Mumbai, India – Once more bringing Mumbai to a standstill, Monday morning’s torrential rain caused major waterlogging and traffic disturbance. Renowned for flooding every monsoon, the Andheri subway became the main cause of public annoyance. Renowned for his critical opinions on government inefficiency, filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri expressed his frustration on social media.
Agnihotri posted on X (previously Twitter) saying, “I have lived in Mumbai for thirty years. While everything else sarkari fails, this subway never fails to flood. It’s so obstinate that it doesn’t show results even if every government vows to address it. Though citizens suffer and die, who are they anyway? But just numbers? His comments underlined the continuous difficulties Mumbaikars experience every monsoon season because of poor infrastructure and limited government actions.
The words of the director coincided with Mumbai experiencing torrential rain, which caused flooded streets and stopped train operations. Affected were flight operations at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA). Severe waterlogging caused by shutdown the Andheri subway, a vital route for commuters, aggravating the traffic problems in the metropolis.
To evaluate the situation, Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde led a high-level conference and gave all emergency agencies orders to keep great attention. CM Shinde asked people to venture out only if absolutely essential in a social media message acknowledging the disturbance the rains caused. He also asked the Mumbai Municipal Corporation, Police Administration, and Emergency Services to help to control the problem.
Currently working on his next production, “The Delhi Files,” Agnihotri has helmedial films including “The Kashmir Files” and “The Tashkent Files.” For research, he has been making a lot of trips around India gathering material from several historical sites to guarantee veracity in his narrative. The director spent time addressing the water problem despite his hectic schedule, connecting with several of the neighbors who expressed their annoyance online.
Local citizens’ opinions matched Agnihotri’s criticism of the government’s incapacity to fix the flooding issue. One user said, “Government is promising since annual expenditure reflects. Government only spends till the issue is not resolved, so the issue will never be resolved. Another user said, “I seen yearly flooding of this subway from my school years in the 1970s. Simply said, flooding is inevitable unless we raise the tunnel by 20 feet, which essentially implies no metro.
The ongoing flooding in the Andheri subway continues to be emblem of more general infrastructure problems Mumbai faces. Cities all over are facing comparable challenges as climate change keeps aggravating weather patterns, which emphasizes the need of sustainable and efficient urban design solutions.
The words of people like Vivek Agnihotri highlight the pressing necessity of proactive measures to protect the infrastructure and people of Mumbai from recurrent natural disasters while the monsoon’s effect is under negotiation.
