MUMBAI: When Surekha Chiplunkar’s home started to flood during recent heavy rains in Mumbai she knew exactly what to do — she had to; catastrophe comes every year and no one else was going to help.
Her family’s tiny ground floor apartment in central Mumbai is one of hundreds of thousands of homes in India’s financial capital that regularly flood during the monsoon months of June to September.
“We grab all of our possessions and move to one of our neighbors on a higher floor until the water subsides,” explains the 60-year-old.
Last week, as floods wreaked unaccustomed havoc across parts of Texas, global news coverage was dominated by scenes of Americans being winched to safety.
People in Houston, America’s fourth biggest city, told reporters of their anguish at being forced from their homes by the unusually fierce Hurricane Harvey, as a sophisticated rescue and recovery operation revved into high gear.
President Donald Trump visited the affected area twice, while his vice president, Mike Pence, also went to assure Texans that the might of the US government was behind them, and would help them pick up the pieces in the wake of a storm that caused tens of billions of dollars’ damage and killed around 60 people.
At the same time, half a world away, monsoon rains were dumping millions of gallons of water on India.
Mumbai, a city of around 20 million inhabitants where at least ten people died, was brought to a virtual standstill for two days.
But there were no prime ministerial visits; no pledges of national unity; no promises to help the slum dwellers rebuild their washed-away homes.
India largely shrugged and carried on, almost inured to a near-annual tragedy.
“No one from the government comes to check to see if we have managed to survive the floods or not,” said Chiplunker.
“People from top floors provide us with food during flooding as we cannot cook for ourselves.”
The help provided by members of the community during a disaster is often referred to, usually by local newspapers and leaders, as the “spirit of Mumbai.”
Many of the homes that flood in Mumbai are shanties packed tightly into narrow dark alleyways lining the city’s sprawling slums.
The slums, where over 50 percent of Mumbai’s population live, become covered in a sea of blue tarpaulin every monsoon as residents try to keep out whatever rain they can.
But sturdily-built houses flood as well. Chiplunkar, her three sons, one daughter-in-law and two grandchildren, live in a basic flat built in an old chawl, or tenement, which used to house Mumbai’s mill workers.
“We prepare for every monsoon by packing our belongings in plastic covers and keeping buckets ready,” Aditya Jadhav, who lives in the one-room apartment opposite, tells AFP.
The speed with which the rain fell — more than 315 millimeters (12 inches) in just a few hours — caught both families by surprise this year though.
“We were shocked. A lot of our valuables were damaged this time including a refrigerator and washing machine, causing us a lot of financial loss,” says Chiplunkar.
Activists claim Mumbai’s susceptibility to floods has worsened in recent years due to a rapid construction boom that is trying to keep up with the city’s swelling population.
They blame many in power as well as property developers for an insatiable desire to make money from luxury residential tower developments built on reclaimed land.
An estimated 40 percent of Mumbai’s mangrove cover, which is extremely effective in helping to drain water, has been destroyed over the past decade to make way for glitzy high-rises.
“Mumbai’s estuaries have been tampered with and there is no space for water to flow out,” Stalin D, a director of the environmental non-profit organization Vanashakti, told AFP.
Mumbai’s drainage system was built by the British in the 1860s when the population was a tenth of what it is now. Many drains are full of rubbish and desilting operations are often inadequate, activists say.
While Chiplunkar and her neighbors are used to fleeing the floods at short notice, there’s one aspect they can never get used to — cleaning up on their return.
“All of us fall sick as the water is very dirty and sometimes we find dead rats in it. The children are particularly prone to getting diseases,” she says.
With no government help, Mumbai flood victims are on their own
With no government help, Mumbai flood victims are on their own
Rubio defends US ouster of Venezuela’s Maduro to Caribbean leaders unsettled by Trump policies
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts and Nevis: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday defended the Trump administration’s military operation to capture Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, telling Caribbean leaders, many of whom objected to that move, that the country and the region were better off as a result.
Speaking to leaders from the 15-member Caribbean Community bloc at a summit in the country of St. Kitts and Nevis, Rubio brushed aside concerns about the legality of Maduro’s capture last month that have been raised among Venezuela’s island-state neighbors and others.
“Irrespective of how some of you may have individually felt about our operations and our policy toward Venezuela, I will tell you this, and I will tell you this without any apology or without any apprehension: Venezuela is better off today than it was eight weeks ago,” Rubio told the leaders in a closed-door meeting, according to a transcript of his remarks later distributed by the US State Department.
Rubio said that since Maduro’s ouster and the effective takeover of Venezuela’s oil sector by the United States, the interim authorities in the South American country have made “substantial” progress in improving conditions by doing “things that eight or nine weeks ago would have been unimaginable.”
The Caribbean leaders have gathered to debate pressing issues in a region that President Donald Trump has targeted for a 21st-century incarnation of the Monroe Doctrine meant to ensure Washington’s dominance in the Western Hemisphere. The Republican administration has declared a focus closer to home even as Washington increasingly has been preoccupied by the possibility of a US military attack on Iran.
Rubio downplays antagonism in US regional push
In his remarks to the group, America’s top diplomat tried to play down any antagonistic intent in what Trump has referred to as the “Donroe Doctrine.” Rubio said the administration wants to strengthen ties with the region in the wake of the Venezuela operation and ensure that issues such as crime and economic opportunities are jointly addressed.
“I am very happy to be in an administration that’s giving priority to the Western Hemisphere after largely being ignored for a very long time,” Rubio said. “We share common opportunities, and we share some common challenges. And that’s what we hope to confront.”
He said transnational criminal organizations pose the biggest threat to the Caribbean while recognizing that many are buying weapons from the United States, a problem he said authorities are tackling.
Rubio also said the US and the Caribbean can work together on economic advancement and energy issues, especially because many leaders at the four-day summit have energy resources they seek to explore. “We want to be your partner in that regard,” he said.
Rubio said the US recognizes the need for fair, democratic elections in Venezuela, which lies just miles away from Trinidad and Tobago at the closest point.
“We do believe that a prosperous, free Venezuela who’s governed by a legitimate government who has the interests of their people in mind could also be an extraordinary partner and asset to many of the countries represented here today in terms of energy needs and the like, and also one less source of instability in the region,” he said.
Rubio added: “We view our security, our prosperity, our stability to be intricately tied to yours.”
Trump plays up Maduro’s ouster
Trump, in his State of the Union address Tuesday night, called the operation that spirited Maduro out of Venezuela to face drug trafficking charges in New York “an absolutely colossal victory for the security of the United States.”
The US had built up the largest military presence in the Caribbean Sea in generations before the Jan. 3 raid. That has now been exceeded by the surge of American warships and aircraft to the Middle East as the administration pressures Iran to make a deal over its nuclear program.
In the Caribbean, Trump has stepped up aggressive tactics to combat alleged drug smuggling with a series of strikes on boats that have killed over 150 people and he has tightened pressure on Cuba. Regional leaders have complained about administration demands for nations to accept third-country deportees from the US and to chill relations with China.
One regional leader who has backed the US escalation is Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, whom Rubio thanked for her “public support for US military operations in the South Caribbean Sea,” the State Department said.
Persad-Bissessar told reporters that her conversation with Rubio focused on “Haiti; we talked about Cuba of course; we talked about engagements with Venezuela and the way forward.”
She was asked if she considered the latest US military strikes in Caribbean waters as extrajudicial killings: “I don’t think they are, and if they are, we will find out, but our legal advice is they are not.”
Rubio had other one-on-one meetings with heads of government, including from St. Kitts and Nevis, Haiti, Jamaica and Guyana.
Caribbean leaders point to shifting global order
Trump said during the State of the Union that his administration is “restoring American security and dominance in the Western Hemisphere, acting to secure our national interests and defend our country from violence, drugs, terrorism and foreign interference.”
Terrance Drew, prime minister of St. Kitts and Nevis and chair of the Caribbean Community bloc, said the region “stands at a decisive hour” and that “the global order is shifting.”
Drew and other leaders said Cuba’s humanitarian situation must be addressed.
“It must be clear that a prolonged crisis in Cuba will not remain confined to Cuba,” Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness warned. “It will affect migration, security and economic stability across the Caribbean basin.”
The US Treasury Department on Wednesday slightly eased restrictions on the sale of Venezuelan oil to Cuba, which instituted austere fuel-saving measures in the weeks after the US raid in Venezuela.
That move came hours before Cuba’s government announced that its soldiers killed four people aboard a speedboat registered in Florida that had opened fire on officers in Cuban waters.
