Total collapse of accountability

The collapse of the paying guest facility in Satya Niketan raises several questions

The collapse of a building housing a boys’ paying-guest facility in Delhi’s Satya Niketan was a familiar script playing out: Negligence accepted till disaster hits. And then Delhi’s residents pick up the pieces and get back to living dangerously. All sorts of threats to life and limb and property materialising frequently has inured the Capital into accepting continued negligence by one party or the other, government or private.

As the debris is cleared and rescue operations are mounted, foremost on the mind of Delhi’s residents would be the well-being of the young boys who were inside the building at the time of collapse. (AFP)

The exact number of casualties is yet to become clear, as there was no clarity on the number of people trapped under the debris till late on Sunday. That most were students adds another layer to the tragedy — the lives snuffed out also represent lost future human potential. The police has said that there was ongoing construction activity in the ground floor, which led to the collapse. As the enquiry proceeds and those responsible for precipitating the tragedy are brought to book — the building owner and others have been named in an FIR — several questions need answering.

Was the building designed to house as many students? Did it have the requisite permissions and clearances (including safety) to be run as commercial lodging? What about the construction quality and the new construction that was being undertaken — did it have all the permits and demonstrate the required safety and other compliance? Was the work being actively supervised by someone who understood structural integrity of buildings well enough? As the debris is cleared and rescue operations peak, foremost on the mind of Delhi’s residents would be the well-being of the young boys who were inside the building at the time of collapse. The next priority should be demanding accountability from the parties involved and ensuring that official inertia and private-sector apathy don’t form a deadly mix once again, allowing such tragedies to play out with frightening regularity.

Heavy rainfall exposing all manners of dereliction of standards, quality, and monitoring across infrastructure, from road to housing, has also become a monsoonal leitmotif for the city. Craters open up on roads, streets and footpaths sink as stormwater drains are lost to silt and poorly planned construction, and buildings collapse in some of the Capital’s most vulnerable localities. This has to stop.