Mumbai floods prompt calls for crackdown on India’s urban sprawl

In Mumbai, which has amongst the priciest real estate in the world, mangroves and wetlands have been destroyed to build office towers, which also block the mouth of the Mithi river.

The deluge this week, after the city received nearly a month’s worth of rainfall in a single day, revived memories of the floods in 2005 that killed more than 500 people.Most victims lived in slums, home to more than half the city’s 20 million population.

“During the 2005 floods, city officials said it was a once-in-100-years event. Today they’re realising it’s a once-in-10-years event,” said Goenka, the environmentalist.

About 65 million people live in India’s slums.

Improving their infrastructure – with stormwater drains, sanitation facilities and embankments – is essential to disaster preparedness, analysts say.

Yet a $7.5-billion Smart Cities Mission that aims to modernise 100 Indian cities with high-speed internet and efficient public transport may evict slum dwellers and lead to yet more concrete structures.

“We cannot prevent future flooding disasters unless city officials commit to curbing the real estate industry and to not doing further damage to the wetlands,” said Nityanand Jayaraman, an environmental activist in Chennai.

“If that means going without an additional flyover, so be it; if that means de-congesting our cities, we have to do it. There are no short cuts,” he said.