Its almost a month after the disaster and feel its a right time to do a dissection of why, how & what of this great disaster mainly to get a solution on how we can avoid such things in future.
If we take out the emotions away for a while & view this disaster with an objective view we all know that the followin are the major reasons for the disaster apart from the government agencies & poor infrastructure etc etc which everybody blames.
1) Rapid reclamation of the lands to build new buildings - every citizen who lives in those premises are party to this blatant abuse of the nature. We used to know Bombay( Mumbai) as 7 seperate islands where are those islands? Now we only have almost one 2 large mass land greater Mumbai & new Mumbai. all the rivers flowing inbetween has been reclaimed and filled with land
2) Have we ever bothered to stop putting those plastic covers on to the road as per survey the major reason for water clogging and flooding in Mumbai was plastic covers in the gutter
3) Every soceity irrespective of the class is only bothered to keep their premises clean and try to pump all waters flowing on to the street. Most of the societies have covered with concrete platform all around without allowing the water to seep into the ground If each soceity adopts water catching technique in monsoon months the entire water can be used to pump water without the dependence on Current there by saving huge money and also water clogging
4) As a resonsible citizen we need to spend at least 2 days in month to know whats happening in our sourronding like any new building coming up which is flauting rules any civic problems like drain clogging, etc etc. If only every citizen take initiative we can change the scenario without expecting BMC to do all the work.
I hope if everyone can contribute their part we can avoid disasters in future.