When Mumbai
Flooded
By Ram Kumar
09 August 2005
World
Socialist Web
Torrential
rains and flooding have had a devastating impact on Mumbai (Bombay),
Indias financial capital, and surrounding areas over the last
week. The death toll has climbed to more than 1,000 and tens of thousands
more than been left homeless. Overwhelmingly, the worst affected have
been the poor from the citys slums and from outlying rural villages.
The monsoonal rains
began on July 26, when an unprecedented 76 centimetres of rain fell
in just 24 hours, devastating the citys inadequate infrastructure.
Flooding and landslides cut roads and rail and snapped electricity and
power lines. The international airport was only partially operational,
with a number of airlines being forced to cancel flights.
Tens of thousands
of people were stranded for hours or compelled to wade through water
to get home. Some died in submerged cars. Ground-floor apartments were
flooded. The carcasses of thousands of dead animals littered the streets.
The narrow alleyways in the shantytowns, where between a third and a
half of the citys population of 15 million live, were turned into
raging torrents. In the Saki Naka area, a massive landslide swept away
135 huts, killing several people.
The lack of clean
drinking water has raised fears of an epidemic of water-borne diseases.
Biju Mathew, a World Vision India (WVI) representative, told the media:
Anti-diarrhoeal and anti-malarial medicines used to prevent water-borne
diseases are not available. These medicines are needed as there could
be a disease outbreak. Another WVI official Reena Samuel explained
that many people had lost all their provisions in the floods and were
in urgent need of emergency rations.
Areas near Mumbai
have also been hard hit. About 14,000 passengers were stranded at railway
stations in the Nandurbar district due to flooding at the Mumbai end
of the line. Several trains were sent back to their originating points
on July 27. Milk tankers as well as vegetable trucks could not reach
Mumbai as the main Mumbai-Agra national highway was flooded near the
Shahapur area.
The BBC reported
that 22 people died in the village of Diva and another 10,000 lost their
homes and paddy fields. What we have now is whats left on
our bodies, one villager said.
In the Satara district,
50 villages were cut off after authorities were compelled to open all
10 floodgates of the Koyana dam because of the heavy rain in the catchment
area. Floodwaters submerged roads and bridges in the Patan and Karad
areas.
An estimated 20
million people across the state of Maharashtra have been affected by
the flooding. Damage to industry, agriculture and infrastructure is
put at between $US700 and $2.8 billion. The slow response of state and
national governments to the crisis has provoked angry demonstrations
by victims who have been left without food, water, shelter and other
essentials.
Thousands of men,
women and children staged 24-hour rasta rokos (blocking
highways) at more than 16 places in Mumbai to protest over the lack
of assistance. Residents from the government settlement in Bandra marched
to the local government offices on July 27 after local authorities failed
to carry out their promise to restore water supplies. The citys
police commissioner A.N. Roy warned Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao
Deshmukh that the situation could get out of hand if the power supplies
were not restored.
An article in the
Hindustan Times on August 2 commented: The spontaneous response
of over 5,000 angry residents of Kurla, facing acute problems of electricity
and clean water for five days, was indeed befitting. It was, indeed,
shameful that people at the helm of affairs in the city did little to
mitigate the sufferings of the poor and disadvantaged citizens affected
by the heavy downpour last week. The rasta roko and dharnas by the citizens
of Kurla is a signal to all the powers-be that enough is enough.
That limits of tolerance have been crossed and the common man cannot
take things lying down meekly.
A group of filmmakers
and media personalities, including filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt and director
Vinta Nanda, has announced public interest litigation against the state
government over its failures during the floods. Bhat told the press:
We are punished if we dont do our duty of paying taxes.
Why should the government not be punishable if it neglects its duty?
Poorly planned development
Chief Minister Deshmukh
acknowledged last week that the machinery was not as effective
but tried to brush off criticisms by declaring we have learnt
our lessons. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, whose Congress
Party is a partner in the state government, also tried to deflect opposition,
praising the residents for bearing a lot of personal distress
in silence. He toured Mumbai a week ago and promised $500 million
in assistance to upgrade the citys drainage system.
Both governments
have been seeking to promote Mumbai as a go-ahead economic and financial
centre capable of rivalling Indias global rivals. Deshmukh once
declared that Shanghai should be the benchmark for Mumbais
development. But it is precisely this anarchic economic development
that has led to an explosion of poorly planned construction that has
strained Mumbais antiquated infrastructure to the limit.
City authorities
were responsible for bulldozing large areas of slums earlier this year,
leaving an estimated 400,000 people homeless, in order to make way for
further development. The displaced were among the hardest hit by the
flooding. In the aftermath, state water resources minister Ajit Pawar
blamed slum dwellers for clogging the drains with rubbish and called
for fresh demolition drives.
However, as social
activist Medha Patkar explained: Everybody, media to the ministers,
blames slum-dwellers for blocked drains, but the municipal engineers,
after preliminary surveys, have acknowledged that the real cause is
large scale construction activity which should not have been undertaken
without first providing for adequate drainage.
An article in the
New York Times pointed to some of the underlying causes: Mangrove
swamps, which act as natures 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 been pinched by the construction of a road
to connect a northern suburb to midtown Mumbai.
The Mumbai drainage
system was built over a century ago, during the period of British colonial
rule. According to city municipal commissioner Johny Joseph, a plan
for a $3 billion upgrade has been put been put before the national government
but has not yet been approved.
Majid Memon, a lawyer
involved in the public interest litigation case, commented to Associated
Press: Last weeks disaster has exposed the citys inability
to cope with such crisis. It is a manifestation of a larger problemthe
manner in which we have ignored the basic interests of the people of
Mumbai. If we can develop the technology to make nuclear bombs and launch
satellites, why cant we build better drains, better roads, give
our citizens better amenities?
The obvious answer
to the question lies in the operation of the market. Successive municipal,
state and national governments have all been intent on opening up India
to foreign investment and transforming Mumbai in particular into a financial
and economic hub. As a result, city authorities have ignored planning
principles and bulldozed slums in order to provide land for high-rise
development. As in Shanghai, the divide between rich and poor has deepened
and infrastructure has been stretched to the limit. The consequence
has been a disaster that has claimed more than a thousand lives and
brought terrible suffering to many more.
One can predict
in advance that Deshmukhs statement about learning lessons
will be forgotten as soon as the flooding fades from the media. The
year began with the tsunami catastrophe that claimed more than 15,000
lives in southern India. In June, heat waves with temperatures reaching
47°C caused the death of more than 370, mostly poor people, throughout
India. That was followed by heavy rains and flooding in the state of
Gujurat which killed 142 people. In each of these cases, little or nothing
has been done to prepare for or prevent future tragedies.