City blights

Sir ? I was in Mumbai three months back, long before the rains came, and it didn?t seem like a land of opportunities to me. The roads were dug up everywhere, with earth and filth piled up high near the constructions. These cluttered the roads, resulting in endless traffic-jams. When I asked taxi- and auto-drivers why everything had been dug up, they nonchalantly replied, ?Well Mumbai is being made into a Shanghai?. That Shanghai never happened and now Mumbai has been transformed overnight into the biggest urban gutter. Filmstars, politicians, office-goers, slum-dwellers, dogs, snakes were all brought to the same level as they half-swam, half-walked through the filthy waterhole.

What are the lessons we can learn from this disaster? It?s no use expecting any help from the government which has already defaulted in the planning stage. The magnitude of the present problem is so huge that solutions are not going to come easily either. This was not unexpected though. Even after so many years of independence, which metro in this country can be called an ideal city? Most of them have grown in population while basic amenities like sanitation, water supply and electricity are lacking. But the most alarming fact is that most of the smaller towns and cities are going the same way. Even a small city like Guwahati now cannot think of a future beyond shopping malls.

Yours faithfully,
Kasturi Borkotoki Baruah, Guwahati

Sir ? The way the state government and the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation handled the crisis in Mumbai shows that becoming a second Shanghai will remain a pipe-dream for the city.

In a bid to impress the electorate, the state government has pulled up Reliance Energy Limited for delays in restoring electricity in certain areas. But shouldn?t a notice be served on the Maharashtra government itself? Can it say why mangroves were destroyed to build the Bandra-Kurla complex? Why has the Mithi river been reduced to a nullah? Why did it not stop slums from proliferating? Why has the drainage system not been improved even as the city was allowed to grow wildly? Why were playgrounds made to give way for the construction of high-rises? Why, despite the size of Mumbai, have the authorities not thought about dividing the city into three or four municipal corporations? And why are municipal councils not allowed to include architects and environmentalists?

Forget Shanghai, the state government and the BMC have converted Mumbai into Venice.

Yours faithfully,
H. Parshuram, Mumbai

Sir ? When it comes to excuses, there seems to be no dearth of them (?Rain sends plane skidding?, July 31). If a wet runway is really a cause for accidents of the kind mentioned, people should be asked to stop flying during the monsoons. One may assume that the pilot of the Air India Boeing was experienced enough to calculate the risks involved in landing on a short and wet runway, battling hostile winds and poor visibility. As commander of the aircraft, he was well within his rights to refuse to land and divert the plane to a safer airport. Why did he take the risk then? Was it because of the tremendous pressure to resume flight operations in Mumbai? But the price that others might have had to pay for putting up this appearance of ?normalcy? in Mumbai is staggering.

Yours faithfully,
Govind Das Dujari, Calcutta

Sir ? What happened in Mumbai is shameful. Where is the tax- payers? money going then? For how long do we keep blaming the drainage system that was put in place during the raj? Who will take the blame for the loss of lives? Imagine what would have happened had the tsunami struck Mumbai. Despite what this natural disaster did to Chennai, Mumbai, which is no less close to the sea, has not bothered to put in place any disaster management mechanism, nor created popular awareness.

Yours faithfully,
Prashant Solomon, New Delhi

Sir ? It wasn?t the incessant rain as much as the inefficiency of the government and municipal authorities that did the Mumbaikars in. During these past few days, the government machinery has completely broken down. But Mumbaikars have reached out to help each other, irrespective of caste and creed. Most in the city believe that the crisis could have been averted had there not been such glaring faults in planning, had the land around the Mithi river been allowed to remain unclaimed and unsettled, and had the river not been allowed to get clogged with waste. But thanks to the Bollywood stars (both the Bachchans and Govinda) who did not cease to entertain the city even in the calamity.

Yours faithfully,
S.P. Sharma, Mumbai

Sir ? At a time when glorious stories of selfless service were being scripted in Mumbai, readers were taken aback by the coverage given to the Bachchan family. Jaya Bachchan did not forget to criticize the Congress for the collapse of the administration. There probably could not have been an easier way for a Samajwadi Party legislator to get to the front page.

Yours faithfully,
A. Megha, Hyderabad

Sir ? The distinct change in the weather cycles and rainfall pattern may create havoc in any state during the monsoons. State governments should draw up a master plan to combat disaster. The civic authorities should concentrate on improving the drainage system. Units for relief operation should be kept ready especially in cities like Calcutta, which are thrown out of gear by even a brief spell of rain.

Yours faithfully,
N.C. Chakrabarti, Calcutta