The Annual Stress Test

On July 26, 2005, when Mumbai saw record levels of rainfall, there was the extraordinary sight of Bal Thackeray, the founder of Shiv Sena, the party that rules the civic body of the city, having to leave his house because it got flooded. That deluge prompted a wave of recriminations and mammoth expensive plans of thousands of crores of rupees were floated, like desilting rivers, sprucing up the drainage system, etc. All of them now seem like the debris that floated on Mumbai’s flooded roads when the city saw five days of extreme rainfall.

It is not the flooding that is germane because the weather gods are always going to triumph and most cities in the world, even in developed countries, will not be able to avoid it. What is apparent in Mumbai, or anywhere else in India, is how quickly systems collapse. For instance, over the last one year, roads have been repeatedly dug to concre­tise them across Mumbai and before the monsoon, as usual, it was promised that there would be no potholes. And yet, no sooner did this spell happen, than over 2,000 potholes were reported. That doesn’t happen in developed countries. Nei­ther do suburban trains have to wade through railways lines that become waterways before finally giving up leaving commuters stranded.

The monsoon is the annual stress test that nature gives to Mumbai. That there will be at least one massive down­pour each season has been a predictable climate event for decades and what you can expect, you can plan for. Why then does Mumbai fail every single time? It does plan. On paper, every problem has been identified and the solution stated. But when it comes to execution, corruption raises its head. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation is rich, and every project includes a cut for everyone, from the contractor to the bureaucrat to the politician. To deliver permanent solutions would turn the tap off that feeds all those mouths. Mumbai’s potholes exist not because of the monsoon, but by design. Mumbai fails its stress test because there are hungry mouths riding on it.

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