05 July,2026 07:28 AM IST | Mumbai | Akshita Maheshwari
Pic/Sayyed Sameer Abedi
The monsoon is finally upon us. So much so, that the city is drowning in rainwater.
In the streets of Bhagat Singh Nagar-1, Goregaon West, water reaches the knees as this writer goes to meet slum-dwellers who have been facing the brunt of the city's water scarcity. In a corner sits Lakshmi, selling corn on the cob. The corn sits on a makeshift table, and the water on the streets is just shy of touching it. "Flooding is a big problem. A lot of water goes inside my home," she says, pointing to the blue-walled dwelling, on whose doorstep she sits. "It isn't so bad right now," she says even as we're knee-deep in water, "The monsoon has only just begun."
In these streets, water is all around - except for the tap. Even after raining for two weeks, lake levels - the main suppliers of the city's water - had only gone up slightly as of Thursday.
In Mumbai, floodwater could invade your house, but you might still have to struggle to get water for drinking and cooking. "Before, we would get water from 6 am, and by 8-8.30 am everyone would have filled the needed amount of water. Now, one member has to wait five days to get a chance to fill water," says Rohan Garg (name changed), who has been a resident here for 25 years.
Although this year's water crisis is being called an exception, and the hope is that the rains will fix this problem, green warriors and experts told us that the rain is no longer recharging the city's groundwater the way it used to because of how concretised Mumbai is. Over 50 per cent of the city is built up, according to a Centre for Science and Environment study, leaving little open ground for the rainwater to seep into the ground. Instead, most rainwater ends up in drains and falls into the sea.
Since water doesn't go into the ground, more and more of it is going to flood our city, and less and less will be available for drinking.
Around 20 years back, all 35 homes in Garg's chawl had a private tap. Now there are three taps that the entire chawl shares. Garg's mother wakes up at 6 am to collect water from one of these taps, which 13 other families share with them.
"Right now, we try to minimise our water usage as much as possible. We keep buckets of water stored in our home. Thankfully, we have storage space. Most other residents don't," he says, "But there is camaraderie among residents. If we run out of water, we ask neighbours. Especially if it's drinking water, everyone shares."
"Even till six months ago, we had a daily supply of water. But now, it has become a huge issue. Never have we ever experienced such killat [scarcity] that we have to run out with buckets," he says.
Flood water is still always around. "Water gets filled up till the knee. When we were younger, our home was on the street, and water would rush in every monsoon," he says, "We have now made our home in such a way that it is one foot above the ground. But those who don't have this, still suffer."
Has the rain helped with better supply, we ask him. "No. We still have to wait a lot. Sometimes, people start fighting at the tap because they are irritated. They ask, âHow much water will you hoard?'"
Every day, the 32-year-old gets ready to head to his corporate job in Cotton Green. But before he even reaches Goregaon station to catch his train, he finds himself drenched. "I can't wear shoes or socks ever. Most times water from gutters makes its way onto the streets," he says.
The city's unfulfilled water demands are now being met by water tanker supply. Ankur Sharma, spokesperson for the Mumbai Water Tanker Association says that rapid development means that they might not be able to fulfill that demand soon. "We appreciate that Mumbai is developing. But the question is: Are we capable of storing enough water? We are building dams, but do we have enough ground and drinking water? Is the government planning accordingly?"
Sharma paints a sharp contrast between the streets of Bhagat Singh Nagar and the high-rises of the city. "In Worli, people are buying flats worth hundreds of crores, but there is still no water. Societies are installing booster pumps and motors to suck out more water from MCGM lines to satisfy their daily needs. But they won't install a rainwater harvesting plant, even though the BMC requires rainwater harvesting for all new building projects, redevelopments, and properties with a built-up area of 500 square metres or more.
"People are asking for swimming pools and jacuzzis. Water that could serve 1500 households gets consumed for one swimming pool," Sharma says, "Some people are getting abundant water while others are not getting any."
Environmentalists and scientists explain why rainwater doesn't always convert to groundwater
The delay in the arrival of the monsoon has largely been attributed as the reason behind a water crisis this year. Well, it's been an entire two weeks now since it first rained. The city is flooded and yet the water crisis is still upon us.
Rakesh Kumar, who is a scientist at the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute tells us that Mumbai has become too concretised. A report from the Centre for Science and Environment finds that Mumbai's built-up area has increased from 38.4 per cent in 2003 to 52.1 per cent in 2023. Green cover has decreased from 35.8 per cent in 2003 to 30.2 per cent in 2023. "So yes, from one angle, it looks fine because we're doing a good job in terms of infrastructure," Kumar says, "The flip side is that water movement and its soaking into the ground has been reducing."
As we concretise the city, not only do we stop groundwater recharging, but, "the speed at which water flows through the city increases. The roads, drains, everything is concretised, which means they are really smooth. Urban flooding goes up really high then."
Environmentalist Zoru Bhathena explains why Mumbai's water management systems are failing. "The entire drainage system is designed to take every single drop of rainwater that falls in the city, put it into a drain, and send it into the sea," he says.
"To reduce flooding in Mumbai, the BMC installs pumping stations. A few years ago, the BMC proudly proclaimed that on a single day of heavy rain, they pumped out more than the capacity of two lakes that supply water to the city in a single day and threw it into the sea. Good rain water, the capacity of two entire lakes, fully lost to the sea," Bhathena says, "That is the magnitude of the catastrophe we are facing."
Mumbai is seeing an unprecedented number of construction sites, "nearly 10,000 of them simultaneously," Bhathena says, "Every single one of them is building basements. When they dig, they hit groundwater, which they throw into drains, which eventually send sit into the sea."
"And this wastage doesn't just affect a small pocket of groundwater under that plot. When they suck out the water, the surrounding groundwater flows back in. So they keep sucking until they dry out the groundwater in the entire vicinity," Bhathena says.
"There was an instance in the Juhu area a few years ago. There were mangroves on one side and a natural drain on the other, flowing into the mangroves and then into the sea," Kumar says, "The authorities concretised that drain, thinking it was a good thing to do. But then some areas that never used to get flooded, started flooding."
"If you see earlier, Mumbai had so many mills. Most of the buildings that have come up in the last 10 to 15 years are on mill land. The whole idea in the beginning was that you would make high-rises and create more space on the ground. But what has happened is that because of high-density development, we are concretising each and every inch of these mill lands, which were huge areas where water used to soak into the ground," Kumar says, "I'm not saying the mills weren't concretised, but not to the extent that you see today. On average, I think 30-40 per cent of the mill lands were actually free then."
Vertical development is an idea largely derived from places like New York City and Singapore. "But in Singapore, they have frozen areas meant for development and green areas, meaning they do not interfere with them," Kumar says, "The whole idea of cluster development is fine. It may be the need of the city. But on the ground, keep your spaces free. You cannot do both. You cannot cover the ground and also build upwards endlessly. Wherever they have done vertical development - New York or Singapore - they have also created a lot of free, natural surfaces on the ground."
Bhathena too points to Chennai, also a coastal city, as a warning sign. "Chennai had very poor municipal water supply. The entire city extracted water from the ground," Bathena says, "Because they over-extracted it, they ruined the city's groundwater reserves. The same thing may happen in Mumbai one day. When it will happen, God knows. But when it happens, it cannot be reversed."
"I remind you that in a single day, Mumbai gets and drains more water than the capacity of two lakes. This is a unique advantage no other city has. To have a water crisis in this city is unthinkable," Bhathena says, "And yet, here we are. Because poor governance has led us to drain all our readily available rainwater into the sea."
52.1%
Proportion of the city that has been concretised
Pranav Naik, urban designer and founder of Studio Pomegranate, sheds light on design interventions that can help with groundwater percolation
Though the BMC relies on the city's seven catchment lakes for water supply, "several places have historically relied on wells," says urban planner Pranav Naik.
The water cuts by BMC this year have made these wells all the more important. Moreover, water tanker supply, which is about 550 million MLD, comes from groundwater extraction.
In 2011-12, Naik built a rainwater harvesting system for his offices in Lower Parel. "There were downtake pipes from the terrace, so millions of litres of water came down every monsoon. You cannot possibly store that much water in tanks," Naik says, "So I diverted it to two places as groundwater recharge systems. The water simply goes into the ground, and then is extracted from the four wells around. Even though we've moved offices now, from May 2013 onwards, that building has never needed a water tanker, something they used to require every year before."
The BMC identifies 496 flooding spots in Mumbai, "which have gone up from some 20 spots in the 1970s," Naik says. Open grounds are then absorption sponges. "Think of it like a perforated vessel," he says, "To demonstrate this to the BMC, in 2017 we took up the Mumbai Mile Project." It is an initiative to redesign a 1.9 km stretch of Senapati Bapat Marg in Lower Parel.
"Within it, we built groundwater percolation systems, about 250 metres long each, on both sides of the flyover between Dadar and Lower Parel, and from Lower Parel towards Kamala Mills," Naik explains, "All the stormwater goes into these percolation pits and gets absorbed into the ground. We deliberately decided not to use the BMC's stormwater drains because we didn't want to burden the system with more water."
The system is a proof of concept and is 100 per cent maintenance-free. Naik hopes that the BMC implements in throughout the city. There's not much to be done to substantially reduce the use of concrete, Naik says. "But we can do it mindfully. There are paver blocks that let water pass through them, which cost as much as any other paver block."
"The most worrying part is that even if only 25 to 30 per cent of the city is paved over, look at how much flooding is happening because of it. Are we moving forwards or backwards? We have to do something drastic and very soon. If things continue this way, we're all going to be underwater," Naik laments.
250m
Length of water percolation systems built by Pranav Naik in Lower Parel
