A foreign visitor praised Mumbai's new Aqua Line metro but criticised the city's filthy beaches and sanitation. He called for a "national emergency" cleanup drive.
A foreigner in Mumbai was impressed by the city's infrastructure, particularly the newly opened Aqua Line metro, but also highlighted a stark contrast: the poor condition of the city's beaches and sanitation. In a post shared on X, Lee Kuan Yimby said he recently visited Mumbai and was impressed by the progress.
"Mumbai should have one of the greatest waterfronts in the world," he wrote
"I was just in Mumbai, and I have to give them credit for the progress they're making on infrastructure," he wrote. "The new Aqua Line metro is phenomenal." However, he said the city still has significant work to do on basic cleanliness and sanitation. "The amount of work India still has to do on basic cleanliness and sanitation and it is hard to understand until you see it yourself."
He pointed out that despite Mumbai's location beside the sea, people cannot enjoy the water. "The beaches are filled with trash, the water is badly contaminated, and almost nobody swims, even when it's brutally hot outside. Walking on the beach is just mud and trash meeting filthy water on the horizon. There are much poorer places around the world where people can still use the beaches."
He added that the problem is not due to a lack of money, but to decades of inadequate waste collection and sewage treatment, and a lack of enforcement. "At this point, the scale of the problem feels almost impossible, and the oceans around the world are paying the price for India's garbage output as well. I like the direction Modi is taking the country, but India needs to treat cleanup like a national emergency."
He suggested a "full-scale blitz" instead of small campaigns and proposed creating paid jobs for people to pick up garbage, clear drains, clean beaches, and maintain public spaces with better equipment.
"India has shown that it can build metros, airports, highways, and digital infrastructure. Clean streets and usable water should be treated as infrastructure too," he wrote. "Mumbai should have one of the greatest waterfronts in the world. Instead, it has basically an irrelevant feature of the city and feels surrendered to sewage and garbage."
