Pouring Panic, 24/7

Torrential Tuesday, July 4 of 2006 was no differentfrom Torrential Tuesday, July26 of 2005 for the marooned city that was Mumbai. At least, that’s how it looked on 24x7news channels, the new kid on the block that has most people mesmerized.

Yet, the reality of the two Torrential Tuesdays was not just different; itwas dissimilar in terms of rainfall, impact and lasting effect. Television news,both Hindi and English, not only did not make the distinction but were guilty ofdrawing parallels in a situation that did not call for one. In classicslam-bang-TRP driven brand of journalism, the context, perspective and nuanceswere sorely missing.

First, some data and facts. Mumbai records rainfall at two places - Colabaand Santacruz, one that’s meant to map the island city and the other for thesuburbs. The usual pattern is that it does not rain equally hard at the same timein the two zones. The most glaring example is of the infamous 26/7 last yearwhen the suburbs floated in 944 mm of rainfall in 24 hours -- higher than therecorded rainfall in Cheerapunjee, famous for its over-the-top numbers -- butthose in the island city wondered what the fuss was about since Colaba recordeda little over one-tenth of that. If an outsider thought these were two differentcities, he might have been forgiven. This time, the spread on Torrential Tuesdaywas more even. For 12-hour time from 0830, Colaba received 184mm while Santacruzhad nearly 192 mm. For Monday 0830 to Tuesday morning the recorded figures were122m and 152 mm in Colaba and Santacruz respectively. The corresponding figuresfor Wednesday read 100m and approx 123 mm respectively.

It tells us very clearly that this Tuesday was, indeed, a torrential one.Mumbai underwent everything that it usually does when the skies open up withsuch fury and ferocity. There was, not surprisingly, water-logging at manyplaces across the entire metropolis, but most notably in the suburbs. Thelow-lying areas of Sion, Matunga, Dadar, Kurla, Grant Road and so on were theusual suspects, but new ones like Mulund, Andheri and most western suburbs wereadded to the list. This, in turn, caused moderate to severe disruptions in road,rail and air traffic. Vehicular movement was not possible in the water-loggedareas while it was deathly slow in the rest of the city. Suburban trainservices, Central and Western railway that carry seven million commuters a day,were cancelled or staggered or very slow. Where the average for a nine-coachrake is three minutes at peak hours, rakes departed and arrived 15 to 30 minutesapart. Flights, of course, had to be re-scheduled, some cancelled to deal withwater-logging near runways.

In a city totally driven by commuting and commuters, transport breakdown hadcascading consequences in every other aspect of life -- school and colleges hadto be closed, parents who had already packed off their kids that morning wereharried and desperate about their safety, corporate offices and privateenterprises were forced to declare an unscheduled holiday while governmentoffices simply did not see people at their work-desks, essential supplies wentout of one’s usual comfortable horizon such as the pavement next door or thesmall supermarket down the road, daily wage earners spent another day withoutearning, roofs of old buildings leaked while stilt garages of new ones swelledwith water, many slum-dwellers lost hearth and belongings because there was noway to escape the rising water, weddings and football theme parties werecancelled as were film shoots, those who ventured out quickly realized theywould have to wade across in knee-high or waist-high water which brought outpolitical and non-political volunteers with their bright yellow ropes to guidepedestrians (swimmers?) away from open drains, open manholes, dug-up trenchesand such normally dangerous phenomena that dot Mumbai roads, while the brightred BEST buses gamely ploughed their way across water-logged and other roads toremain the only lifeline, phone connections worked though power was shut down inmany areas as a matter of precaution.

So, what’s new? A true blue-blood Mumbaikar would ask the question, shrugat the lost casual leave (CL), spend time at home and get back to the routinethe next day. Is he/she indifferent? No, it’s just that Mumbaikars know thatevery monsoon brings at least two or three such stop-all days a year, they areas much a thread of the Mumbai monsoon story as the high waves crashing alongMarine Drive and lovers’ losing their solitary umbrella to a huge gust ofwind. Yes, this Torrential Tuesday was one such. Yes, there was water-loggingthat threatened to maroon Mumbai for a few hours, and, yes, Mumbaikars wentthrough hell. In fact, ten people lost their lives during those days of rain.The city reputed for being always on the move was at a standstill, but itcertainly wasn’t an unusual "heavy" monsoon day in Mumbai.

You wouldn’t know this if (a)you haven’t lived in and understood Mumbai,(b)you are unfamiliar with monsoon patterns in Mumbai, (c) your knowledge andinformation on Mumbai is second-hand through television images and webcasts, (d)you watched 24x7 news channels on the Torrential Tuesday this year.

It’s worth looking at a factsheet: July 5, 1974 saw 576 mm rainfall inColaba, June 10, 1991 saw 478 mm. Rainfall in Santacruz was 318mm on September23, 1981; 399mm on June 10, 1991 and 346mm on August 3, 1997, and lastly, therecord-breaking 944mm last July. 

This is not randomly-picked data, these arerecords of the "extreme" rainfall in the last few decades. On everyoccasion, without exception, Mumbai was at a standstill with water-logging atseveral places. On other dates that recorded "heavy" rain too, everythingwas grounded. Mumbaikars know this Torrential Tuesday will certainly not be thelast.

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Television news, though, makes no distinctions and has little time forperspectives or nuances. This Torrential Tuesday was, in their view, programmingand output, no different from the ultra-extreme Tuesday of July 2005. So, whatdid we see?

There were some discernible patterns. For one, the similarities drawn betweenthe two Tuesdays were not only incorrect and unfounded, but also mischievous.Nearly 400 people lost their lives last July 26th and many thousands stillcarry nightmares about their specific horrendous experiences. Post-2005 monsoon,Mumbaikars are more fearful, less blasé, about the annual "heavy" raindays. It was simply not fair to draw parallels and show footage - howevertemptingly easy it was - from last July. That day was an exception, as factsshow. This Tuesday was bad but nowhere as close. The moment television channelsput the two together, juxtaposed images of 2005 and 2006 that perhaps made forgreat screen usage, they were telling Mumbaikars -- and the rest of the country--to expect the worst disaster, second year in a row. There was no similarity inmagnitude or in impact; it was, simply put, wrong and sensational to draw suchparallels round the clock, at the top and bottom of each hour. The moreMumbaikars watched television news, the more panic set in. Fear fuelled thepanic even more.

Secondly, on 24x7 television, the micro very swiftly and unnecessarily becamethe macro. Sion, Kurla, Matunga, Andheri (east and west suburbs), Goregaon werevalid stories in themselves. Some background research would have toldeditors/programmers that there hasn’t been a monsoon in decades that has notled to water-logging in Sion, Matunga and Kurla; this perspective passed on tothe young and over-earnest reporters would have helped us all. Water-logging inMulund, Andheri and other western suburbs is a relatively new phenomenon thathas become progressively worse by the year. It should not surprise anybody atall because this belt has seen the maximum amount of unplanned, haphazard anddense RCC construction in the continuing real estate boom, acres upon acres havebeen reclaimed from the sea and built upon, hills have been quarried to makeentire upscale townships, open spaces have become easy fodder for the realestate lobbies, drainage system to carry sewage and storm water has remainedconstant from the 80s. What do you expect?

Of course, none of this was told to the viewer. The stories were limited totwo motorists and two pedestrians that the reporter spoke to and theirexperiences in the water-logged area. A typical reporter-driven telecast went:"I am standing here in knee-deep water at Andheri on the Western Expresshighway. As you can see, there’s water all around and traffic is at astandstill…Let’s find out more from Mr. XYZ …" 

It was worth rememberingat that point that a handful of suburbs did not exactly mean Mumbai.Extrapolating specifics into generalities always carries a high risk ofconfusion, insincerity and obfuscation. Applied to an already panicky situation,it spelt trouble. Why was it so difficult to tell viewers of the areas thatremained dry and non-water-logged as well? This would have lent the perspectiveneeded. Why were the extreme cases of water-logging repeated over and over againwithout qualification that this specific is not the general? Viewers all overmust be familiar by now with a certain subway called the Milan subway. It runseast-west connecting the two ends of Santacruz suburb, is so low-lying thatMumbaikars joke it takes a hundred buckets of water for Milan subway to bewater-logged. What this means is that it takes a drizzle for it to becomewater-logged and it’s no benchmark of the situation in the rest of Mumbai, letalone the rest of Santacruz. However, Milan subway makes good televisionfootage, instant, dramatic and of course, problematic. The problem is that Milanis not representative of Mumbai.

Thirdly and ironically for 24-hour news channels, the dynamism was somewhatmissing. Footage of an obviously skin-soaked reporter bravely managing thechannel umbrella in one hand and keeping the microphone straight up with theother telling us everything that was shown by the camera on the water-loggedWestern Express Highway and Andheri-Kurla Road -- arterial roads that should nothave been water-logged -- was repeated endlessly the entire morning, afternoon,and late into the evening when water had receded from that stretch by earlyevening. 

If 24-hour television journalism is about the here-and-now, why weren’twe shown fresh footage after 5pm, when there was no water-logging? Why weren’twe informed that water had receded and traffic was moving on these stretches?There was no water on these stretches after 5pm but late-night shows stillinsisted on showing morning footage. Why were we not shown the same water-loggedareas after water had receded and there was some semblance of normalcy in theevening? Dynamic? True? And, is it so difficult to time an image? There arechannels that do not even bother to tell which is a "File" image, means animage that’s not current and live. More than just saying "File", it wouldhelp to know that so-and-so image was that of the Western Express Highway at9am, then another at 12 noon, followed by another at 5pm. This probably meansmore work, more reporters, but it’s worth the effort.

Fourthly, certain things had changed from July last year; they did not findroom on the hourly news. There were more policemen out on Tuesday, braving therain, guiding traffic and pedestrians from water-logged streets to the ones withless water. There were municipal corporation supervisors who were walking entirestretches with their teams to open manholes so that rainwater could flow throughthe sewage lines apart from the stormwater drains. This enabled water to recedefaster than expected. Junior level workers were keeping guard for hours at everysuch manhole, complete with rickety red boards warning pedestrians of thedanger, with only an umbrella for protection. If water was rising at Kalina,rescue teams with boats were making their way there. Close to 2,500 people,mostly slumdwellers, were rescued and taken to higher spots from the banks ofthe swelling Mithi. If viewers knew of all this, and much more, it would havehelped calm nerves that day knowing that at least some things are under control.Why were all these stories missing from our 24x7 news screens? While it’sacknowledged that no newspaper or no television channels can, or will, carryeverything that’s happening around and that selection is an intrinsic andnecessary part of the news-making process, it’s worth asking who makes theselection and on what parameters. Television viewers saw how this rain affectedthe middle-class or upper-middle class average Mumbaikar but are clueless aboutthe slum-dwelling population which is 56 per cent of the city.

Fifth, the hyperbole and polemic helped make the news channels’ conclusionssound and look good, but they did nothing to inform or enlighten viewers inMumbai or elsewhere about the factors that are gradually taking apart themetropolis. Some said Mumbai is sinking, others lamented that it’s a hopelesscity. While editors are free to reach conclusions and share them with viewers,they do not have the right to polemicise conclusions in a debate where the otherside also offers equally polemical soundbytes. What is the viewer to make ofthis? Well, he/she will try to relate such polemics to personal experience andpress the ‘vote’ button. Most television polls would show over-whelmingsupport for "sinking Mumbai" because most of those who voted might have hadsuch experiences themselves. The involved viewers will feel vindicated, theinterested viewers will believe they should join the bandwagon, thedisinterested ones will shrug and get on with life anyway, others would not carefor such conclusions. If there has to be a debate and there must be conclusions,is it so difficult to make the entire process more informative, less shrill?

The 24x7 news channels have come to be the main source of people’s access tonews and information, more so on crisis days, in disasters and calamities, inemergency situations and fast-developing events. Rightly so, because other formsof media like the newspapers have their limitations. This makes it even moreimportant that news channels relay cross-checked information, always giveviewers the complete picture or even parts of it that do not seem connected,tenaciously put every story into its context and bring in perspective so thatviewers know not just information but also what sense to make of thatinformation. The public view of the Tuesday coverage seemed to be: TV was agreat help but caused unnecessary panic, Mumbaikar believed that FM radio -which ironically cannot and does not deal with "news" - fared much better,gave more and concrete information, created less hype and panic. A pollconducted by a morninger on Thursday July 6th on television coverage had many ofthese points. Here are some statements:

"The TV guys went overboard and scared people so much that they aren’tstepping out of homes. My children who were out that day told me the situationwas not that bad…they were showing how streets were flooded and how a coupleeven got married in such torrential rain. Who wants to know that? What peoplewant is the exact scenario and some tips to tide over it." Nargis Natarajan

"Whenever you switched on TV, it was the same footage being shown over and over again. They neither updated clippings nor news.Unlike the radio, not a single TV channels gave commuter-specific informationsuch as exact location where roads were flooded, traffic congestion anddiversions." Abhijit Nayak

"The TV hyped the rains. Switch on any channel and all one gets to hearabout is the rains. TV channels scare people sitting at home. To get the truepicture, one had to move out of the house. The situation was not as bad as itwas shown to be." Prerana Mehta

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So, does it mean nothing was wrong in Mumbai? No, it doesn’t. Many thingsare not quite right at all. The hype created on such days does not help mattersat all. The disruption on Tuesday was disproportionate to the level of rainfall.It certainly was nowhere close to that on 26/7 last year, but similar levels ofrain have seen much less disruptions in the last 25 years. Therein lies thestory of Mumbai. This should worry, and hugely so, the Chief Minister, the BMCcommissioner, urban planners and everyone of us.

It’s worth asking why new areas got water-logged this time round, to anextent where the water did not recede for two days (no channel found this storyworth doing?). Like the upscale Juhu that houses the wealthy and famous. Or theThakur Village (a misnomer because this township carved out of the foot of ahill has the most swanky highrise duplex apartments). Or the Andheri-Kurla Road,which leads to the international airport and the new commercial/businessdistrict, has become the lab for many a transport-project experiment throughoutthe last year. Much of this has to do with haphazard planning of road projectsor complete lack of it.