does not flow out of the city but just backflushes and inundates every low-lying area. Incidentally, there has been a consistent public awareness campaign about encroachments into the city’s natural creeks and land reclamation drives that have increased the city’s built-up space rather disproportionately. But these are of no avail as there has been no redrawing of contours or any concrete plan to allow unhindered water flow by reviving and restoring creeks. Even the Mithi river, which was brought to focus after 2005, continues to be a trickle rather than the outflow channel it needed to become. Unfortunately, most rail tracks in the city run through low-lying areas or below the mean sea level, resulting in flooding and halting of rail services. The city relies on storm water drains that are over a century old and with a lax solid waste management system, clogging is an old story. The BMC did plan a storm water disposal system (Brimstowad) project after 2005, which involved eight pumping stations and 58 projects to rev up the city’s pipelines. But till date, less than half the projects are yet to take off. Civic contractors, tasked with the job of garbage disposal, clearance and sewerage management, are seldom reviewed, fined or hauled up within an actionable time frame. One need not even mention the cosy relationship that they have built with officialdom over time, a malady that is so deeply entrenched that it is difficult to root it out. The civic consciousness is only seasonal. And Mumbai’s ills can be replicated in any city in India, where natural water channels and lakes are being buried under human greed. Wait for the showers in Delhi to wreak traffic havoc, yet again.
Meanwhile, one hopes that the rains fill up the reservoirs and save the rain-shadow of western India from drought. A deficit of monsoon rain in July is particularly worrying for farmers. It is the time to transplant rice that needs regular showers. And anyway, with warnings of a late monsoon, farmers have planted this crop rather late in the day. Paddy was sown in about 27 lakh hectares by June 28 — 8.45 lakh ha short of last year. Almost all crops have reported a drop because of under-sowing. If rainfall becomes erratic again, then crops will be damaged before they mature. Deficits in monsoon have historically caused our worst droughts.
