BMC claims Mumbai is monsoon-ready — a look at the ground reality
India's financial capital of Mumbai, which boasts of the country's richest municipal body, BMC or Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, has an annual problem — the monsoon is heavy and waterlogged streets and train tracks bringing a majority of the city to a virtual standstill on some days. CNBC-TV18’s ground report tries to find out if 2022 will be any different.
The Southwest Monsoon is expected to arrive in Mumbai by June 9, i.e. today, and the India Meteorological Department (IMD) has predicted rainfall at 103 percent of the normal. However, for Mumbaikars, this may not be good news — while it may give a much-awaited reprieve from the heat, monsoons hold the dubious distinction of bringing the city to a near standstill — despite the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation's myriad promises to the contrary, and spending thousands of crores of rupees on "monsoon preparedness".
From 2014 to 2020, the BMC has altogether spent more than Rs 9,000 crore on road repairs and nallah desilting — with the amount rising steadily every year, from Rs 2,150 crore in 2017 to over Rs 3,200 crore in 2019. But the city has still faced near-paralysis on multiple occasions every year.
This year too, the BMC claims it is ready.
For the common man, the onslaught of the monsoon was not as severely felt in the last two years, mainly because the pandemic restricted movement to a great degree. So the real test will come this year, now that many of the restrictions have been phased out and life has come back to near-normalcy.
The BMC has already spent over Rs 2,000 crore on road repairs this year. But of the 788 roads that needed repairs, only 128 roads have been fully restored; 435 roads have been repaired partially, and work on 218 roads has yet to begin.
BMC also claims that 98 percent of the sewer desilting work is complete. But while the opposition disagrees with this assessment, experts say the BMC needs to take drastic action to get its attempts to bear fruit.
Also read | Monsoon Likely To Be Weak In First Half Of June
With BMC elections scheduled after the monsoon, the civic body has made extra efforts to ensure that the voters get a hassle-free monsoon this year. BMC has made three holding ponds in the city with a holding capacity of 4.47 crore litre water, and has installed 477 water pumps across the city—11 percent more than last year.
As per BMC, all six water pumping stations are in their best condition. Now only rains will tell how concrete BMC's hassle-free monsoon claims are.
(Edited by : Abhishek Jha)
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