The New York Times August 3, 2005 Torrential Rain Reveals Booming Mumbai's Frailties By SOMINI SENGUPTA
NEW DELHI, Aug. 2 - The monsoon season this year brought India the mantle of a would-be world power with nuclear weapons in its arsenal and a friend in George W. Bush.
Then came the revenge of the real.
Fluke rains a week ago submerged Mumbai, the country's financial and entertainment capital, and unearthed the sorry state of the urban infrastructure that Mumbaikars already know too well.
Cattle carcasses floated in ponds that suddenly materialized on city roads. Commuters died in their cars. Shanties were swept away. Residents of first-floor apartments lost all their worldly possessions. Even a week later, when the rains had subsided and many commuter trains returned to near normal service, the streets of this always hustling, always harried coastal city remained eerily quiet. People simply stayed home.
On July 26, Mumbai, or Bombay as it is also known, received a record downpour of more than 30 inches in a 24-hour period. Rains came again on Monday, flights in and out of the city were curtailed, and though the death toll varied from account to account, the numbers were still staggering: 962 people had died across the state, according to officials Tuesday evening, among them 406 in Mumbai. Estimates of losses varied widely, from $700 million to $2.8 billion, in industry, agriculture and infrastructure combined.
A week into the disaster, it became clear that nature alone could not be blamed, and anger began to boil among the citizenry.
Why did the downpour cause such a calamity? The storm drain system, much of it built a century ago, has been clogged with garbage. The shanties of the poor, as well as the trash of the rich, have blocked gutters and creeks. Mangrove swamps, which act as nature's bathtub during the rainy season, have been built over. A river that once allowed storm water to be carried down to the Arabian Sea has since been pinched by the construction of a new road that is to connect a northern suburb to midtown Mumbai. Called Mithi, or Sweet, River, it once spawned oyster beds; now it swims with feces.
"The past has caught up with us, about which little can be done," Gerson D'Cunha, a former advertising executive and the founder of a civic group called Agni, or Fire, said by telephone. "It is bad weather that has caused part of the tragedy, but it is bad government policy that has compounded bad weather."
For years, environmentalists and civic activists have been screaming about what they regard as the unchecked development of the city, greased by spiraling land prices. Now they are saying they hope their city officials will take note and begin to make amends.
Government officials came under fire, too, for how they responded to the disaster. Why were streets not cleared for emergency vehicles? people asked. Why did relief not reach the neediest much sooner? What would happen, a former municipal commissioner, Jamshed Kanga, wondered aloud, if Mumbai were to be hit by even a moderate earthquake? More than half of the city - not only its beggars, but its maids and security guards and washerwomen - live in slums.
"You have a tragedy of this scale and you realize how the infrastructure is totally damaged," Mr. Kanga said. "Naturally it does a tremendous amount of damage to the reputation of the city."
Mumbai's ambitions to become a world-class city like Shanghai, as it was once suggested, or Dubai, as it was suggested before that, fell under a wet blanket. That it happened in India's iconic city of strivers, and not in some destitute corner, only highlight the bricks-and-mortar challenge - or rather, sewage and storm-drain challenge - that faces a country keen for a seat on the United Nations Security Council.
The Maharashtra State chief minister, Vilasrao Deshmukh, said Tuesday that the scale of the disaster did not allow government relief to reach everyone on time, but that government workers were today going door to door to provide rice and kerosene to all affected families. "It was unprecedented," he said, according to a Reuters report. "What could any government do?"
"We will look into the urban development issue, but this is not the time to do it," Mr. Deshmukh added. "Our priority now is rescue, relief and rehabilitation."
Mumbai being what it is, however, there were optimists. Mr. Kanga said he hoped that disaster could be converted to blessing and that building laws would be made stricter and infrastructure repaired. A member of Parliament from Mumbai, Milind Deora, seized on it as an opportunity to devolve power to city officials who would be accountable to citizens; currently, a state-appointed municipal commissioner is technically responsible for the city.
Bittu Sahgal, editor of the magazine Sanctuary Asia, said the sheer scale of the devastation from the flood perhaps would prompt a review of urban development plans that had effectively destroyed Mumbai ecological assets, the very assets that could have prevented waterlogging.
"We've got 25,000 flamingos; we've got a 103 kilometer national park with free-ranging leopards; we've got a seascape that is among the most beautiful in world," Mr. Sahgal said. "These assets should be defended. Decisions are in hands of people who don't have ecological foresight or hindsight. This has been a rude awakening."
Kiran Nagarkar, who counts himself as a Mumbaikar who likes to grouse about Mumbaikars, said he had witnessed a spirit of practical camaraderie and not that of a "besieged city."
"I don't think even on our worst days, we don't breast-beat - 'Poor us, what's happening to us,' " said Mr. Nagarkar, a novelist and playwright. "It's more 'Can I lend a hand?' and 'Let me get home.' It's very matter of fact, practical and helpful."