am appalled at the situation in Mumbai. I think it is about time the Citizens wake up and take control of their city back. I think Mumbai needs to become separate state by itself. It must be run by someone who understands the local issues. I grew up in Mumbai and now live in USA.
Only when Mumbai will become autonomous, all voters will ask their politicians, what did they do for the city? Being part of Maharastra, does not serve both Mumbai and other parts of Maharastra. Let them be separate and free to grow.
Every calamity signals a fresh chorus of howls against the inefficient government. Yes the unfortunate truth is that a majority of them are so. But we forget, the Raj gave up their kingdoms half a century ago; these rulers are up there because we choose them to be there. India is a country where the term "retirement from service" is a preparation for death. A whole lot of experienced, intelligent, and still active gray heads choose to go into limbo once their turn comes to "retire. If those healthy among them could be made to start contesting at least the panchayat level, God we could see great things in the times to come. We need to do something because the country is not yet dead, because we hear of
-One businessman from surat setting out to rescue his family from a stranded train and ends up rescuing seventy others as well.
-A couple landing up in earthquake torn surat with their seven dogs and helped in sniffing out survivors.
-Groups of people in boats and on anything floating supplying relief to the stranded in flooded mumbai.
I am not from Mumbai and so I do not know in a firsthand way what Mumbai went through. I have been reading what has been said about the anger among the citizens. But how long does this last. For a few eeks, a few months and then it is business as usual. I am speaking from experience. I live in Ahmedabad which had an eartquake in 2002. The buildings which collapsed were not because of the earthquake but a clear violation of all building laws and norms. A husge hue and cry was made that the builders should be put behind bars and action taken against them. A few builders were arrested and for some time were kept behind bars. As soon as the hue and cry subsided, they were given bail. As for the cases launched against them, only God knows what happened and I doubt if even He knows.
As Govindraj Ethiraj had written, it is not using getting angry. As he put it we have to stay angry and force the system.
Citizens action is the only answer to the callous indifferent attitude of the Government
Really i would say ,we should stop blamming Rain. As every one in the Mumbai knows ,during every Monsoon period Heavy rain hitting Metro ( may be this time Too much).
My Question is to the Government , what precaution did they take for the Monsoon.
1) Did they ever properly maintained the Drainage
2) Instead spending 1000 crores for rescue , why cant they spend some 100 crores in advance for proper maintainance of the Drainage to avoid this many human Loss.
Well, today it is Mumbai, tomorrow it could be Delhi or any other city in India, because the problem is more or less same in all cities.
I live in Delhi and the ground situation here is that even a couple of hours of rains could bring the city life into a nighmare with snarling traffic and deep knee water everywhere. MCD has in its pay roll hundreds of safai karmacharis, who come only to collect their salaries. They don't bother to clean the drainage daily. As a ritual just before monsoon, MCD undertakes desilting of drainange, which should be done on daily basis.
Choking of drains is the result of excessive use of non-biodegradable material in our daily use. In almost all cities, you will find polythene layers if you dug even a feet.
A complete ban of polythene is necessary to arrest this trend, or lest we will be doing immense damage to the nature and injustice to the future generation. We need a government that works both at the centre and states. If the state governments and the local municipal bodies had discharged their duties property, this situation would not have occured in Mumbai. It is undoubtedly a manmade disaster.
In my view, everybody is doing mistakes, we cant blame only government or government servants or anyone. This is not the time to blame anyone, We should move to help the people who are struggling to restart their lives. we can blame the fools afterwards anyway. Please try to help the people (In anyway u feel comfortable)
What have we learnt from the past experiences only decide our future. After facing such natural calamities like Tsunami or the one we are facing in Mumbai just now, we need to graduate ourself on the disaster recovery. If we do not know this, how would we expect the govt to work on this which is still filled with illiterate and ignorant people. Lets start from Mumbai. Lets decide to elect only those people who have adequate knowledge on the city and how take care of it. They should produce the concrete plans on how our beloved city will look like after next 5 years and the roadmap. Lets establish forums in the suburbs of Mumbai to set the platform to debate on this. I know this is expecting a too much from those people but do we have anything other than this in hand as a common and responsible citizen? This I see is a most suitable constitutional way and my faith is only 'Mumbaikars' have that kind of unity and urge for their own city. Let the nation take the lessons from Mumbai on this.
People sitting in US should stop putting theri comments on rediff.....Please.
It is not the time to blame the administration but the time to light the thought of social service in everybody's mind. The youth has to be approached and encrouaged to help in the situation.
Because all the government machinery togather also wont be able to cope up the situation.
Think about the government servants picking up the garbage....will anybady from us writting the messages on this forums dare to do it, atleast for the sake of social service.Please do not blame the administration but please help...Help the administration.
One thing that hurts me as a person is in these last 10 days none of the bolloywood guys has come out and tried to help or atleast bothered to appeal to the people to remain calm and help the administration.
But they will be the first one to organise the Charity shows relief fund and show off.Please the tragedy does not require relief fund as made clear by the CM there is no shortage of money...what is required is to have a lion heart come on the streets and join hand with the administration to overcome the calamity.
