Most of us have been frustrated over delays in government action at one time or another—especially when it relates to flooding or extreme erosion problems, or to delays in tackling something that’s easily fixed. But few here in the US would go as far as Rafat Hussain, the president of a nongovernmental organization in Mumbai known as Lokadhikar. Hussain is planning a hunger strike to protest a delay—granted, it’s been a 17-year delay—in solving flooding that affects the city’s Milan Subway.
The subway—not an underground train, but a belowground passage that runs under a railway line to connect two areas of Mumbai—floods each year during the monsoon season, snarling traffic and creating havoc for people trying to navigate the Santa Cruz area of the city. In 1993, a local stormwater authority recommended solving the problem by widening a nearby waterway, called a nullah, by about 6 ½ meters. The work has not been done, though, and in the years since, more than a dozen shops have been built up over the nullah, complicating matters; the shop owners would have to be evicted before the project can be carried out.