10 days after monsoons and record rainfall devestated parts of India, people are turning to blogs and text messages to help themselves out.

There is a great deal of anger in Mumbai (Bombay) as infrastructures and government fail.

There are people still looking for family, fresh water and and basics like a blanket.

Says an angry message from a historian, B Arunachalam: “One could have lived with a calamity of Tsunami proportions bringing down the country’s business capital to a grinding halt; not sheer ineptitude by authorities who were found to have feet of clay in the hour of crisis.

“The authorities cannot keep blaming nature and try and hide during monsoons, wishing away a problem that needs to be faced squarely. This, especially in a city that is built on reclaimed land to the extent of 40 per cent on the island and 20 per cent in the suburbs.”

Lists of oxygen suppliers, chemists, ambulance service and calls for blankets, food and clothes etc, warnings for diseases and impending epidemics were some of the other messages put out by private citizens for desperate Mumbaikars on cloudburstmumbai.blogspot.com.

“Though the print and broadcast media did a good job of covering the entire fiasco, there was little that people could put into practical use at a time like this,” Mumbai-based theatre personality Raell Padamsee said.

“What people were looking for was how to tackle the situation on an hour-to-hour basis, and that’s where the new media stepped in,” she said.