Former municipal commissioner calls flooding in Mumbai ‘man-made disaster’

Mehta said that there is a common dilemma that the civic authorities face when it comes to taking precautionary measures against flood abatement because these disasters impact the poor most

Mumbai During the final session of the two-day workshop on ‘Flood Risk’ in Mumbai, former municipal commissioner Ajoy Mehta said that flooding in Mumbai is a man-made disaster which impacts the poor the most while the rich sit at home and enjoy their ‘chai and pakoras’.

“For the rich, it is another holiday for having their Pakoras and Chai, while the huts of poor people get flooded and their wages are lost,” Mehta said. (Yogendra Kumar/HT PHOTO)

“Often there is a debate that whether flooding in Mumbai is a natural or a man-made disaster. It is a man-made disaster because if it was a natural or God-made event then the solutions would have originated automatically, wherein here the administration needs to find out the solution,” said Mehta speaking at the event.

Speaking at the session, Mehta said that there is a common dilemma that the civic authorities face when it comes to taking precautionary measures against flood abatement because these disasters impact the poor most and the rich don’t get that much impact.

“For the rich, it is another holiday for having their Pakoras and Chai, while the huts of poor people get flooded and their wages are lost,” Mehta said.

“Therefore, the budget doesn’t come to us easily because it is a major economic loss and the larger percentage of this economic loss is being carried out by the poor and not by the rich,” he added.

Furthermore, Mehta said that there are several common aspects to the annual flooding incidents of Mumbai as a ‘Planning-Execution-Operational’ disaster. Mehta said that either the abating measures have not been planned properly or the proposed plans were ‘punctured’ by someone.

“We need to plan the flood abating measures more meticulously. We need to take note of the blue lines, the height of plinths that are being constructed along with the absorption capacity. Flood abating measure in Mumbai is simply a planning disaster flooding takes place at the same places every year,” Mehta said.

“Besides planning flood abating in Mumbai is also implementation and operational disaster. Execution works are being taken up haphazardly and later we find out that the newly laid pipelines are affected by roots of trees while during a deluge the existing pumps of the city run out of diesel,” Mehta added.

Meanwhile, Jairaj Phatak, senior IAS officer and former municipal commissioner who also spoke at this event said that flooding is a natural calamity that couldn’t be predicted before.

Phatak said that man-made disasters are only of three categories - natural, nuclear, and biological.

“Rainfall and cyclones are natural disasters which we cannot foresee and predict. Moreover, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has distinguished urban rainfall from rainfall and flooding in rural areas,” Phatak said.

He said that in urban areas due to infrastructure building catchment areas occur naturally which increases the flooded value by six times automatically. The urban areas are also densely populated because of which the loss is higher.

“Due to these factors the loss in revenue and infrastructure caused during monsoon is higher in Mumbai,” Phatak said.