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Mumbai emerges from a watery
hell
By Raja M
MUMBAI
- Armageddon, too, comes with previews. Or so
India's two most-populated coastal cities now have
the right to think, following the murderous
tsunami waves that deluged Chennai on the east
coast in December and the monsoon floods and a
diabolic city civic administration that battered
and crippled Mumbai on the west coast this
fortnight.
At last count, more than 1,000
are conservatively estimated dead in Mumbai,
property loss is pegged at more than $US1 billion
in the state of Maharastra and after 10 days the
bustling financial capital of South Asia still
struggles to totter back to even keel. And just
this week, health authorities announced that 47
people, including many children, had died in
Mumbai from several water-borne diseases.
Domestic insurance companies have reported
receiving more than 20,000 claims, even as
carpetbaggers are making hay. The busiest seem to
be junk dealers and auto garage owners (who have
desperately doubled car repair fees to keep the
rush away and still have to work overtime to
handle long queues).
J K Gupta, general
manager of New India Assurance Company, told the
media that claims on account of torrential rains
in Mumbai are expected to far outweigh losses from
the Gujarat quake in 2003. Tsunami-caused
insurance claims total $14 billion worldwide.
April 29 started out as any other monsoon
day in Mumbai - cloudy, muggy, with persistent
drizzle. The first inking this correspondent had
of things being seriously askew was when there
were no taxis to be found in busy Churchgate for a
ride to the Shivaji train terminus barely two
kilometers away. Trains were not running, and
neither were buses, and millions were stranded
high and wet in the peak-hour evening rush. It was
back to the office for me, and for the next three
days the Mumbai bureau of the Kolkatta-based
Statesman newspaper became a comfortable port in a
storm, even as the rest of the city north of South
Mumbai sunk into a watery hell.
By the
morning of April 30, Mumbai knew this was no
ordinary monsoon squall. A local English daily
reported: "A weary and sodden Mumbai, which was
lashed by the highest-ever rainfall recorded in
three decades, woke up on Wednesday to find that
the second day was barely a little better than the
first: landslides, deaths, water and power cuts,
food shortages, erratic telephone links, and no
trains ... And, in a cruel irony, a fire in the
middle of the flood," the story added, referring
to the major fire at the Bombay High oil rig in
the Arabian Sea, with fatalities and 70% drop in
oil production. "While South Mumbai," the
newspaper marveled, "which recorded barely two
inches of rainfall, was like Noah's Ark in the
midst of the deluge, untouched and afloat, the
suburbs went under."
As the city went
under, women trudged home in neck-high gutters
filled with carcasses of buffaloes and stories
poured in of bodies of children floating by, of
folks disappearing while wading through roads that
had turned into raging torrents of water, of
people drowning in stalled flooded cars. The
Mumbai disaster management plan needed disaster
management.
A fortnight later editors
fumed with righteous indignation at governmental
failure and prominent Bollywood personalities
filed a public interest litigation in court. Other
Bollywood worthies decided to cash and make a few
quick "reality" movies on the flood. A diffident
state government tried to weakly fend of angry
accusations of incompetence and callousness.
Besides the obvious fingerpointing at
outdated drainage systems, unchecked urban
development and missing crisis management systems,
the core issue was whether modern-day cities have
become death traps by themselves, sliding to that
final oblivion under a steadily building overload
of people, wastage and over-stretched
infrastructure.
For instance, in an
interview the Mumbai Commissioner of Police for
Traffic told Asia Times Online that more than 380
new cars were being registered every day in
Mumbai. That was two years ago. Since then, there
is yet to be any serious thought, planning or
decisions invested in reducing road traffic. With
this disaster fortnight, not many were willing to
consider the mania to own cars and the bursting
auto population in shrinking road space being as
much responsible for city arteries being choked as
death traps in any human-made crisis or natural
disaster.
History's early warning system
serves multiple reminders of periodic visiting
disasters in South Asia and China. On November 13,
1970, a cataclysmic cyclone-generated tidal wave
killed more than a million in Bangladesh (then
still East Pakistan). A worse and little-known
natural disaster was in China, along the Yangtze
River, in August 75 years ago, when 3.7 million
perished in a flood from drowning, disease and
starvation
Disaster management has to
start with how to decongest and de-slum South
Asia's biggest cities, the last refuge for a rural
population fleeing poverty. And secondly, managers
have to look at how to create an urban workforce
than can work from home in these times of 24-hour,
high-speed Internet connectivity,
video-conferencing and mobile phones that serve as
communication work stations.
Urban
disaster is just a dateline away. The 21st century
mega cities on coasts have their date with the
kind of final disaster that buried civilizations.
The French scholar Claude F A Schaeffer
(1898-1982) had researched the fall of ancient
great cities, particularly the Phoenician
city-state of Ras Shamra (Ugarit) in Syria. The
second city of Troy came to an end at the same
time the Old Kingdom of Egypt fell. The
destruction was born out of earthquakes and great
tidal waves.
In a business survey of
India's leading CEOs, an overwhelming 90% warned
that what happened to Mumbai week could be
repeated in other major cities as well. India Inc
(business community) was disappointed with the
complete failure of disaster management in the
metropolis, but India Inc also needs to wear its
thinking cap to find less office-centric and
city-center ways of doing business.
Mega
cities such as Mumbai cannot sustain current
populations of more than 15 million, let alone
thousands entering the city each day to make it
their new home. City planners have long warned
that storm drains, built more than a century ago,
were getting choked by garbage and construction
debris. Mumbai municipal commissioner Johny Joseph
said that a $3-billion upgrade plan was awaiting
approval from the central government in New Delhi.
The saving grace in the watery crisis came
as usual, with the intrepid spirit of Mumbai
refusing to be squashed by floods and bungling
governments. People waited by the raging rivers of
roadsides and served tea, biscuits and bottled
water around the clock to stranded, struggling
commuters - many thousands of whom were trudging
for more than six hours through dark, flooded
roads to reach home. Many opened their homes to
shelter strangers, particularly the elderly.
In suburban Jogeshwari, local groups
united to distribute food. Ramnath Shenoy, an
engineer, circulated a story appearing in a local
newspaper about a stray dog turning pathfinder,
saving lives by guiding people to portions of the
road without going under in open potholes.
Five-star hotels such as the Hyatt and the Taj
opened their doors to everyone, particularly
street children. People slept in the hotel
ballrooms and on carpets. The hotels served free
snacks and beverages, and local residents pitched
in by sending sandwiches and other food.
Multinational banks opened their office doors to
stranded school children, feeding, clothing,
entertaining them and helping them stay in contact
with parents.
Every time Mumbai faces a
crisis, and the city has faced many in the past 15
years, its people turn out to be the biggest
single crisis-management unit, by helping
themselves and others. And the usual
congratulation ends with the salutation "Salaam
Mumbai". Salaam can also be a way of bidding
farewell, and perhaps the reality that has begun
to stare Mumbai in the face is that for its future
medium-term survival, a few million may better bid
this city good-bye, to give it much need breathing
and living space to heal itself.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact us for information
on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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