Ex Jet Airways CEO Sanjiv Kapoor questions Anand Mahindra’s remark on Dubai rain, later retraces tweet

The massive rainfall in Dubai, that brought life to a halt in the city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has been making headlines. Amid intense debates on a probable cloud seeding project gone wrong situation among experts, Anand Mahindra had in a tweet compared the situation in the emirate to India's Mumbai. The comment was called out by former Jet Airways CEO Sanjiv Kapoor.

Here's what happened

Mahindra Group Chairperson, Anand Mahindra, had on Tuesday, taken to microblogging site X to share a tweet on Dubai rain and floods. His tweet read, “Nope. Not Mumbai. Dubai…”. Mahindra had shared a video of a vehicle wading through knee-deep waters. This is in contrast to a Dubai known for its extremely arid climate.

The video showed cars and trucks partially submerged in water. The scene also showed various luxury cars stranded in traffic due to the floodwaters.

On Wednesday former CEO of Jet Airways, Sanjiv Kapoor, called out Anand Mahindra and said that it was an incorrect analogy. 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?”

The former CEO of Jet Airways also attached a follow up post wherein he clarified that Anand Mahindra might not be mocking Dubai. “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 Sanjiv 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!”

Anand Mahindra hits back

A day later Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra responded to Sanjiv Kapoor's remarks and said “PAUSE before you PUNCH. REFLECT before you REACT”.

Hitting out at the analogy comment of the ex-Jet Airways CEO Sanjiv Kapoor, Anand Mahindra said, “to use your own analogy—if it had ever snowed in Mumbai, I might well have said: Nope. Not Oslo. Mumbai. For the very same purpose of highlighting how atypical this weather was for Mumbai; Not to mock Mumbai.”