Opinion From Noida techie’s father’s grief, a question: Is our well-being even a sub-plot in the story of a Viksit Bharat?
Countries and economies are made up of people. Just building urban spaces is not enough. They need to be infrastructurally sound, efficient, safe and democratic
Yuvraj Mehta, 27, was returning home when his car plunged into the drain at Noida sector 150 on Monday. (Express Photo By Amit Mehra) It’s every family’s nightmare. On an otherwise unremarkable day, one of them heads to work as usual and follows the oft-taken road back home — only they don’t make it. An ordinary day turns into a tragedy. For Raj Mehta, last Friday night, that nightmare became reality.
His 27-year-old son, Yuvraj, a software professional living in the centre of a sprawling planned urban centre — known across India for its booming IT and manufacturing industries — called him in a panic just after midnight. On Yuvraj’s drive home to Greater Noida, amid a thick layer of fog, his car went off the road over a partially broken boundary wall. The vehicle fell into a deep pit, dug for the construction of a building, which had filled up with water over several years. Despite making all the right calls — reaching out for help in time, pulling himself out of the partially submerged car and climbing atop it to alert passersby, using his phone flashlight to guide rescue teams — he drowned in the abandoned pit at around 2:30 am.
This tragedy speaks to a larger failure in India’s vision of development and progress. For a country rushing to become an urbanised, developed economy with smart cities and smarter infrastructure, the reality speaks to mismatched priorities and gaps in urban governance that fail these dreams everyday.
An empty plot that should have been secured by the Noida Authority against potential hazards, a lack of qualified divers, hours-long delay in arrival of specialised professionals and equipment — Yuvraj’s death has state negligence written all over it. And yet, this is not a unique story in urban India. Earlier this month, at least 10 people in Indore died and hundreds more were hospitalised after drinking water was contaminated with sewage and no action was taken despite a number of complaints registered with local authorities by residents. Similar outbreaks have been reported and have caused injury or death in Noida, Bengaluru, Gandhinagar, and Chennai in recent years. All Raj and countless other family members can do is watch helplessly as their loved ones slip away.
Time and again, through one tragedy or another, the public is reminded that their well-being is not even a sub-plot in the story of an urbanising India. Basic rights such as water and public safety remain elusive in this country. The CEO of Noida Authority, Lokesh M, has been removed. FIRs have been registered against two private builders involved with the project, a show-cause notice has been issued to those responsible for traffic-related work in the area, the services of a junior engineer have been terminated and an SIT probe has been set up. But accountability cannot and should not stop here.
The reasons for the repeated loss of life in urban India are plenty. But structural gaps and bureaucratic apathy top the list. Local governance bodies, for example, are riddled with issues. There are undue delays in elections. Once elected, local bodies are often not empowered enough to carry out their duties, or the mechanisms of power are too disjointed to be effective. A callous approach to local governance in cities that are built by migrants and their aspirations, creates crises where there need be none. As in almost all other cases, the empty plot with all its red flags had been brought to the attention of local authorities earlier. In fact, a truck driver had an accident in the same spot and fell into the same ditch not even two weeks ago. Allegedly, the police arrived at the scene nearly three-and-a-half hours after the incident occurred and no safety measures had since been put in place. For local authorities, a reactive — not proactive — approach seems to be the mantra. Give us a reason to fix something and maybe we’ll get to it.
For there to be responsive governance, there must, first and foremost, be an elected government. Noida remains the only major city in India to not have a municipal body. In August last year, the Supreme Court asked the Uttar Pradesh government to consider converting Noida into a metropolitan corporation to make it more “citizen-centric”. For now, a city with well over a million residents is being administered by a non-democratic bureaucratic body appointed by the state government — a scenario ripe for tragedy with next to no appropriate redressal mechanisms.
A national vision of technical excellence and economic abundance are appreciable but it cannot exist in a vacuum. Countries and economies are made up of people. Just building urban spaces is not enough. They need to be infrastructurally sound, efficient, safe and democratic. Reaching for a prosperous future without tending to the present makes for an unstable foundation — and the citizen pays the price for each crack in it. A conversation on progress will always be lacking without competent and careful governance. Scaling up must work in tandem with plugging gaps — like a missing or disempowered municipal body and complaints that fall on deaf ears — and eliminating lapses. Otherwise, even if Bharat becomes Viksit, will its citizens be any safer?
The writer is sub-editor, The Indian Express. sukhmani.malik@expressindia.com
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