Heavy Rains Expose Shoddy Infrastructure; A Nation Is Known By the Enemy It Keeps; Wage Share Declines Despite Profit Surge

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by Tanweer Alam, Sidharth Bhatia, Pratik Kanjilal, Seema Chishti, Sushant Singh, MK Venu, and Siddharth Varadarajan | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK

---

Dear readers

If you are already a paid subscriber, thank you! And be sure to renew your subscription when it expires.

If you like our work and want to support us, then do subscribe.

Please click on the following link to make a payment and start or renew your subscription - https://rzp.io/rzp/the-india-cable

1. Please give us at least up to 2 business days to activate/upgrade/renew your subscription

2. These are one-time payments and there will be no auto-renewal

Over to Siddharth Varadarajan for today’s Cable

---

Snapshot of the day

May 26, 2025

Siddharth Varadarajan

As heavy rain continues to lash the country’s financial capital, Mumbai on Monday recorded its highest rainfall in 107 years on just the first day of the monsoon. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) reported 295 mm of rain at the Colaba observatory, surpassing the previous record of 279.4 mm set in May 1918. Several areas in south Mumbai received over 200 mm of rain between midnight and 11 am, according to Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation data.

The monsoon arrived in Mumbai 16 days earlier than usual and reached Kerala on May 24 – eight days ahead of its typical onset. On Sunday, it advanced into Maharashtra, marking the earliest arrival in the state in 35 years. In light of the severe weather, the IMD has issued a red alert for Kerala, coastal Karnataka, western Maharashtra and Goa, warning of continued heavy rainfall and thunderstorms.

Operations on Metro Line 3, the city’s first fully underground corridor, were partially suspended after flooding hit the under-construction Acharya Atre Chowk station. Services between Acharya Atre Chowk and Worli were halted as a precaution. The station, inaugurated just 17 days earlier, was left waterlogged and resembled a disaster zone on day one of the rains.

An over-enthusiastic head of the NITI Aayog proclaimed over the weekend that the IMF had declared India the world’s fourth-largest economy, surpassing Japan with a nominal GDP of $4.187 trillion, but it looks like he — and the Modi government’s bhajan mandali – jumped the gun. India is