Day after deluge, Mumbai asks: What happened to all that money?

However, the city administration and the political leaders in charge of it were busy thumping their own backs for being able to keep the intensity of the deluge limited.

Debris of the collapsed houses after a landslide in Vikroli Mumbai on Wednesday. One person was killed in the mishap. | PTI

MUMBAI: Inability of Mumbai’s infrastructure to handle heavy rains stood exposed yet again. However, the city administration and the political leaders in charge of it were busy patting their own backs for being able to keep the intensity of the deluge limited.

BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) commissioner Ajoy Mehta defended the civic administration, pointing out that the city returned to normalcy within eight hours on Tuesday while it had taken 36 hours in 2005. He also said that the area and population affected by the deluge twelve years back were manifold compared to the present crisis and gave the credit to the implementation of the recommendations of Brihanmumbai Stormwater Disposal System report.

A car is seen piled over another, after being

“According to the report, the Mithi river has been widened and deepened. Due to this, there was no flooding even while the Vihar lake was overflowing,” Mehta said. He added that works on six out of the eight recommended pumping stations have been completed. They pumped out 8,000 million litres of water throughout the day on Tuesday, he said, and claimed that the capacity of the city’s storm water drainage system was doubled to handle an additional 50 mm of rains per hour since 2005.

The report Mehta referred to was part of the Greater Mumbai Disaster Management Action Plan of 2007. The plan identified risks and vulnerabilities the city may face, including floods, earthquakes and cyclones. It also formed a Disaster Management Cell to coordinate relief and rescue efforts. However, according to Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray, a coordination between various civic agencies in the city like the BMC, the Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (MMRDA), Railways and the Metro rail corporation (MMRCA) was lacking.

De-silting of the storm water drains is one of the major reasons for the monsoon waterlogging in Mumbai. Corruption in awarding de-silting contracts has been blamed for that. Thackeray’s Shiv Sena has been ruling the BMC for over two decades now. The budget of the BMC has skyrocketed to over 500 per cent in the last decade alone.

According to records, the civic body should have spent over Rs 75,000 crore on capital investment in the city over the past 15 years. At least that much had been set aside for construction/renovation of roads, bridges, solid waste management, water, sewerage, storm water drains and public healthcare system. However, almost half of it remains unspent.

The state government has announced mega plans and assured heavy investment, primarily in ramping up the city infrastructure. However, the construction work for three metro lines, which is in progress, primarily in the western suburbs of the city too is being blamed for Tuesday’s waterlogging. Apart from these, environmentalists and researchers have contended the plastic garbage that clog the waterways, is another reason for the monsoon water logging in the city.