The Hindu Business Line : Whither Mumbai?

On July 26, 2005, the day that will remain deeply etched in the consciousness of Mumbaikars for a long time, every single public utility in Mumbai failed, pushing the city's half-million residents into a bizarre water world.

True, the heavy downpour and high tide came with no advance warning. The downpour lasted 12-14 hours, but it took the State Government, and particularly the Municipal authorities, almost 36 hours to wake up to the chaos around them. With almost no information forthcoming from the authorities, people panicked.

"Given that Mumbai is a coastal city, there is no way one can say such a catastrophe was not anticipated. True, the cloudburst and the 995-mm rain that fell in the space of a few hours was of nature's making but the resultant water-logging that turned the city lowlands into virtual water bodies was man-made," says Vidyadhar Phatak, former Chief Planner, Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority.

Workers repair a damaged highway.

What came to light was the complete lack of preparedness by the civic and city planning bodies in dealing with such a disaster. Even as traditional communication links such as telephones (both land lines and mobile phones) collapsed, it appeared that only the amateur radio (HAM) operators were keeping communications going that day.

Civic authorities world over have created Search and Rescue (SAR) teams, which are immediately deployed during such contingencies. However, the SAR team created by Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), it transpires, is trained only for collapsed structures and rope rescue. They are not skilled in handling floods and other calamities. That the Mumbai SAR team conceived in 2002 is a half-baked product with marginal funding and no independent communication system became starkly evident on July 26.

Rescue, relief and rehabilitation are three stages in disaster management. During the floods, rescue operations were chaotic and unorganised, largely because of lack of information.

The worst example was the traffic jams, especially in south Mumbai where people started for their suburban residences in private vehicles, as there was no advisory to the contrary. This led to huge traffic jams and the whole traffic system collapsed. By this time, the suburban railways had ground to a halt, unable to flush out water from its tracks.

"Mumbai is still dependent on a 150-year-old railway system that has no mechanism to drain out water from the tracks. Whenever rains halt suburban rail traffic, we still wait for the tide to ebb, for water to recede from the railway tracks. At least, after this calamity, the railways will have to find a proper engineering solution to what has become a recurrent problem," says Arun Mokashi, transportation expert and former World Bank consultant.

GIS? What's that?

To compound woes, it was found that the BMC, which rules over a city that's arguably the richest in the country and rated amongst leading cities in the world, did not have a Geographic Information System (GIS). This computer mapping and simulation facility is, in fact, available with several city-based private companies.

Town planners are convinced that had BMC utilised GIS and computer simulation models on July 26 and the ensuing days, it could have given a fairly correct picture of the deluge and the potential danger areas. GIS in recent years has emerged as a valuable forecasting tool especially because of its ability to create complex digital maps with voluminous data.

"We should have had a detailed plan of all the waterways in the city, with details of cross-section, longitudinal profile, drainage basin and catchments areas of each of the gutters, creeks and rivers, not necessarily in that order. It is unfortunate that BMC does not even have a detailed drainage map of Mumbai city," says Phatak.

And to compound the drainage problems, the Mithi river, which is one of the biggest carrier of rainwater from the hills of Powai, rose to record levels of flooding. The river has been blocked at various points along its 15-km course through the eastern suburbs, mainly to accommodate the Mumbai airport runway and the financial hub at the Bandra Kurla Complex, not to mention the extensive choking at the river mouth.

Little wonder that environmentalists compared this to a coronary thrombosis when almost all the low-lying areas along the river route got flooded.

City plan

According to the town planner, slums and other unauthorised structures in Mumbai are most vulnerable to flooding. The slum-dwellers have built on culverts, river embankments and hill slopes; maximum casualties were reported from these areas, many situated under high-tension electrical lines. Clearly, it did not help to have a large number of buffalo sheds and makeshift dairies in these areas, as the dung and other wastes led to massive silting.

"The river mouth is much wider today due to the dredging of Mahim creek in1981, as part of the Bandra reclamation process. The foundations of the three bridges (road, rail and water) across the Mahim creeks have been altered to allow additional flow of water. The problem is more upstream than downstream," adds Phatak.

The city's development plan assumes that the region is a flatland, with no contours. It does not take into account the drainage basin of the water bodies.

Water flows from the lakes uphill, by way of a river-turned-gutter, before reaching the Mahim creek. In the development plan there is no topographical cognisance of the water levels at various points. Consequently, the land use is also based on the `flatland perception'.

Significantly, the World Bank-aided Mumbai Drainage Master Plan was prepared for the BMC in 1992. However, the BMC opted against implementing the plan in totality, which would have cost Rs 600 crore. "The plan was implemented in bits and pieces. You need to implement such a plan in totality," says a government official under conditions of anonymity.

Hopefully, BMC would now go ahead and implement its disaster management plan, complete with GIS and computer modelling. By simulating the rainfall and tide, one can forecast potential flooding spots in Mumbai.

Periodic updates would provide an early warning system for city residents. Vulnerability zone demarcation would also help in identifying possible shelter areas during a calamity.

Wishing away calamities is a sure recipe for disaster. It is not that Mumbai is not prone to flooding. Though the intensity of floods in the past may not have been as severe, till date the Government has been guilty of not taking any proactive measures to counter this threat.

"Electricity bills can be colour coded to help with the zoning process. Utilities like power and communication systems should be designed and managed in such a way that they can withstand disasters. Transformers can be placed on a higher level to prevent damage from flooding," says the bureaucrat.

If there is one overriding issue facing Mumbai, it is the burgeoning slums. By and large, Mumbai slums can be classified into four categories: slums located close to basic infrastructure facilities, in flood-prone areas like river embankments, in open public places, and in proximity of infrastructure projects under execution. The State Government needs to address the issue of relocating slums that are close to basic infrastructure like railways, airports and pavements.

Way forward

If infrastructure remains what it is today in Mumbai and modes of road and rail transportation comes under further strain with galloping population, there may be no alternative but to decongest the business district of south Mumbai. The other alternative is to get the private sector involved in solving the logistics problems — both by constructing alternative modes such as mass rapid transport and by linking the island with mainland using trans harbour bridges. Also, the authorities could consider the polder and dyke model prevalent in The Netherlands, as these are very similar to the reclaimed land tracts in Mumbai.

In suburban Vashi, the authorities are already experimenting with this model and may need to scale it up further to meet the requirement at the Mahim creek.

For a city that has been making enormous noise about becoming a world-class city, upgradation of basic infrastructure is mandatory. Mumbai may not become Shanghai, either by noon or midnight, but it cannot afford to regress on account of what happened during the recent deluge. This is, after all, the country's financial nerve centre... let's not lose our nerve so easily.

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