India’s cities need more than cosmetic change

Last week, more than 15 people were killed when a 43-year-old bridge in Gujarat’s Vadodara district collapsed and with it, the myth of the Gujarat model that supposedly saw huge steps forward in “development”. What is worse, media reports say that officials from the state’s roads and buildings department were alerted three years ago to “unusual vibrations” coming from the bridge. They ignored the warnings. Since 2021, there have been as many as four bridge collapses in Gujarat alone.

Hundreds of kilometres away in the national capital Delhi, the same day as the Vadodara bridge collapse, a spell of heavy monsoon showers caused massive water logging on the roads, with shocking images of cars floating in the water and traffic that crawled for miles. According to media reports, 9 people were killed across the National Capital Region, including a 25-year-old who died of electrocution, and an auto driver who drowned in an uncovered manhole. The police received over 400 distress calls that evening mostly from people whose cars had stalled in 3 or 4 feet of water. Once again, the national capital region’s pathetic infrastructure was exposed. We know the monsoon comes every year and yet we are so badly prepared to deal with the rain. Only days earlier, the Haryana chief minister declared that 500 acres of land had been identified near Gurugram for a ‘Disneyland’. A state whose roads crumble with one spell of rain wants to build a state of the art amusement park. These are the priorities of our elected officials. But who is holding them accountable?