India, July 7 -- Every year the rains return and Mumbai drowns. This year's erratic monsoon should force some overdue questions about who is accountable.

Mumbai is underwater again, and the experience suggests it always will be, year after year. This week's red alert brought shuttered schools, a landslide on the Mumbai-Pune highway, suspended flights, and a collapsed chawl in Mankhurd that killed six people. The Andheri subway went under, as it does every year. Low-lying junctions across the suburbs turned into small lakes, as they do every year.

None of this is a surprise. It is a script the city re-enacts each monsoon, and the real tragedy is not the rain - it is our refusal to prepare for it. Ask who is responsible, and the honest an...