‘Not a single thing was dry’: Mumbai’s residents count the cost of floods
MUMBIA - As torrential rain pounded Mumbai this week, Radha Rajput was where she always is: on the pavement between railway tracks and a main road. The streets of India’s financial capital are her home and have been for the past 50 years. She and her son, his wife and their oneyear-old twins have endured the challenges of seasonal rain and scorching summer heat for decades, but this downpour was a fresh nightmare.
“We have been sitting and sleeping on these steps, because they are a bit higher up, for days now,” said Rajput, as her daughter sat behind her picking lice out of her hair. “We can’t cook, there is no clean drinking water. The water was up to our waist. Not a single thing was dry. The rich are OK, but we’re out here with nothing.” Devastating rainfall across South Asia has led to the deaths of more than 1,200 people and directly affected more than 40 million people in northern India, southern Nepal, northern Bangladesh and southern Pakistan. About 60% of Mumbai’s 20 million residents live in slums, which gives the city its nickname “Slumbai”. The 2011 Indian census put the number of homeless people in Mumbai at just over 57,000, but local activists say it is more like 150,000-300,000. As the flood waters began to ebb on Friday, the impact of the disaster on rich and poor people alike was beginning to emerge. Rescuers worked overnight to pull 12 survivors from the rubble of a building that collapsed on Thursday in the densely populated area of Bhendi Bazaar, killing 34 people.
(Theguardian)