A spate of recent incidents has bared the shameful state of public infrastructure in India today. The collapse of a portion of a canopy at the departure area in New Delhi airport, which claimed one life and led to cancellation of flights, after a downpour on Friday was shocking but sadly not an exception. In a matter of days, airports at Jabalpur and Rajkot saw two similar cave-ins. From megacities to mofussil towns, the spread of a crumbling infrastructure is secular. As many as five under-construction bridges collapsed in Bihar alone, within a span of nine days. Such examples are unacceptably routine and tend to provoke anger only when they lead to loss of lives, such as the Kolkata flyover collapse in 2016 or the bridge cave-in at Morbi, Gujarat, in 2022. These betray troubling patterns such as attempts to cut corners, use of substandard material, lack of maintenance and sheer incompetence.
Technical failures are also too frequent, including in the biggest urban centres. In Delhi, for instance, the two-year-old Pragati Maidan tunnel, a 1.3km-long structure built at a cost of Rs 777 crore, was closed for three days due to waterlogging following Friday’s torrential rain. Earlier this year, the Delhi government issued a notice to construction firm Larsen and Toubro after it found that the tunnel was irreparable and needed an overhaul. In Mumbai, a project aimed at linking two critical flyovers has invited ridicule and a political backlash because two bridges that were meant to be joined inexplicably had a height difference of six feet between them. In a bid to salvage the project, the city’s civic body took up work to correct the misalignment of arms in April, and at the end of June the connector was yet undergoing a crucial load test, keeping citizens waiting for a bridge too far.
Shoddy public infrastructure is nothing new in India and has been forever plagued by systemic corruption. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance government through its successive terms has focused on development as a key agenda. However, the current spike in cases of damage or disrepair show the Modi government’s ambition for speeding up projects in a poor light. According to data from Bloomberg Economics, fresh infrastructure worth Rs 44.4 trillion will become operational over the next two years, which is a huge jump and equals the value of all such projects — including nearly 80 new airports — built in the last 11 years. But infra projects cannot be reduced to political gimmicks aimed at wooing voters. Quality and public safety cannot be sacrificed at the cost of speed of delivery.
In several projects that are based on public-private partnerships, there have been instances of companies winning contracts and passing them on to other vendors, thereby giving rise to corrupt practices as well as a lack of accountability. Therefore, awarding projects to contractors with a proven track record and expertise, and fixing accountability are the most urgent of steps if we are to bring about a culture shift in a deeply unequal country with no regard for human life. India has to get out of the practice of initiating probes and do nothing until the next mishap takes place. Before dreaming of becoming Viksit Bharat, we should ask ourselves: Should we not create a liveable India first? It’s not only the dead taxi driver’s family; the nation wants to know the answer.
