Mumbai8217;s downpour

As Mumbai takes stock of the damage caused by Wednesday8217;s downpour, there are bound to be long arguments about what could have been done and what needs to be done in future to prevent this vast metropolis from coming to a standstill for two days. By and large the government8217;s office for disaster management failed to rise to the occasion. People were left to cope as best they could with a flooded city and paralysed transport system. Mercifully, the telephone and power systems did not collapse. What did was the information system. It is truly astonishing in this information age how little useful information was available at the right time for the people who needed it from official agencies or private sources. There is probably no other city in India where people are bombarded with so much information all day long. Yet, when it came to wet Wednesday there was an information blackout and millions of commuters rolled unknowingly into high water.

Looking at general conditions in the city on that day it is clear that everything could have been a lot worse than it was: a higher death toll, more economic losses and even civil disturbances given hundreds of thousands of stranded people and impassable roads and rail tracks. Wednesday was a pointer to worse scenarios in the future which the city should prepare for. The present death toll is high and accounted for mainly by the disastrous mudslide in the eastern suburb of Ghatkopar which engulfed a congested slum so quickly that no one in its path had time to escape. Similar accidents are waiting to happen in many other parts of the city. Any serious disaster planning for Mumbai will have to reckon with the risks to a slum and pavement population of some seven million from the collapse of rough and ready building materials, and waterborne diseases.

The city is all too familiar with the pattern of incessant heavy rain coinciding with high tide leading to flooding within a few hours. Accurate predictions of when this will happen are not possible. The only certainty is that large parts of the city will be flooded once or twice every monsoon season. This is because natural drainage has been greatly reduced by the cement concrete sprawl and Mumbai8217;s 100-year old drainage system, even when it is not choked with plastic, cannot cope. While new storm drains need to be built and are planned, other solutions should urgently be considered. One way to minimise the hardships people undergo is to ensure they stay home when floods threaten. That means the city8217;s information system needs to be cranked up. If every supervisor at railway stations is equipped with a palm pilot, he or she can both send out and receive useful information about the state of the tracks and roads in the locality. Every cable operator should be supplied with quarter-hourly monsoon and trafficbulletins. A government weather bureau on the Internet at least for the duration of the monsoon would be helpful for citizens who need to plan their movements. Simple remedies such as these can make a world of difference while the city waits for its infrastructure to be modernised.