Falling walls: On building collapses

In September 2020, the Bhiwandi Municipal Corporation in Maharashtra placed the Kohinoor building on its ‘danger’ list around the same time the Jilani building collapsed a few kilometres away, killing 41. Six years on, and hours after officials declared the Kohinoor to be unsafe again and evacuated around 40 residents, it collapsed, killing 10. In the half decade in between, the owners had refused to vacate or redevelop the property and instead undertook unauthorised repairs. While the fall of the Jilani building, which was old but not on a ‘dangerous’ list, was a failure of anticipation, that of the Kohinoor building, on such a list and which fell mid-repairs, implies a failure of enforcement. Yet, the State responded similarly in both instances, by suspending officials in 2020 and filing a criminal case against the contractor now. Bhiwandi, one of India’s largest powerloom hubs, has a large low-income migrant population living in small houses in densely packed neighbourhoods. With hundreds of buildings on the ‘danger’ list and no transit camps or temporary housing, residents often choose unsafe homes over homelessness, while owners continue collecting rent. Evacuation orders are also hard to enforce without police support, while allowing the corporation to claim that legal liability has been discharged on paper; demolitions are politically fraught. That both buildings collapsed during the monsoons is also not coincidental.

India treats infrastructure as an asset with a one-time investment. The post-2000s construction boom only outpaced maintenance work and administrative oversight, with the latter having fragmented further since. In mid-2024, roofs/canopies collapsed at airports in Delhi, Jabalpur, and Rajkot while Bihar had a spate of collapsing bridges in 2024-26. Roads have frequently caved in and basements have flooded in tier-I cities, including in the Rajinder Nagar tragedy. This year, similar collapses have also been reported in Kolkata and Pune. Despite the availability of technologies to continuously monitor structures and issue early warnings, urbanisation has outrun municipal capacity, with most of the resulting failures involving a known hazard. The apparent rise in the frequency of these incidents indicates a lack of attention to construction quality as much as greater media coverage and there being more infrastructure to fail. But in place of the state’s almost instinctive responses in the form of legal and disciplinary action, inquiries and promises of audits, and victim compensation, India’s buildings need widespread rehabilitation work. Nothing short of an urban renewal would do.