Mumbai’s Monsoon Chaos Exposes Decades Of Infrastructure Failures; Calls Grow For Unified Civic Authority

Once again the focus in India’s financial capital, Mumbai, is on the poor state of infrastructure and the collapse of transport and other systems. Three days of incessant rains broke down most of Mumbai's transport services, like the suburban train network, which carries over a crore commuters every day, the BEST bus service, as well as the swanky monorail service, which is supposed to be a flexible and durable urban mass transport system.

As usual, there are now allegations and counter-allegations about who is responsible for all this mess and how it can be prevented, or at least some improvement that can be managed in the coming years.

Most of the services that broke down are being managed by some government agency or the other, and the question now is whether political leaders from both sides of the political divide are unable to manage civic bodies and modern urban transport services because of too many vested interests and corruption.

It is clear that there is hardly any professionalism in the way Mumbai's garbage waste is managed, drains are cleared ahead of every monsoon, and public transport is managed. It is as if nobody takes ownership of the systems that are so crucial for the city and its two crore residents.

For over three days in the past week, visuals of rail tracks submerged in water, waterlogged roads, and stranded commuters made headlines in national media, but no political party or leader seemed to take responsibility for what was happening.

The other reason is, of course, the multiplicity of government agencies. A thriving megacity like Mumbai is controlled by multiple government or local self-government agencies, and many times it becomes impossible to establish accountability. There’s the Brihan Mumbai Municipal Corporation, or BMC, which looks after the day-to-day working of the civic amenities in the city and the suburbs; then there is the Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority, or MMRDA, which plans new developmental projects and implements development work like building large roads or flyovers etc.; next is the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority, or MHADA, which is the public housing agency in the city and the suburbs; the Urban Development Ministry of Maharashtra government plans city development and gives clearances for large constructions; and lastly, the Central Railway and Western Railway, which run the suburban transport services and hold large tracts of land in the city and the suburbs. It is very difficult to understand where one agency's jurisdiction ends and the other’s begins when it comes to responsibility.

The challenge is to bring these agencies, which manage Mumbai's transport, housing, water supply, solid waste management, power supply and drainage, under one umbrella so that they can be controlled by a single, unified authority, which will be professional and accountable to the people. The scale of corruption seen openly in Mumbai's public and civic services has to be brought down at some stage, if not stopped completely. The problems of transport and breakdown of public service during heavy monsoon days that have been witnessed in Mumbai for decades can now be seen in other cities of Maharashtra, like Thane, Pune, Vasai and Nalasopara, as well. Urgent action is needed to stop this.

Perhaps not the national media, but the regional media will definitely publish analysis by this weekend on how and why Uddhav Thackeray and Raj Thackeray, the "Sena cousins", despite joining hands together, lost badly in Mumbai's cash-rich BEST credit society elections. The results were declared on Wednesday, and out of the 21 seats, the Thackeray cousins could not win even a single one. These are indications of what may be expected in the upcoming BMC elections. It looks as if people, even members inside some bodies like the BEST credit society, are wanting a change.

If Mumbai has to see better and dependable civic and infrastructure services, it is perhaps time to set up a single authority in charge of the overall city infrastructure the taxpayers need. What the city and its suburbs have suffered in the past five days is simply unacceptable. Mumbaikars have been performing their duties to the country as taxpayers but are getting a raw deal in return, year after year. There has to be some light at the end of the tunnel for Mumbaikars and other taxpayers living in the large cities of Maharashtra.

Rohit Chandavarkar is a senior journalist who has worked for 31 years with various leading newspaper brands and television channels in Mumbai and Pune.