Anand Mahindra's recent comment on the Dubai flood has been called out by former Jet Airways CEO designate Sanjiv Kapoor. Mr Mahindra compared Dubai's situation to Mumbai.
Sharing a video of the Dubai flood situation on X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday, the Mahindra Chairperson wrote, “Nope. Not Mumbai. Dubai…” The video, filmed from a moving vehicle during the floods, showed cars and trucks partially submerged in water. The scene also showed various luxury cars stranded in traffic due to the floodwaters.
Sanjiv Kapoor reposted the tweet, saying, “Incorrect analogy. Dubai was not built for such heavy rains - rains that would flood most cities. A better analogy would be if it suddenly snowed heavily in Bombay, which was obviously not built to handle snow at all. Would people in snowy Oslo mock Bombay?”
However, in a follow-up post, Mr Kapoor clarified that Mr Mahindra might not have been mocking Dubai with his tweet. “Ok, upon re-reading the post, maybe it is not mocking Dubai. However the point remains Dubai was not built for heavy rains, no matter what the source of the rain (seeding etc). It would be impractical to build cities to handle any extreme weather scenario, however unlikely,” he said.
Sharing another video of 3 pm scenes in Dubai, which turned the city into darkness due to a severe black storm and fog, Mr Kapoor said, "This is not normal rain in any city! If seeded, it produced much more than they would have been expecting. A year's worth of rain in a few hours!”
The former Jet Airways CEO later clarified and said, "My initial reaction was triggered by, and directed to, the responses by others to your comment, many of which were mocking/gloating." Mr Mahindra responded to Mr Kapoor's clarification and said, "I understand".
Dubai faced a state of paralysis recently as heavy storms triggered nationwide flooding across the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain.
Torrential rain swamped roads, homes, and malls, leading to a temporary halt in operations at Dubai's international airport. All incoming flights were diverted.
The flagship shopping centres, Dubai Mall and Mall of the Emirates, were both affected by the floods and water levels rose to ankle-deep at least one Dubai Metro station.
