Every monsoon, Mumbai is tested. Streets vanish under brown surges, trains halt, and families wade waist-deep in search of milk and medicines. We call each deluge a once-in-a-century shock, yet the cycle repeats every few years. The truth is more straightforward, and more unsettling: India’s largest city, like many of its peers, is misplanned, underfunded, and poorly managed. Until we change how we finance, design, and govern urban growth, the rains will continue to expose our failures.For decades, Indian cities have followed a spatial model that encouraged sprawl, mandated rigid land-use segregation, and restricted density through outdated floor space limits. Car-centric planning, long commutes, blocked floodplains, and brittle public transport were the inevitable outcomes. The consequences are visible everywhere: wetlands are sacrificed for real estate, air pollution is choking, rain-swamped cities stretch from Chennai to Bengaluru, and COVID-19 is revealing the fragility of our housing and infrastructure systems.
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