MUMBAI: Barely had the people of Mumbai recovered from the devastation caused by torrential rain on July 26 than they woke up to a Sunday that promised to be almost as bad.

Fortunately, though the precipitation has been heavy and the weather bureau has predicted more rain in the next 48 hours, it is not on the scale of last Tuesday. Also, the downpour has not coincided with high tide as it did on Tuesday and it is not a working day.

After a night of continuous and heavy rain, between 8.30 a.m. on Sunday morning until 11.30 a.m., Mumbai's suburbs received 41 mm of rain and the city (Colaba) 42 mm.

As a result, many areas where the water had begun to recede after the last week's flood were once again under water.

But unlike last week when the Government failed to issue an alert or any warnings, from early on Sunday television channels have been flashing warnings from the Government and the police about the weather and asking people to stay at home.

Some cell phone networks have also sent out messages from the Police Commissioner asking people not to panic but to avoid risks.

The Government has announced that schools and colleges will remain closed on Monday though all other establishments including banks will be open.

Apart from rain, the weekend has also seen the anger of residents in areas where power and water has not been restored bursting into the open. On Saturday, there were spontaneous street protests in 16 different parts of Mumbai.

On Sunday the residents of Kalyan, just outside Thane, staged a rasta roko complaining that they had not seen the face of the Government since last week's disaster.

In response to the growing public pressure for some accountability from the Government, Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh appealed to the media to report what the Government was trying to do instead of focussing only on people's anger.

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