'Scared Games' of Mumbai monsoon: Why rain washes away maximum city every year

By Jayadev Calamur

[...]

Anshu Sharma of SEEDS tells DNA, “Mumbai is a classic example of humans challenging nature by building where he shouldn’t.  While technology and management systems that could have helped do this better do exist, they haven’t been used adequately.  The city will continue to flood the way it has been flooding, and unfortunately, it will only get worse in the years to come unless very substantial investments are made in infrastructure and human capacity to be prepared.”

[...]

While speaking to DNA, Dr Kapil Gupta, a professor at IIT Mumbai and an expert on urban floods says that the flooding is caused by three main factors - meteorological, hydrological, and human. “Mumbai was made up of seven islands, which became one large landmass due to the reclamation of land. As a result, when it rains, the water level rises and causes flooding. This has been the case for several years, and constant urbanization has just added to the problem,” he says.

Dr Gupta adds that human factors include land use changes, surface sealing due to urbanization (which increases run-off), occupation of floodplains and obstruction of flood flows, urban heat island effect (which has increased the rainfall in and around urban areas), sudden release of water from dams located upstream of citizen towns and the failure to release water from dams resulting in backwater effect have added to urban flooding in Mumbai. “The indiscriminate disposal of solid waste into urban water drains and channels is a major impediment to water flow during the monsoon season,” he added.

[...]