Rains In Mumbai and Flooding

Long Hiatus again , cause it time to get prepared for the rains, specially if you reside in Mumbai / garodia nagar, ghatkopar.Well the first showers were here in the morning today, the roads were wet and small pools of water collected on the roads.The morning air had the earthy smell, like it always does when the first showers fall on the soil.

Come rains in Mumbai and the people start running for taking all the precautions so as not to get trapped in the now infamous Mumbai flooding that have become such a regular thing.

The gutters / drains have now been cleared to some extent by the BMC in Gardoia Nagar albeit late or must say very late. But the debris removed from the gutter is still lyin gon the raod as it has not been collected by the dumper.

I don't understand the working schedules, timelines of the BMC, this is the 4th year since the flooding of 2005 which made Mumbai a death trap. Yet the BMC fails to implement a schedule to clean and tar the surface and potholes much before the May deadline.The cleaning of the Garodia Nagar gutters began just last week, and this also is being done by the contractors hired by the BMC, their work hardly monitored or supervised by the men In BMC and is left entirely to the contractors, who are totally hand in glove with the ward officials and pay good amount of money to the officials to see that they don't give a bad report about the same.

For long the gutters were not covered , so it was much easier for the ALM sweepers to clean them as and when they had the time. Now with the BMC taking over the cleaning of the same and with the gutters being closed / covered with concrete with very small drain covers it does not give much space to clean the gutters completely, thus accumulation of rain water is always there.

With the main Nalla, route of the water that pass into the large chambers / channels to the sea is covered with debris and illegal construction on these areas and squatters have made this problem more acute.

The BMC has time and again always blamed the utilities and other agencies working for the betterment of the roads and infrastructure as the main source of the flooding and pothole problems, this is not entirely wrong as most of the utilities specially the telecom companies and the electrical power companies dig at their own will and hardly take the effort to cover the roads in a proper manner , or quality of material ,without any knowledge of civil work the contractors of these companies make a mess of the nice and evenly tarred road, resulting in water logging and pot holes with the first rains.

Coupled with the Potholes, untimely or no cleaning of the drains gutter, poor scheduling, the lack of responsibility from the BMC as well as the utilities and also the general residents poor civic sense to adhere to have a proper disposal of dry wet garbage, Mumbai has become the richest garbage dump city of the world .As for Garodia Nagar, the ALM's were doing a good work with proper coordination and with little or no help from the residents they had still managed to keep the colony nice and clean.

But the residents most of them highly educated, cultured and knowledgeable are still bad when it comes to civic sense, the dry wet garbage disposal which was time and again shown and demonstrated by the local housewives , and men and children has not made any sense to these so called clean and knowledgeable residents.

The most basic problem is the segregation of dry wet garbage at source , in own homes many still don't do this and unless we have this system in our very homes and each and every individual becomes more responsible for what is happening in our homes and neighborhood , we all will be walking in dirty , goo (shit and urine filled drain waters coming from our very own toilets and ours neighbors , our children will go to school in the same waters, working people dressed up in best of clothes and shoes will just ignore and without looking down in the shit will walk and go to and come home as if it was nothing but plain good water.

Happy shit and urine filled monsoon to all of Mumbai, may all of us enjoy each others shit and urine and may God bless Mumbai with all the best diseases & epidemic.