HEAVY monsoon rains lashed Bombay for a fifth consecutive day yesterday, submerging the commercial capital and dampening the Government’s ambition to turn the city into a global financial hub to rival Shanghai and Singapore.

Commuters were forced to wade through murky, knee-deep water as the city’s 150-year-old drainage system struggled to cope with the deluge, which is forecast to continue for several days.

In the worst-affected suburbs, residents floated along the streets, while the authorities battled the floods with electric pumps. Flights were disrupted as the runway was shut.

Seven people were reported to have died, and the national death toll from the monsoon has reached two hundred and fifty. Schools closed for a second day, and people were advised to stay indoors.

The memory of last year’s devastating monsoon, which delivered India’s highest rainfall for more than a century, remains fresh in the minds of all Bombay residents. The flooding peaked on July 26, when almost a metre of water was dumped on the city in one day, and every resident has a story to tell. Some were trapped in their offices for two or three days; others spent many wet and miserable hours perched on fences or traffic islands after abandoning their cars and swimming to safety.

The 18 million residents are wondering whether any lessons were learnt from the disaster, which claimed more than 1,000 lives. The Bombay High Court accused the municipal government of failing to plan for the rains that are falling now.

The benefits of a 12 billion rupee (£142 million) overhaul of the antiquated drainage system, scheduled to take three years, have yet to show through, although there has been some progress. Four rivers have been widened, according to Johny Joseph, the municipal commissioner, and the number of rain gauges increased from two to twenty-six.

“We have been working overtime for the past three or four months,” he told The Times. “We have had 248mm [10in] of rain and we have a drainage system that can manage only 25mm an hour. Naturally, there is waterlogging, but we are working to clear it.”

With large parts of the country’s richest city under water, the level of planning is being called into question. The relatively ineffective response by the authorities to chaos on the roads and railways days has exposed once again Bombay’s fragile infrastructure as a significant obstacle to sustained economic growth.

“You would have thought after a year that things might have improved,” an analyst at a leading US investment bank said. “That they haven’t tells me the money’s not being spent in the right place. The infrastructure work has to be done. It’s killing business.”

INDIAN MONSOON

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