Opinion It’s high time Noida had a municipal corporation
City governance in India has two broad dimensions — accountability of the state to its citizens and capacity of the state to undertake preventive action.
Yuvraj Mehta, 27, was returning home when his car plunged into the drain at Noida Sector 150. (Express Photo/Amit Mehra; File Photo) Article 21 of the Constitution guarantees the Right to Life. Yet, the everyday functioning of Indian cities reveals an alarming apathy towards the well-being of its people. The number of avoidable deaths — from pedestrians walking or crossing roads, vehicles falling into potholes, building fires, or being electrocuted by exposed wires on public streets — is staggering. Between 2004 and 2015, nearly 3.9 million such deaths were recorded by the National Crime Records Bureau. Yet, more often than not, these incidents are reduced to statistics, briefly discussed, occasionally protested, and then forgotten. In the most recent tragedy in Noida, a 27-year-old man fell into a deep, abandoned construction pit filled with water.
The reaction to this incident has largely been at the surface level: officials were transferred, show-cause notices were issued to officials, and SIT probes were instituted. But the underlying cause — failure of city governance in India — has remained largely unaddressed. City governance in India has two broad dimensions — accountability of the state to its citizens and capacity of the state to undertake preventive action. Both were found wanting in this case.
Local accounts suggest that the tragedy was avoidable. The dangers posed by the construction pit-turned-pond were known to authorities, with multiple incidents reported in the preceding weeks. Basic measures — barricading, warning signage, or a dedicated rescue response — could have prevented the risk. The two critical questions to ask is why this was not done, and what the city government does now to prevent such incidents from recurring.
The answer lies in having an accountable local government. Globally, well-functioning cities are led by locally elected representatives, often a mayor. Noida does not hold local government elections. This means that there is no system for the citizens to be heard, responded to, and represented.
The existence of an abandoned construction pit raises a fundamental question: Who is responsible for securing such sites? Regulations place the onus of construction safety on developers and contractors. Local authorities are responsible for enforcement and penalties. Yet across Indian cities, construction safety norms are routinely violated, not because regulations are unclear, but because monitoring is weak, enforcement is sporadic, and penalties lack deterrence.
This reflects a broader capacity deficit within urban local governments — insufficient staffing, inadequate technical expertise, fragmented jurisdiction, and poor inter-departmental coordination. These gaps are not inevitable: They reflect local governance deficits. Even well-drafted regulations fail without routine inspections, real-time risk assessment, and the authority to act swiftly.
Many preventive measures are neither complex nor resource-intensive: Adequate street lighting, reflective markers and road studs, retro-reflective treatment near crash-prone locations, and mandatory physical barriers around construction sites. These are basic public safety responsibilities that a properly empowered local government ought to plan for, implement and enforce as a matter of course.
Noida needs to become a municipal corporation. It needs a local government that is empowered to plan, regulate, enforce, and build the capacity required to ensure that no lives are lost to preventable accidents.
The writer is associate manager, Urban Policy, Jana Urban Space Foundation
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