Column

Mumbai is flooded, but your taps will only drip. It is a kind of paradoxical image that college-level street-theatre intelligentsia would love. And did you ever think a day will come when your friends across India and the world would engage in feeble drollery about Mumbai being ‘dry’?

Even foreign news agencies think it is a big deal. Sample this from Bloomberg: “Water supplies across India’s financial capital, Mumbai, will be cut to 30 % below normal from today as monsoon rains remain weak and reservoirs dry up.” Folks marooned in the floating gridlocks of the Western Express highway may be amused by the characterisation of ‘monsoon rains’ being weak.

More to the point, all Mumbaikars would be outraged by any more talk of netas aspiring to transform Mumbai into a Shanghai or Dubai. The problem with netas is they use the ‘metropolitan metamorphosis’ metaphor, more like a seductive palliative than a benchmark to overhaul infrastructure. When netas say, “Mumbai will be shining like Shanghai”, you are tempted to ask, “But how exactly will that be happening?”

Building great monuments to honour disposable incomes will not help. After all, how many would want to go to a tony mall without being adequately washed in their cleansers made of marine products? The first stepMumbai’s rulers must take to tackle the water problem is to make the supply efficient.

Every day, 185 million litres per day (MLD) of water is pumped out for the city. Unfortunately, only 125 MLD makes it into the billing cycles. Which means, a staggering 60 MLD is either pilfered or wasted in transit. Plug the holes to stop the ludicrousdaily leakage and you will end up with a prodigious amount of water on a yearly basis.

After having improved supply, netas and babus will discover that the expanded capacity is still not enough. That is when they should look to Dubai. But instead of attempting to make Mumbai another Elysium of gift items, the authorities here must carefully study howDubai has harnessed a source that Mumbai has in abundance: sea water.

Just last month, it was reported around the world that Dubai was all set to more than treble its desalinated water capacity in the next eight to 10 years, with aninvestment of up to $20 billion being lavished on five power and water projects.

It is estimated that Dubai’s fresh water outputcapacity would go up by 600 million imperial gallons, or MIG, per day from the current 278 MIG per day when the five new plants become operational.

Now that is a thought, is it not? You think of sea water in Mumbai and you have visions of the government launching stern drives against couples who tenderly discuss water problems on the beachfront! If the government does not act fast, soon, whole families would be forced to bathe in the sea.