Buildings Waiting for Death; Action Needed for Deep Slumber

The heart-wrenching incident that has occurred in Satya Niketan, South-West Delhi, is not merely the collapse of a five-storey building; it is also the collapse of a system in the national capital whose foundation should have rested on the safety of citizens, the rule of law and administrative accountability. In the building where, only a few hours earlier, young people who had come to Delhi from different parts of the country were nurturing dreams of their future, everything suddenly turned into a heap of bricks, cement, iron and debris.

The cloud of dust will eventually settle, the rubble will be cleared and the roads will return to normal, but the void created in the lives of those families will never be filled. At the time of the incident, several students were reportedly inside their rooms in the five-storey building, a boys’ PG named ‘Hostel Days’, and there are fears that they may be trapped under the debris. The building was reportedly around 40–50 years old, and repair and excavation work was underway in the basement when the incident occurred. This very fact makes the tragedy even more horrifying.

The question is not merely why the building collapsed; the real question is how excavation for a basement and construction-related activities were allowed to take place in such an old and sensitive building in the first place. After every major building disaster, the same story is repeated. The administration says that an investigation will be conducted, action is taken against a few junior officials, and after a few days the entire matter gets buried under files.

PG Culture

The Satya Niketan tragedy is particularly serious because the PG culture is expanding rapidly in Delhi. Thousands of young people from across the country come to the capital to study, prepare for competitive examinations and seek employment, and many of them live in buildings where rooms are small, lanes are narrow, staircases are cramped and the status of safety standards is often questionable. For a landlord, increasing the number of rooms is a business opportunity, but the person living in that room arrives with dreams for his or her future. When a building permitted to have six rooms is turned into one with more than 25 rooms, when a basement meant for parking is used for commercial activities, and when the safety of hundreds of people is made dependent on a single exit route, it is no longer merely a violation of rules; it becomes a reckless gamble with human lives.

Past tragedies in Delhi have repeatedly warned us. Whether it was the 1997 Uphaar Cinema fire tragedy or the basement, coaching centre and commercial-building-related accidents witnessed in recent years, questions have been raised after every incident about safety standards. Locked doors, blocked exits, illegal construction, the absence of firefighting equipment and administrative indifference have repeatedly appeared in the background of such tragedies. Yet the memory of the system is so weak that after a few days everything returns to the old pattern.

Present Need

What is needed now is not merely the identification of those at fault but a transformation of the system. A comprehensive safety audit of all old multi-storey and commercial buildings in Delhi should be undertaken. Mandatory inspections should be conducted of PGs, hostels, coaching centres and commercial establishments operating in basements. The process of obtaining fire NOCs should be made completely digital, transparent and time-bound.

The practice of merely imposing fines on illegal constructions and then legalising them should be ended. Buildings with serious violations should be immediately sealed and, wherever necessary, demolished. Most importantly, accountability must reach the higher levels. Suspending two or four junior employees after an accident is not administrative action; it often becomes a way of evading responsibility. If the negligence, collusion or corrupt conduct of an official has put people’s lives at risk, strict criminal action should be taken against that official. The higher the position, the greater the accountability should be.

The rubble of Satya Niketan is not merely a heap of bricks and stones. Beneath it, the credibility of administrative claims, building safety regulations and public trust is also being put to the test. To call this tragedy an ‘accident’ and move on would be the greatest wrongdoing. An accident is something that could not have been prevented, but when the ground for a disaster is prepared through illegal construction, disregard for rules, corruption and administrative negligence, calling it merely an accident is to diminish the truth.

(The writer is a senior journalist. Views personal.)