Category Archives: Mumbai

Thirteen killed in India after bus carrying musicians falls into gorge

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Twenty-nine passengers also injured as vehicle slides off highway during journey from Pune to Mumbai

A passenger bus carrying dozens of members of a music troupe slid off a highway and fell into a gorge in western India on Saturday, killing 13 people and injuring 29 others, police said.

The bus was on its way to Mumbai, India’s financial capital, in Maharashtra state, from Pune city, where the musicians held a performance, said Atul Zende, a police officer. The exact cause of the crash was not immediately known.

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Wolverine fish and blind eel among 212 new freshwater species

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Report from Shoal on 2021’s newly described species shows ‘there are still hundreds and hundreds more freshwater fish scientists don’t know about yet’


Scientists are celebrating 212 “new” freshwater fish species, including a blind eel found in the grounds of a school for blind children and a fish named Wolverine that is armed with a hidden weapons system.

The New Species 2021 report, released by the conservation organisation Shoal, shows just how diverse and remarkable the world’s often undervalued freshwater species are, and suggests there is plenty more life still to be discovered in the world’s lakes, rivers and wetlands.

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‘Their future could be destroyed’: the global struggle for schooling after Covid closures

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Hundreds of millions of children fell behind around the world as schools closed during the pandemic. We look at four countries as pupils try to resume their education

Children’s mental health suffers as schools remain shut

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From concrete to jungle: cartoonist puts Mumbai’s wildlife on the map

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The Indian city is home to 20 million people but is also a place rich in biodiversity, with flamingos, leopards and black kites among its flora and fauna

An Indian Ocean humpback dolphin swims beneath an Indo-Pacific octopus close to the coast, a gargantuan atlas moth flutters above Sanjay Gandhi national park, while an Asian palm civet shins up a tree near Vasai Creek and a black kite soars over a banyan tree. All are part of a vibrant new map of Mumbai that showcases the Indian city’s rich biodiversity.

“Most people only think of Mumbai as a concrete jungle, with skyscrapers, slums and beach promenades, but scratch beneath the surface, and you will find a place of rich biodiversity,” says Rohan Chakravarty, an award-winning wildlife cartoonist from Nagpur famous for cartoons that deal with the environment, conservation and wildlife, and creator of the Mumbai map.

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Indian TV anchor’s arrest escalates feud with Maharashtra state

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Arnab Goswami’s arrest follows claims that his BJP-backing TV channel smears opponents

One of India’s most famous and polarising television journalists has been arrested in connection with a 2018 suicide case, escalating an ongoing feud between the conservative news anchor and the Maharashtra state government.

Arnab Goswami, the founder of the rightwing channel Republic TV, was arrested at his home in Mumbai early on Wednesday. It prompted a chorus of anger from the ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), including from the home affairs minister, Amit Shah, who called it a “blatant misuse of state power”.

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Covid turns tide on India’s Ganesh festival traditions

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Thousands of ritual statues are dunked into the sea off Mumbai each year – but coronavirus and pollution concerns are forcing change

In the quiet housing estate of Angrewadi in the heart of Girgaon in south Mumbai, people are celebrating the 100th consecutive year of the Ganesh Chaturthi, the Hindu festival of the elephant-headed god of new beginnings. Statues of Lord Ganesh are brought into homes and put on display for offerings and prayers.

On the 11th and final day of the festival, the ritual of Ganesh Visarjan takes place – falling this year on 1 September. The statues, normally made of soluble plaster of paris, are traditionally carried in a public procession with music and chanting, and are then immersed in either a river or the sea. Here, they slowly dissolve in a ceremony that dramatises the Hindu view of the ephemeral nature of life – but also causes widespread pollution.

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Monsoon rains driven by high winds bring flooding misery to Mumbai

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India’s commercial capital grinds to a halt after heaviest August rainfall in 47 years causes widespread flooding

The heaviest monsoon downpour in nearly 50 years has brought Mumbai to a standstill, with stranded passengers at railway stations having to be rescued by dinghies from waist-high water.

People who live in areas normally unaffected by the annual monsoon flooding looked out from their high-rise flats at new swirling rivers outside caused by the heaviest single day’s rain recorded in August in 47 years.

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Mumbai flooding: monsoon rains inundate streets, homes and hospitals – video

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Scores of videos shared on social media show streets and homes in Mumbai deluged by heavy monsoon rains, driven by high winds. The flooding has added to the woes of residents already bearing the brunt of the coronavirus pandemic. 

India has the third-highest number of cases worldwide with Mumbai considered the worst-affected city. A survey last month showed that more than half the people who live in its sprawling slums had been infected with the virus

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How renamed streets in Mumbai’s slums are encouraging children to study

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A mobile school helped Rehmuddin Shaikh become a rugby star. Now a street named after him is inspiring a new generation

No map of Mumbai mentions Rehmuddin Shaikh Road. But a local taxi driver would find the narrow lane between the huts in Ambedkar Nagar, Colaba, behind Mumbai’s elite Cuffe Parade. Despite not being officially named by the city authorities, the road boasts a new signpost.

Rehmuddin Chittasahab Shaikh grew up and still lives here. Today, he is a rugby star, winning national gold and silver medals and and now coaching the Indian women’s team. He is one of the only four coaches in India to qualify for the World Rugby Level 3 coaching course.

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Mumbai discovers life isn’t so sweet without the workers it once ignored

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Lockdown precipitated an exodus of day labourers and “wallahs” but as monsoon season breaks their loss is being felt

As the monsoon lashes Mumbai and black clouds darken the skyline, the city is in the grip of nostalgia for the men who used to keep daily life ticking as rhythmically and comfortingly as a Swiss watch. Men who are missing.

The men who cleared the drains of silt so that the rains don’t cause flooding and water-borne diseases such as leptospirosis. The electricians who came to fix breakdowns caused by wind and rain. The sanitation workers who used to spray neighbourhoods with mosquito repellent before the monsoon to prevent vector-borne diseases such as malaria, dengue fever and chikungunya. All are missing even though the monsoon officially arrived last weekend.

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Cyclone Nisarga: India evacuates 100,000 as Mumbai awaits historic storm

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First cyclone in 70 years for financial capital sparks rush to transfer Covid-19 patients and sanitise temporary shelters

At least 100,000 people including coronavirus patients were being moved to safety as India’s west coast braced for a cyclone – the first such storm to threaten Mumbai in more than 70 years.

Authorities in India’s financial capital, which is struggling to contain the Covid-19 pandemic, evacuated nearly 150 virus patients from a recently built field hospital to a facility with a concrete roof as a precautionary measure, officials said on Tuesday.

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Patients share beds as coronavirus cases overwhelm Mumbai’s hospitals

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As India’s pandemic continues, in some areas the healthcare system is close to collapse

In Mumbai’s Sion hospital emergency ward there are two people to a bed. Patients, many with coronavirus symptoms and strapped two to a single oxygen tank, were captured lying almost on top of each other, top-to-toe on shared stretchers or just lying on the floor, in footage shared on social media in India this week.

Mumbai, a city of more than 20 million people, is weeks into the pandemic, but with new cases showing no sign of slowing down the city’s already weak healthcare system appears to be on the brink of collapse. State hospitals such as Sion, overcrowded in normal times, are overrun. With frontline doctors and nurses falling sick with the virus in their droves, it is also leading to a shortage of medical staff.

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Deadly clashes in India as protests take place across country – video

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Police and protesters have clashed across India and six people died during standoffs on Friday in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where tensions exploded between majority Hindus and minority Muslims.

Thousands of protesters have been demonstrating since 11 December in several parts of the country to oppose a new law championed by the prime minister, Narendra Modi, which makes it easier for people from non-Muslim minorities in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan who settled in India prior to 2015 to obtain Indian citizenship


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Which is the world’s hardest-working city?

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Tokyo may be the most ‘overworked’ city – but there are ways to measure how hard a city works other than simply totting up the overtime

In July 2013, 31-year-old Miwa Sado, a reporter for Japan’s national broadcaster NHK, was found dead in her Tokyo apartment. She had died from heart failure. It was later revealed that Sado had logged 159 hours and 37 minutes of overtime at work in the month before her death. Sado’s death was officially designated as a “death from overwork”.

So common are cases of people dying from overwork in Japan that the country has a special term for it, karoshi. The first case of karoshi was recorded in 1969; according to government data, Japan had 190 deaths from overwork in 2017.

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Indian navy rescues more than 800 people from train stranded in floodwaters

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Mahalaxmi Express stuck for about 12 hours near Mumbai when river burst its banks after torrential rain

Indian navy helicopters and emergency service boats came to the rescue of more than 800 people stranded on a train in floods near Mumbai on Saturday. Some reports have the number of people affected at over 1,000.

The Mahalaxmi Express left Mumbai late on Friday for Kolhapur but travelled only 60 kilometres (37 miles) before it became stranded after a river burst its banks in torrential rain, covering the tracks.

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‘A double-edged sword’: Mumbai pollution ‘perfect’ for flamingos

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The flamingo population of India’s largest city has tripled. Is it thanks to sewage boosting the blue-green algae they feed on?

There is an air of anxious excitement among the urban professionals and tourists on board our 24-seater motorboat as we enter Thane Creek.

A chorus of “oohs” and “aahs” breaks out as we spot the visions in pink we came to see – hundreds of flamingos listlessly bobbing in the murky green water – followed by the furious clicking of cameras.

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