Irresponsible development to blame for Mumbai flood woes: experts

MUMBAI (AFP) – As work crews across India’s financial hub clean up damage from the city’s worst-recorded monsoon rains, Mumbai residents and urban planners say the flooding was a disaster waiting to happen.

Normally, land absorbs more than 50 percent of rainwater but in Mumbai, there are few green spaces left.

As Mumbai’s population grew, the government earmarked large areas reserved for playing fields and parks for housing and business use. Mumbai civic administration data shows around 900 such green plots have been “de-reserved” by successive governments since 1990 to make way for buildings.

In the past 10 years alone, built-up land in Mumbai has soared nearly 114 percent, according to a research paper by H.P. Sawant, of the local St Xavier’s College. In the same period, forest and wetland areas shrank by 35 percent.

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