Monsoon rains lashed parts of India s east and west on Thursday, taking the death toll from a week of extreme weather to 81 people, but eased over the financial hub of Mumbai after disrupting life for three days.The June-September annual monsoon, key to India s agriculture and economic growth, revived this week after a two-week lull. Most of the latest deaths were in the eastern state of Orissa and western Maharashtra and Gujarat and were due to lightning strikes, electrocution and drowning. At least eight people were swept away in flash floods overnight in Orissa, taking the toll there to 32. More than 3,700 houses -- largely mud-and-thatch -- were destroyed in Orissa

. In Maharashtra, heavy rains have killed 28 people in the past three days. "Most of the people died from lightning," D.K. Shankaran, Maharashtra s top bureaucrat, said. But the state capital, Mumbai was, however, limping back to normal with flood waters receding from roads and railway tracks. But residents were angry at the government s response to three days of flooding since Monday.

"There was rainwater in our house for two days. Now it has gone but the whole area is dirty," said Jayant More. "It happens everytime." Train and air services were normal on Thursday in Indias richest city, which shut down for a week in July last year after two days of heavy rains exposed its highly underdeveloped infrastructure and killed hundreds of people. But traffic was slow as civic workers used water pumps to flush out rainwater from some areas.

In Gujarat, which neighbours Maharashtra, heavy rains have killed 12 people since Wednesday and more than 10,000 people living in low-lying areas were evacuated. Almost every year, monsoon rains kill hundreds of people, damage homes and destroy crops. In Orissa, hundreds of hectares of paddy crop -- the state s staple -- were damaged due to this week s downpours.
(Por Sanjaya Jena em Bhubaneshwar, Rupam Jain Nair em Ahmedabad, e Krittivas MukherjeePlanet Ark, 07/07/2006)