For how many years will millions in Mumbai, and the larger Mumbai Metropolitan Region, risk death each time they step out in the monsoon because of the sins of omission and commission of the urban local bodies? In less than a week since heavy rainfall started, an 11-year-old died after a massive tree fell on a school bus, and a senior citizen lost his life after falling into an open manhole in Mumbai.

A 17-year-old girl in Thane and a 42-year-old woman in Dombivli died of electrocution. These are not deaths caused by natural calamities or monsoon-related incidents, as the term goes; these are akin to murders by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and other authorities in the Mumbai Metropolitan........

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