Scenario for railways commuters does require their employees to be disciplined and firm in their actions but someone should also keep up with the ownership to help railways spend our money wisely. More money spending schemes are coming up! Mumbai is also billed to have protected the monumental buildings. There are over 110 monuments in the city and each is derived in their own style, each of them needs protection in their own style and each style needs a special approach. Although, right now only the data is being compiled to know which monument will need what kind of facility for protection. We can witness that Taj Mahal has been going ‘yellowish’ and many credited the ‘acid rains’, earlier, which are mainly caused due to factories using thermal energy where the combustion rate of coal used is not even near 90%.

Whenever it pours thousands of commuters leaving for offices get caught unaware on reaching the suburban railway stations as trains get cancelled due to waterlogging of tracks, as services on all three railway lines – Central, Western and Harbour – always get cancelled. As every year, the civic body issues flood alert and keeps silent on their preparations. Large parts of Mumbai, including the central, western and eastern suburbs get flooded, and traffic comes to a standstill. Water levels at 91 major reservoirs nationwide are the lowest in a decade – no more than 29 per cent, water levels at Indian reservoirs are 71 per cent of last year, or 74 per cent of average storage over the last decade, the CWC data reveal.

The 91 major reservoirs contain 157.8 billion cubic metre (BCM) of water; the capacity of these reservoirs is 250 BCM. Another 400 BCM water is available for irrigation in India through groundwater, according to this answer given by the government in the Lok Sabha (the Lower House of Parliament) in July 2015. July 2016 is on course to witness the worst water scarcity in a decade, and the waterlogs too would be much more as Sena-BJP wasted their entire tenure just accusing each other but none really bothered to care for the city. Then the BJP Government came up with Minister centric apps, they were talking about “Aache Din” to “Badal Raha India” but in reality, nothing has moved, even after coming to power and ruling for five long years they were blaming previous government’s inefficiency. Well, the BJP came and went out of power doing nothing much towards waterlogs and potholes. Now its new government Maha Vikas Aghadi, they are yet to tackle COVID 19 cases and rain water has arrived with new challenge to them, hope this government lives up to our expectations. There was a long lockdown, people are in a hurry to get back to their bread earning. Almost all the reserves got absorbed in this unplanned long lockdown. Monsoon has arrived but exposed the authorities and government with one pouring. The city’s buying cars faster than it’s building roads. The number of vehicles on Mumbai’s roads has increased in thousands while the city’s total road length has not increased accordingly, even if the roads have increased in the recent past the population has over grown in the city, so controlling traffic is actually a faraway thing. A 10 per cent increase in car population increases parking woes by 25 per cent and traffic congestion by around 20 per cent. There is a need to implement schemes that put a premium on using vehicles in Mumbai. These schemes include the Bus Rapid Transport System and increased parking charges. The study said the number of vehicles in the Mumbai metropolitan region is expected to reach 75 lakhs by 2024. New York has 50 lakh vehicles while Beijing has 20 lakhs. Well, Mumbai will always remain jam and monsoon is another challenge to control the roadblock.

Massive traffic queues across the city, especially in areas that are badly flooded including Dadar, Parel, Sion, Andheri, Jogeshwari and Santacruz. Residents complained that brand new water pumping stations on which the civic body spent 200 crores failed to work after being damaged by rocks. Mumbai has once again stuck in water. BMC has been silent over the news this monsoon. This is strange. Every year, there is at least one picture of a BMC worker who is working towards clearing the choked drainage, the silent messages depicted in pictures but what is the point in it? Every year Government is making budgets for drainage and those people are doing their jobs. The ever-procrastinating people, who are not answerable to anybody, waste much of government funds. Thankfully, the privatization has spurred those workers to work hard and be answerable. For example, the railways, people working for the railways are now ‘lesser’ corrupt, they are, I would not defy it but the point of escalations has been brought up to a higher scale.

Just one or two rains hit Mumbai, but look at the conditions around, Railways station escalators are not protected against weather, there are water logs everywhere on the stations to metro and skywalk, tiles are broken and holes everywhere. Of course, there are attempts being made to ‘advance’ the facilities to passengers by installing escalators worth nearly 80 lakhs per set, which can speed up enough to cope with the rising demand of hurry for citizens. Ideally the escalators are powerful enough and require more electricity than an elevator, depending on the number of people who join in. So, what next? Fair of railway tickets too gone up, again that is the price we all are willing to pay for the facility given in return.