Wake up, Mumbai, or it will be too late!

Year after year, lip service is paid to controlling the onslaught of the monsoon in Mumbai but come next year, the deluge is back again with the same ferocity, disrupting normal life and putting the residents to untold misery and suffering. The story is repeated in cities across the country. We talk of ‘smart cities’ but we have no answer to nature’s fury, part of which is created by our own recklessness and rape of the environment. In the monsoon months of July to September, between 2012 and 2016, Mumbai’s suburban district received an average rainfall of 18.54 mm. But this time around, Mumbai received more than 11 times this amount in under 12 hours on August 29, 2017. If there is any consolation it is that when the metropolis was ravaged by floods of the same intensity in 2005, 500 people had died but this time the casualties are mercifully in single digit. Hopefully, the city is limping towards normalcy.

The storm water drainage system of Mumbai was built largely in the days of British rule in 1860, when the population of Mumbai was one-tenth of what it is at present. Sadly, improving the drainage has never been a priority for the government. The system comprises of about 400 km of underground drains and laterals, built on the basis of the population and weather conditions of the times it was constructed in. It is antiquated in the extreme. Most of the drains throughout the city have been found to be occupied by a substantial amount of garbage and other solid deposits. The resulting decrease in the capacity of the city’s storm water drainage system leads to inundation on a terrible scale.

The Mithi river catchment area has been drastically reduced due to extensive reclamation of land and this too contributes a lot towards flooding along its path. The flooding of Mithi River has direct or indirect repercussions on the disruption of the traffic on the five transport corridors viz. Central Railways, Western Railways, Western Express Highway, Eastern Express Highway and the Harbour Railway Line. Experts say the construction of Bandra Worli sea link has constricted the mouth of Mithi River at the Mahim bay. So, when the water from the river is discharged into the bay, during the high tides, due to its mouth being constructed the water surges back and overflows from the bank resulting in devastating floods.

There indeed are reasons aplenty but the authorities have to wake up to them and launch a well-thought-out plan of action to save the metropolis which is not happening. Laxity on the part of the authorities is already leading to ghastly results.