In a Noida swamp, the tale of many abdications

Google Earth’s satellite picture reveals certain facts, which invite questions related to urban development. The incident did not occur at a traffic junction. It happened at a fairly wide four-lane main road, which suddenly turns a full 90 degrees and becomes a two-lane single road. The width of the road, as well as its geometry, is not as per the norms of the Central Road Research Institute. It also does not fit the criteria set by the Indian Road Congress. In layman’s terms, all four-lane roads that have a verge in the centre need to be turned in a slow curve. Such curves depend on the speed of traffic movement that needs to be monitored. Speed limits need to be enforced strictly.

Two, there is no visible crash barrier on the side of the road — ensuring this should have been the mandate of both the planning agency and the execution department. Therefore, in the dense fog, the unfortunate car driver drove into what Google Earth calls the “Sector lake”.

Three, why was there a water body/lake at the place of the accident?

It was apparently a plot of land allotted/ sold by the Noida Authority, in which a building with a double basement, or more, was to be constructed. The project never took off. If newspaper reports are to be believed, the project developer sold it to another developer, who too could not complete it. Thus, water collected in a deep hole in the ground — it wasn’t cordoned off, at least on the side where the road runs along the plot.

Fourth, how was the pit for the basement car park so full of water? The answer to this, too, is simple. The plot is at a site that is very close to, or perhaps in, the floodplains — the Hindon river’s pushta. It is well known that groundwater levels near the boundaries of a river are always high (as underground channels of water seep into the river basin and then flow downstream).

Thus, even if there is no source of water to fill the neglected basement pit, the surrounding groundwater would have filled it up over time. The Noida Authorities need to answer whether such a pushta land (in the river’s floodplain) should ever have been sold?

Given that the double basement buildings are about 30-40 feet deep before the foundations are cast, the water level in the pit would easily have been about 20 feet deep, enough to drown the car and its hapless driver.

Will there be any accountability or responsibility for the incident? Although there have been some movement — builders have been served notice and the Noida Authority CEO put on “wait list’ — the probability is terrifyingly low.

After all, the tragedy can be ascribed to a number of reasons and agencies. The Noida Authority’s planning department, as well as its road department. The developer/ builder and the so-called owners of the plot, too, must be held responsible. The authorities in charge of rescue operations, who arrived too late to save the victim, must bear responsibility. It is also an abdication on part of the local police who were probably too overwhelmed by other matters of law enforcement to give adequate attention to the site of the tragedy.

And, finally, the citizenry, too, that seems to have got used to irregularities. For them, the omissions at the site may have appeared trivial before things took a tragic turn.

The writer is an architect and urbanist