26/7 – who is to blame?

On the twenty sixth of July, 2005, there was a cloudburst over Mumbai that brought life to a standstill. 944 millimeters of rain later, people were stranded all over the city. The highways were blocked because of one massive traffic jam, the cell phone networks crashed (or were purposely taken down to prevent mass hysteria), the railways slowed down and then completely stopped and all the airplanes had to be grounded in the airports themselves. Schoolchildren were stuck in their school buses, or if they were lucky, in the schools. Office goers had to spend the night in their offices itself. The worst affected were people stuck in Railway stations, and who had to spend their nights there. To top it all, the electricity failed in most of the city, hampering rescue operations, and the comfort of the stranded people. Everyone has their own story to tell about 26/7. There were well over a 1000 deaths due to drowning, landslides and electrocution. Everyone agrees that it was a tragedy. The question arises as to who should be held responsible for it.
One can just blame nature and end it there. Afterall, what can man do against the forces of nature? If it rains heavily, then there is nothing we can do except learning to live with it. There is our problem: we haven’t learnt to live with it. We just didn’t have the foresight that was necessary to alleviate the tragedy. It is the fault of the entire community of the whole and not of the government at all. In fact, the government did everything in its power to set things right as soon as possible. The rescue and relief operations were handled in a commendable manner. Even if any one of us were to be in the government, would we really be interested in a better way to handle the drainage system? Prevent the intrusion into mangroves by slums and industrial facilities? The answer is no. In our initial planning, we had not taken into account any disaster management plan. Such a thing was not an integral part of the design of the city. Moreover, the city is expanding at a ferocious rate. This means that there is an increasing influx of people into Mumbai, and there is insufficient infrastructure to support these people. Therefore, one of the factors that contributed to making 26/7 a disaster was a lack of proper planning for the city.
Another was the ineffective drainage system, which was further hampered by its clogging due to excessive garbage. Mumbai throws away five tones of plastic garbage everyday. I am absolutely sure that every time someone throws a plastic bag in the gutter, that someone wouldn’t have thought that their actions would end up clogging the drainage system. At least some of the 233 people who drowned could have been saved if only the public hadn’t thrown such garbage I the drainage system. While not doubting the fact that these plastic bags have clogged up the drainage system, one must consider what the BMC could have done to better handle this. Remember around six years ago when the polythene bags were banned the first time around? The initiative was taken because of water logging. The storm water drainage system in Mumbai hasn’t been changed for 65 years, and a massive project to this effect was almost started in 1990. The cost of renovating the drainage system was 600 crores, and the BMC deemed this too high an amount to spend on the drains. The project would have been completed by 2002, and this would have doubled the capacity of drains, and they could have borne the burden of the rains better.
The blame finally comes onto the lack of planning, but we are to blame for this, not the government. In a democratic society, if such a thing as disaster management planning does not exist in the conscience of the people, then it is very unlikely to exist in the conscience of the government.

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