Five people dead as deluge-hit Mumbai struggles to recover
MUMBAI: A day after the Tuesday deluge which claimed five lives, Mumbai struggled on Wednesday to get back on its feet, with many thousands reaching their homes after being stranded for over 24 hours.
Akin to the great floods of July 2005 when the city was buried under 945 mm rainfall on a single day, Mumbaikars were mostly left to fend for themselves on Tuesday when it rained about 316 mm, paralysing the megapolis.
A day later, the situation had yet to fully normalised in the country’s commercial capital as thousands struggled to reach their homes on Wednesday morning — instead of rushing to work as is the usual weekday scenario for Mumbai’s eight million plus commuters.
Mumbaikars alleged that the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), India’s richest civic body with an annual budget of over Rs 25,000 crore and cash reserves of over Rs 61,000 crore, totally let down the citizens who battled all odds to survive and remain safe or unhurt.
“Every year, the BMC claims it spends billions of rupees, this year over Rs 6 billion, for cleaning drains and upgrading the infrastructure premonsoon. If this is the result, where has the money gone?” demanded an agitated realtor P Desai of Vile Parle.
Proclaimed the financial powerhouse of the country, Mumbai simply collapses whenever there is 100mm rains and losses worth billions are incurred due to the inefficiency of the civic officials and the ruling Shiv Sena- Bharatiya Janata Party, Desai added.
On day 2, the train services have not got fully on tracks though the regular crowds were missing owing to a holiday declared for schools and colleges.
Even government servants were given the option to attend office only if feasible.
The IMD has already forecast “heavy to very heavy rains in the entire coastal Konkan belt including Mumbai” later on Wednesday and the extreme wet weather conditions are likely to persist till Saturday.
Even as Shiv Sena President Ud- dhav Thackeray conducted a meeting with top civic and party officials, the opposition Congress-Nationalist Congress Party targeted the ruling party (Shiv Sena) and ally BJP for “utter fail- ure” to cope up with the situation.
Meanwhile, owing to a series of cancellations, massive delays, diversions of several long-distance trains to and from Mumbai, thousands of passengers continued to be stranded at railway stations and terminals like Borivali, Lokmanya Tilak Terminus, Bandra, Mumbai Central, Dadar Terminus and Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus.
Mumbaikars faced the prospects of a fresh spiraling of prices of fruits, vegetables and essentials owing to short supply from wholesale centres outside Mumbai.