It's a little unfair to attribute the problem to lack of disaster management. If Singapore or London faced a downpour like what Bombay had last week, I would imagine the situation won't be much different. Those cities also would have been shut.
It is a negotiating tool. I have a feeling that the left has seen the light of economic reason and knows that to push social sector spending, you need money.
The fact that price pressures are muted suggests that earnings growth of Indian companies will continue to be driven by volume growth, not by pricing power.