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21 August 2024 at 10:20:16 am

Thirsty Metropolis

Barely a year after torrential rains submerged large parts of Mumbai’s, the city’s water sources have fallen to critical levels and water rationing has returned. This year, a bad monsoon has led to Mumbai’s reservoirs falling to barely 9 percent of its capacity, forcing water cuts across India’s financial capital. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has halted supplies to construction sites and swimming pools, and tightened restrictions on commercial users. Predictably, the...

Thirsty Metropolis

Barely a year after torrential rains submerged large parts of Mumbai’s, the city’s water sources have fallen to critical levels and water rationing has returned. This year, a bad monsoon has led to Mumbai’s reservoirs falling to barely 9 percent of its capacity, forcing water cuts across India’s financial capital. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has halted supplies to construction sites and swimming pools, and tightened restrictions on commercial users. Predictably, the politicians blame a delayed monsoon. But blaming the weather alone is convenient and wrong. Mumbai’s water woes are not merely a meteorological problem but the result of decades of political complacency and administrative neglect. Mumbai receives roughly 2,000 mm of rainfall annually. Few global cities are blessed with such abundance. Yet, every year the city oscillates between flooding and scarcity, unable to capture excess water when the skies open and unable to conserve enough when they do not. Mumbai consumes around 4,000 million litres of water daily. More than 900 million litres of treated water reportedly disappear through leakages and illegal connections every day. Non-revenue water losses have climbed above 30 percent, substantially higher than they were fifteen years ago. In other words, the city loses more water through inefficiency than the size of its official supply deficit. Instead, successive administrations have preferred to search for another reservoir farther away. From Vihar in the nineteenth century to Tulsi, Tansa and eventually the Vaitarna system, the city’s answer to rising demand has always been to extend its hydraulic empire.
Such an approach may have worked when Mumbai was smaller. Today, it looks increasingly fragile in an era of climate volatility as a weak monsoon now threatens millions. Meanwhile, local water sources have been allowed to decay. The Mithi River, once a functioning ecosystem, has become an open drain carrying untreated sewage and industrial waste. Wetlands that naturally stored and filtered water have steadily shrunk under developmental pressure. Wells and ponds that historically provided resilience have largely disappeared from public policy. The tragedy is that Mumbai possesses solutions that it refuses to deploy at scale. Rainwater harvesting has been mandatory for many buildings for more than two decades. Yet enforcement remains patchy enough for corporators to demand audits of compliance. Wastewater reuse offers another missed opportunity. Mumbai treats only a fraction of the sewage it generates. The city that pioneered industrial water recycling in India during the 1960s has somehow failed to make reuse central to its twenty-first-century water strategy. India’s financial capital cannot continue treating every dry spell as an unforeseen emergency. Climate change will make rainfall even more erratic in future. In truth, Mumbai does not suffer from a lack of water. It suffers from a lack of imagination. Until politicians focus less on announcing new projects and more on reviving wetlands, harvesting rain and recycling wastewater, every monsoon will remain a gamble.

Clever seat selection helped BJP to secure historic win

The party won 65 seats against Congress, 37 against NCP (SP) and 29 against Shiv Sena (UBT)

Clever seat selection

Mumbai: The BJP’s strategic seat sharing with the allies has proved beneficial for the party. An analysis of the Assembly election results show that the BJP has scored over its main rival, the Congress, in a big way because of the direct fights.


The analysis shows that BJP defeated all three constituents of the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) – Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT) and NCP (SP) – in the direct fights. This is attributed as one of the reasons for the BJP’s historic poll success.


The BJP contested 147 out of 288 seats. In 76 constituencies, it faced Congress. BJP secured victory in 65 seats and lost only 11 seats, making it a whopping 86 per cent of the total direct fights. This was followed by an even stronger performance against NCP (SP). Of the total 39 fights with Sharad Pawar’s party, BJP captured 37 seats making it 95 per cent of the total fights with NCP (SP). BJP and Shiv Sena (UBT) were head-to-head in 32 constituencies, of which BJP emerged victorious in 29 seats, making this 91 per cent of the total direct contests.


According to a BJP strategist the party had bargained hard with its allies, Shiv Sena and NCP to get the desired constituencies in the seat sharing formula. “We had studied to potential candidates of the MVA. That helped us in choosing the seats where we can register comfortable victories,” the strategist said.


BJP spokesperson Niranjan Shetty attributed the success to all the party workers who worked hard to boost development, infrastructure in the state. He gave credit to Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis for his contribution to the party’s success.


Shetty pointed out that in 2019, Uddhav Thackeray had stalled all the “novel” and “legendary” projects that Fadnavis had started when he had taken over as CM, making it very easy for the people of Maharashtra to strike a comparison between both the leaders and the potential they had for serving the people. “Devendra Fadnavis gave up his post very easily for the larger good. There are many such examples like Venkaiah Naidu who was BJP National President and later worked as the Vice President of India because that was the need of the hour. We seldom care about our posts,” Shetty told The Perfect Voice.


Congress spokesperson Atul Londhe refused to call the election results as the people’s mandate. “This is not at all a Janata mandate. Despite Maharashtra struggling with so many basic social issues, how can BJP acquire such a huge mandate is the question. If a student copies and fails with just passing marks, it can go unnoticed, but if a student copies and bags the number one position, something is fishy. Why is the BJP scared of ballot papers?” he said.

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