Mumbai still vulnerable to heavy rains: World Bank report

The risk management in country's financial capital remains inadequate

Mumbai continues to remain highly vulnerable to heavy rains that occur almost every year despite having identified the solutions to reduce the risk two decades ago, a World Bank report has said.

It said despite a master plan (Brimstowad Report) published 20 years ago providing a list of recommendations to make the city more resilient to floods and nearly $200 million approved to implement it, the risk management in the country's financial capital had remained inadequate.

"But 12 years after the report was published, in 2005, only a fraction of this sum had been spent," said the World Development Report-2014 titled 'Risk and Opportunity Managing Risk for Development'.

The report has also covered the 2005 monsoon floods that led to more than 400 deaths and extensive damage to buildings and infrastructure in Mumbai in a separate chapter titled "Missed opportunities for good risk management".

"After the 2005 devastation, the government established a fact-finding committee (the Chitale Committee) to investigate the causes of the disaster and propose solutions. Perhaps not surprisingly, their recommendations were very similar to those of the Brimstowad Report," it said.

With these measures supposed to be implemented by 2015, the report said, "As of 2012, only about one-fourth of the 58 projects in the 1993 Brimstowad Report had been completed, while the tendering process for four major projects had not even begun."