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By:

Sagari Gupta

24 March 2026 at 7:46:04 pm

A Notice Is Not a Wall

India has no shortage of building rules. The problem is making sure they produce safer buildings. The recent collapse of a building in Delhi’s Satya Niketan area, which killed six people and trapped dozens more beneath the rubble, brings into sharp relief the precariousness of the city’s built environment. The five-storey structure, housing a boys’ paying-guest accommodation near Delhi University’s South Campus, gave way while repair work was still under way. While the precise cause of the...

A Notice Is Not a Wall

India has no shortage of building rules. The problem is making sure they produce safer buildings. The recent collapse of a building in Delhi’s Satya Niketan area, which killed six people and trapped dozens more beneath the rubble, brings into sharp relief the precariousness of the city’s built environment. The five-storey structure, housing a boys’ paying-guest accommodation near Delhi University’s South Campus, gave way while repair work was still under way. While the precise cause of the collapse remains unconfirmed, what is already clear is the lethal cost of allowing buildings to be altered, crowded and repaired without adequate regard for structural safety. Building-collapse investigations generally look at structural weakness, unapproved floor additions, removed load-bearing walls and overloading. Those are engineering questions. The policy question that sits above them is the gap between output and outcome. Delhi’s municipal system, like most regulatory systems in India, has been built to measure and reward the first. It has almost no mechanism for verifying the second. The person who decides to add a floor or convert a house into a PG is rarely the person inside it when the structure fails. That mismatch between who takes the risk and who bears its consequence is a textbook negative externality, and it is why market incentives alone will not fix unsafe construction. Land is expensive, formal housing is out of reach for most young workers and students, and demand for cheap paying-guest accommodation near college campuses stays high year-round. A house becomes a PG. A floor built for one household starts carrying three. The extra income is immediate. The structural cost, if it arrives, arrives later and lands on someone else, split between tenant, neighbour and municipality. Death Traps Structural collapses killed 8,756 people across India between 2018 and 2022, close to five deaths a day, a figure that surfaced in Rajya Sabha proceedings drawing on National Crime Records Bureau data. That is not a data gap. India has building bye-laws, approval procedures and municipal enforcement powers already on the books. What it lacks is an implementation architecture that closes the loop between identifying risk and removing it. Put simply, a notice proves the state has produced an output. It does not prove a structural assessment was completed, that residents were evacuated, that repairs happened, or that a certified engineer signed off. It proves paperwork exists, nothing more. Closing that gap is a design problem, not a resourcing one. Every high-risk building should carry a case number and a named officer accountable for it, with fixed deadlines at each stage: inspection within a set number of days, a structural assessment where required, a decision on repair, evacuation, sealing or demolition, and verification of compliance before closure. The named officer should change with the stage, so responsibility cannot sit with nobody in particular. An overdue inspection should automatically flag the officer holding it. An order left unimplemented past deadline should escalate on its own, with the reason for delay logged, whether that is litigation, an uncooperative owner, a capacity shortfall or an evacuation still pending. This turns an enforcement record into an audit trail. That record should sit in public view, within legitimate privacy limits. A ward-level dashboard showing how many high-risk properties are under inspection, how many have completed structural assessments and how many remain unresolved gives a councillor, a tenant or a journalist a way to verify whether a case is moving, rather than take an official’s word for it. At present, issuing a notice ends an official’s obligation. Under an outcome-based system, an unresolved case stays attached to the administration until the risk is addressed, realigning the incentive from documentation to resolution. The same logic applies to unauthorised construction. A booking is not enforcement. A demolition order is not a demolition. A sealing order is not closure if the property reopens later. The administrative chain should end only once the physical condition of the property has been independently verified, not when a file is marked complete. There is also a straightforward fiscal argument. The Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund pays a standard ex-gratia of Rs. 2 lakh for every death in a building collapse - a rate applied most recently after the Thane collapse this July. Apply that rate to the death toll in the Satya Niketan case and the ex-gratia payout alone crosses Rs. 12 lakh, before emergency response, hospital treatment, policing, lost working days and litigation are counted. Prevention requires spending before anything visible has gone wrong, which makes it a harder budget line to defend than a rescue operation. That asymmetry, not a lack of resources, is why prevention keeps losing inside the state. The Satya Niketan building had an owner. It had tenants, students renting rooms inside it. Someone should have flagged it for scrutiny before repair work began on a Sunday afternoon. A notice is evidence that the state has seen a risk. It is not evidence the risk has been removed. Only a verified outcome closes that gap, and until the system is built to track outcomes rather than paperwork, the next notice will tell us as little as this one did. (The writer is an independent public policy researcher. Views personal.)

The Night Democracy Changed

Nearly half a century separates today's journalism students from the midnight of June 25, 1975. For many of them, the Emergency belongs to textbooks, examination questions and occasional political debates. Yet, history acquires a different texture when narrated by someone who has spent decades in the newsroom, understands the anatomy of power and appreciates the indispensable role of a free press.


That opportunity came alive at Jain (Deemed-to-be University), where the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication organised a thought-provoking lecture on “The Emergency of 1975: Precedents, Proclamation, Paralells.”


The session featured Krishna Prasad, former Group Editorial Officer of The Hindu and former Editor-in-Chief of Outlook magazine. Rather than recounting familiar historical facts, Prasad challenged students to view the Emergency as a continuing lesson in constitutional vigilance, democratic responsibility and journalistic courage.


Historical Lens

“Remember June 25. Keep it permanently etched in your mind.”  That simple appeal perhaps captured the spirit of the lecture better than any elaborate analysis.


Tracing the political turmoil preceding the proclamation, Prasad explained how the Allahabad High Court verdict against Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the nationwide movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan and the constitutional advice reportedly offered by Siddhartha Shankar Ray converged into one of independent India's most consequential decisions. At around 11.45 pm on June 25, 1975, the President signed the proclamation under Article 352, citing "internal disturbance", fundamentally altering India's democratic landscape.


The presentation moved well beyond dates and legal provisions. Through archival newspaper pages, rare photographs, political cartoons, constitutional amendments and the covers of landmark books on the Emergency, history unfolded almost frame by frame. The visual journey reminded students that journalism is often history's first draft.


The presentation also examined constitutional changes during the period, including the 38th, 39th, 41st and 42nd Amendments, illustrating how legal instruments can reshape democratic institutions when extraordinary powers remain unchecked.


Press Matters

For journalism students, however, the most compelling lessons emerged from the discussion on the media.


Prasad vividly recalled how censorship became one of the defining characteristics of the Emergency. Newspapers were prohibited from publishing material critical of the government. In Delhi, electricity supplies to newspaper offices were reportedly disconnected to prevent presses from rolling. News was no longer determined solely by editorial judgement but increasingly by official approval.


Perhaps the most haunting image shown during the lecture was the famous front page of The Indian Express, where blank spaces silently protested censorship more powerfully than words ever could. Another memorable slide highlighted that 253 editors and journalists were arrested, while yet another recalled the detention of over one lakh individuals during the 21 months of the Emergency.


Prasad also drew attention to Motherland, the RSS-owned newspaper that continued to symbolise journalistic resistance despite intense censorship. Its editor, K. R. Malkani, became the first journalist to be arrested during the Emergency, underscoring the personal risks borne by members of the press.


Yet the lecture encouraged critical thinking rather than easy conclusion.  One slide quoted Vinoba Bhave's description of the Emergency as an “era of discipline” while another examined why many sections of society, including certain industrial, labour and political groups, initially viewed aspects of the Emergency differently.


Prasad’s advice to future journalists was refreshingly practical. Do not confine yourself to one newspaper, he urged. Read widely. Compare perspectives. Question assumptions. Journalism, he reminded the audience, flourishes not through certainty but through inquiry.


His message carried particular relevance in an age flooded with information, algorithms and competing narratives. Independent thinking remains the journalist’s most valuable professional asset.


The organisers also deserve appreciation for selecting a theme that remains academically relevant even after five decades. 


One thought lingered above every constitutional amendment, every archival photograph and every censored newspaper page displayed on the screen:  democracy rarely disappears overnight. More often, it is gradually weakened when institutions stop questioning, when citizens stop caring and when journalists stop asking uncomfortable questions.


For students entering the profession today, the Emergency is not merely an episode to remember. It is a reminder that freedom of the press is neither permanent nor self-sustaining. Every generation inherits it, tests it and ultimately decides whether it will endure.  That may well have been the most enduring lesson of the lecture. History is valuable not because it remains in the past, but because it quietly shapes the choices we make in the present


(The writer is a retired banker and author. He can be reached at krs1957@hotmail.com. Views personal.)


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