Delhi UPSC IAS Coaching Center: Opinion The death of three students in Delhi due to flooding in the basement of a coaching centre preparing for civil services exams is not an accident but a man-made tragedy. The root cause of this tragedy is gross negligence and widespread corruption at the core of the system.
One cannot be satisfied with the fact that two people have been arrested from the coaching institute, as why were those employees and officers of Delhi Municipal Corporation not arrested, who knowingly gave the facility to this institute to run a library in the basement.
After all, when storage or parking was allowed in the basement, how was the library running there? It is clear that this can be done in connivance with the coaching operators and Delhi Municipal Corporation officials. There were 25-30 students in the library when water entered the basement due to floods. It was fortunate that except for three unfortunate students, everyone else somehow managed to escape.
The area gets flooded during the rainy season, but nobody cares about it. There is no special justification for the fact that the MCD has talked about forming an inquiry committee. There is a possibility of whitewashing in the name of investigation.
The incident in Delhi shows that those who are responsible for the maintenance of urban infrastructure are not willing to do their job properly. This is the reason why the urban structure of the country's capital and other metropolises has deteriorated badly. Be it Mumbai or Bengaluru or other big cities, accidents keep happening every day due to unplanned development and blatant violation of rules and regulations related to urban construction.
The situation is such that safety measures are ignored even in government buildings. There are many rules and regulations in our country, but they are mostly on paper. Due to this, the condition of town planning is pathetic. The average public representative and officers and employees of the municipal bodies are busy earning money and promoting it instead of stopping unplanned development.
Due to this trend, even common people are developing the habit of violating rules and regulations. The mentality of 'anything can happen' has become so strong that the system has stopped caring. It is very unfortunate that despite making big claims of urban development and many beautification schemes, the condition of the cities of the country is bad.
Now the situation has worsened to such an extent that there is no hope of improvement in the condition of cities. This hope is not there because due to disorder and neglect, water has started flowing above the head everywhere in the state of urbanization.