29/8

Earlier there were two dates which no Mumbaikar will ever forget, first was 25th July 2005 and second was 26th Nov 2008. On 25th July Mumbai experienced the heaviest down pour amounting to more than 900 mm in 12 hours, which crippled Mumbai for next 2 days, and on 26th Nov Mumbai city was attacked by Pakistani terrorists in multi location and it again took next 2 days to   kill/apprehend terrorists. Now one more day has been added to the list and that is 29th Aug 2017. On this day again Mumbai was totally paralysed by heavy rains, this time it was only about 300 mm in 12 hours but Mumbai came to grinding halt. The so called life line of Mumbai, the local trains, were not operative for most of the day as tracks were flooded. On most of the roads the traffic came to stand still as they were flooded and on the other roads it was inching traffic. Even Mumbai airport was also not functioning for few hours and many of the incoming and out going flights were delayed beyond three hours, and for some period in coming flights were diverted. Only solace was BEST buses who were operating in full strength but of no use for most of the time, as traffic on the roads was hardly moving. Only thing which was not affected by this was Gatkopar to Versova Metro trains.

Do the commercial capital of country deserve this fate, when few hours down pour can cripple the city ? The answer would be definitely NO, then what ails this city. The city which contributes almost 30% of taxes collected by Govt of India does not deserve this. According to me, there are so many issues which need to be resolved to make Mumbai as world class city. I am mentioning below, few of the issues which need to be resolved:

1.  Mumbai is a Mega City,  having a annual budget which is more than the budget of few smaller states. Should this be controlled by a Municipal Corporation?
2. The present Municipal Corporation  BMC, which is under the control of Shiv Sena , earlier it was alliance of Shiv Sena and BJP. Now BJP is supporting Sena in BMC.  Time and again it has been proven as most corrupt body in the city. Friends you must have read every year  BMC spends hundreds of crores on the road repair, and come the first rain there are huge pot holes on the roads, and they again spend money to fill pot holes in the rain, which is totally temporary.
3. Same is the case with cleaning of storm water drains (SWD), what is the use of storm water drains which can not be kept clean. It is obvious that they are clogged then how water will be drained. Every year in the month of May, BMC  will start cleaning the SWD but it always happened that on paper all SWD are cleaned but reality speaks after the first major shower when roads start getting flooded. Why the cleaning of SWD can not be regular operations through out the year?
4. After 25th Jul 2005, more than Rs 600 crores have been spent on widening and cleaning of Mithi river but at what result. The river is as dirty as before, why, because both the  banks of the river are occupied by slum dwellers and BMC has not been able to clear them because the slum lords who have made these slums are connected politically and politicians used these slum dwellers as their vote bank and are not allowing BMC to clear those slums.
5. The hawkers on the footpath also play havoc with storm water drains, as all the rubbish and scrap which they generate ends up in SWD and clogs them. Additionally food vendors who prepare the food on footpath also add to this problem. And what to say about slums on footpath, they are also the major contributor in clogging SWD.
6. For last three decades there have been a big boom in real estate development in Mumbai, with so many Multi story Residential and Commercial towers mushrooming in the city, has BMC improved its storm water carrying capacity in last few decades. I do not think any one from BMC will be able to provide a concrete reply on this matter. I very well know that when Engineering Consultants  design any real estate project, they design the project’s internal SWD with the calculations of min 100 mm of rain fall in an hour, but if outside main SWD of BMC can not take even load of 25 to 30 mm rain in an hour then what you can do. In the case if your plinth level is not above the road then water will seep into your premises, otherwise water will accumulate on the road.
7. With most of the roads being concretised and hardly any raw earth left on the road, the rain water absorption in the earth is also being reduced, and this might create problems in the near future as water table below will start depleting.
8. Why no one thought  earlier about other mass transport system like metro. The metro work which is being carried out now in city, if it would have been started 3 decades earlier, there would not have been any problem, as this mass transport system is not affected by rains, but most of our politicians do not have brains to think 2 decades ahead.

So the problems are many , but no one from State Govt or BMC is making any effort to resolve them. All the politicians during their election campaign promise to make Mumbai as a world class city and after they win the election they forget. The reality is that these politicians have no solutions to offer for the problems faced by this Mega City. The biggest blunder the Central Govt did was that when they made Delhi as administrative capital of the country and made it as Union Territory, same way they could have made Mumbai, being the financial capital, also a Union Territory. In that case the problem would have been less. But the division of state on linguistic basis ruined this city, as between tussle of Gujaratis and Maharashtrians  the city was allocated to Maharashtra. Please remember even in 1960 Mumbai city,(then Bombay) which was part of Bombay State did not have majority of Maharashtrian populace, but it became part of Maharashtra. Even today almost 50% of Mumbai populace is non Maharashtrians. So what are the solutions to resolve Mumbai’s issue

1. Make Mumbai a separate state like Delhi, with Central Govts involvement for development or make Mumbai a Union Territory. There will be big opposition from the politicians for this move but the Central Govt will have to take this decision sooner or later to save this city.
2. There should be one development agency for city, presently development is being planned  by multiple agencies like BMC, Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority(MMRDA), Mahrashtra State Road development Corporation (MSRDC). Mumbai Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) and many more. These agencies hardly co ordinate with each other and at the time of calamity they start blaming each other.
3. The politician can not solve the problems of this city, as most of the Corporators of  BMC can not think beyond making money through real estates and land grabbing. The city’s development and operations of running the city should be handed over to the experts and some administrative body under Central Govt for approving and allocating funds for the development and operations.

The topic is very vast and I could go on and on, the above few thoughts of mine are worth pondering over.

So what you say my friends.

Awaiting for your feed backs and comments.