First Post

Well ... and that's how I feel ...

Aug 6th. First Post....

More rain in Mumbai. Spent the day at home reading two newspapers (The Hindustan Times and DNA) refreshing break from the Times, which I was used to, ever since I could remember reading the morning newspapers.

Too many issues that I find unacceptable.

Let's start with them one by one ... the failure of the civic administration, my pet peeve ..!

I heard the Municipal Commissioner say that our Mumbai city's drainage system is very old, upgradation would take about 2-5 years and that it cannot handle something more than 3 inches of rainfall per hour .. or something to that effect. I wonder if Mumbai's rainfall has increased that much only over the past 2 years .. at least till then there didn't seem to be as much flooding. I find it hard to believe that Mumbai's rainfall has increased substantially over the past few years .. is there any statistical data to substantiate this ?

Can anyone from the Met. Dept (IMD, I think) actually verify whether rainfall in Mumbai city has actually increased over the past 2 years ??? I think not ...

The only good thing that seems to have come out of our last years' flooding experience is that we now have a few telephone numbers to contact the BMC's "Disaster Management Cell." For what it's worth .. they actually work .. I've tried it ! They actually give out relevant information - Surprise ! Surprise !! Makes you feel that there is hope ... and we need to keep trying.

... now if they only get their own teams to call up each other and figure out what needs to be done in a "Disaster" .. we'd all be better off !

Well ... and that's how I feel ...