What happens when a city receives more rains in one day than it receives in an entire year? It throws everything out of gear. This is exactly what had happened in India’s financial capital Mumbai in the last week of July. The city received about 65cm [26 inches] of rain, the highest recorded in India so far. The deluge not only exposed the shoddy work of the local authorities but also showed how industries suffer when the nature decides to show its true colors.

It wasn’t just the textile industry; or the film industry known as Bollywood, that suffered the most, India’s sunshine IT industry too suffered losses, not just economically but also by way of loss of man days. When the clouds broke open, tech-professionals were stranded at their workplace and had to spend the night at their workplace. While the BPOs were the hardest hit as employees either kept away from work or could not return home. Some BPO companies who had similar operations spread out in other cities like Gurgaon and Bangalore transferred part of the work while other companies who did only specific BPO work like finance and claims processing had to bear the brunt of the customers and clients who cribbed about the poor infrastructure, planning and back up in place at these companies.

Domestic financial transactions bore the brunt. Most top banks have their head offices and main infrastructure like ATM servers in Mumbai, while only a few of them had proper back up in place, customers found it difficult to withdraw money from ATMs. All over the country people were seen standing in long queues to withdraw money from the ATMs lest should the rains hinder transactions.

Industry chieftains’ say some difficulties faced by the industry is understandable given the fact that the city had the highest single-day rainfall in almost 90 years.
While a few like Aditya Birla group chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla are measured in their response, saying, “We must collectively develop a system that can help us cope with such a crisis,” others in private, mock politicians’ aspirations to turn the city into a Shanghai. “It’s a cruel joke on us,” said an IT industry veteran.

Construction and IT major Larsen & Toubro CEO and Managing Director A M Naik estimates the funds requirement at around $100 million if the city has to retain its acceptability. His priorities—the low-lying areas must be filled up and the mass rapid transportation system modernized.

An estimate marks the IT industry’s total loss at $250 million or more considering the fact that there was much loss due to mandays getting wasted.
Despite the deluge battering the rest of the city, which remained shut to the outside world, share brokers had a field day. The sensitive Bombay Stock Exchange touched newer heights with technology stocks performing really well when the city was going down the drains, quite literally.