Mera Mumbai mahan!

We were always told that Mumbai or Bombay is the place which was the show piece of India to the rest of the world. The necklace of India which is the Financial capital of India was in a helpless state the other day last week. We can always blame it on someone. God for instance is an easy way out. But for those more than 800 innocent lives lost that day, and for millions of Mumbaikars who had to brave the rains and the consequent flooding, it must have been traumatic, to say the least.

If similar rains had happened elsewhere in any other city in India, I am sure the result would have been just the same. The infrastructure in almost all the metros in India is woefully lacking in every conceivable way. We have the best cars in the world but do not have the roads for them to drive in. We have the best hotels but do not still have the uninterrupted drinking water supply for most residential areas in the cities. People still store water in containers waiting for the next time rationed supply by the Municipal corporations. As long as we do not have the basics sorted, all this rhetoric being the 10th largest economy in the world, will not do anything to alleviate the suffering People living in the Metros and elsewhere in India, have to go through every day.

The first hand account of Vir Sanghvi in Hindustan Times is worth reading. We always have to have some disaster in which hundreds of people lose lives, before people decide to act. There has to be a Tsunami in which more that 2 lacs of people perish, before we decide to have a Tsunami warning system in place. Hopefully the Powers that be take note of what happened in Mumbai and try to improve the infrastructure in Mumbai and elsewhere in the country before God decides to act!