Monsoon here,not BMC measures

“City’s storm water drains are equipped to handle only 50 mm of rainfall an hour. Anything more would cause water-logging. We cannot afford to design a drainage system with a capacity for 100 mm of rainfall. This is impractical and expensive,” says additional municipal commmissioner Aseem Gupta,in-charge of civic roads and storm water drains department.

This year,220 dewatering pumps were installed at over 180 locations. Still after the first rains on June 9,Hindmata junction and Dadar remained inundated for days. After the deluge of July 26,2005 when 500 lives were lost,it was critical to de-silt major and minor nallahs and the Mithi River (along with its widening and deepening). Though works worth crores (Rs 89 crore this year) are bid out,their supervision leaves a lot to be desired.

“These pre-monsoon exercises are done yearly,yet the work continues to be shoddy. This may be attributed to the deteriorating work ethic and efficiency of the BMC staff and contractors. There is a falling rigour in quality and punctuality. This is exacerbated with growing pressure on the existing infrastructure due to increasing population,” points out former municipal commissioner D M Sukhtankar (retd).

BMC chief Sitaram Kunte admits there is scope to do better. “Many areas in our disaster management need improvement. The city so far has neither experienced heavy showers nor high tides; these circumstances are man-made and a result of negligence. However,given Mumbai’s geographical location,citizens must be cautious. The city is only 1 m above the sea level and naturally prone to water-logging,” he says.

“I agree that potholes and water-logging do lead to slowing down of traffic that may eventually hamper rescue efforts but the city may have to face this for some time before our five-year project of concretising all roads and the BRIMSTOWAD pumping stations project are complete,” says Gupta.

This is what happened when Aftab Manzil in Mahim collapsed earlier this month. Recounting experience,Surendra Pratap,director general,NDRF said,“Although we were immediately informed of the incident,it took us some time to reach the city from Pune on account of the rain and related issues.”

In case of evacuating residents from dangerously dilapidated buildings,the corporation claims its hands are tied. While it has forcibly evicted residents from its own 153 dilapidated properties under section 105B of the Mumbai Municipal Corporation Act of 1888,still no provision allows evacuation of residents from 606 privately-owned non-cessed dilapidated buildings.

Many agree that BMC’s emergency disaster management response is top notch. “It is excellent — we have a state of the art disaster management cell in the basement of the BMC headquarters and very good weather monitoring stations. But they will face obvious obstacles because of the corporation’s larger issues of lack of planning and initiative to take decisive preventive steps. Disaster and development are closely linked and must be considered together during disaster management planning,” said Mahesh Kamble,professor at the Centre for Disaster Management,TISS.