The 27-year-old engineer’s death in Noida exposed the appalling condition of safety and emergency response by authorities despite mock drills. Administrative failures were seen in Indore’s water tragedy and a Goa club fire that points towards systemic misgovernance, with accountability missing.
Noida drowning – the Republic needs Accountability towards Citizens
Last week, a 27-year-old software engineer tragically lost his life after his car broke through a damaged boundary wall and plunged into a flooded pit at a commercial project site in Noida’s Sports City. Over the past few months, several large-scale mock drills have been staged around this area to showcase emergency preparedness. However, at the time of this accident, the absence of a comprehensive action plan was conspicuous – there was significant delay in emergency response, trained personnel like life-guards and divers were not available, and critical equipment like life-jackets, boats were missing – exacerbating critical gaps in public safety.
This is symptomatic of misgovernance, which reflects in incidents across urban India, including the demise of more than 25 people due to consumption of contaminated water in India’s cleanest city, Indore; and the death of 25 people from a fire in a Goa-based club. While a SIT has submitted voluminous report in 450 pages and National Green Tribunal has called for a report, and High Courts are hearing ongoing matters regarding Indore and Goa incidents, true and effective accountability for systemic failures remains missing.
Mirroring findings from the 1993 Vohra Committee Report, Supreme Court Chief Justice Surya Kant recently stated that Chandigarh’s Sukhna Lake is drying up due to illegal construction, made possible by a nexus between builders, the mafia, and bureaucrats. Similar collusion and poor planning are also playing out across India. Actions to address this must move beyond suspensions, dismissals, and arrests:
1. Grand plans, poor ground reality: At the World Economic Forum in Davos, the UP government signed an MoU worth INR 2.27 lakh crore for the establishment of a data center in Greater Noida. An international airport is being built near Noida at a cost of INR 29.6K crore. In 2015, an INR 2.3 lakh crore plan was made to develop 100 “smart cities”, which continue to languish in a state of disrepair. In Abujhmarh in Chattisgarh’sDantewada district, lack of funds of few crores to repair 23 roads damaged by floods last year has restricted mobility for more than one lakh people across a hundred villages. Indian municipalities are among the weakest globally in terms of financial autonomy – areas contributing >60% to India’s GDP are dependent on central and state-government allocations for ~80% of their expenses. This often leads to insufficient funding for salary payments and critical functions including garbage collection, water supply, and road maintenance.
2. Corruption behind the civic collapse: Delhi’s three major landfills, Ghazipur, Bhalswa, and Okhla, are major environmental hazards, and a national embarrassment. While the Delhi Municipal Corporation has an annual budget of Rs. 16.5K crore, a budget of Rs. 57K crore has been demanded to repair sewer lines and drains. Despite this shortfall, budgets for councilor funds are being increased to INR 2 crore. In Mumbai—where residents are struggling due to severe congestion, overcrowded public transport, and poorly maintained roads—a significant portion of the city’s Rs. 70K crore budget remains unutilized, even as councilors prioritize 5-star hotel stays and party-politics.
3. Audit warnings ignored: The CAG had warned about the dangers of contaminated water in Indore, as early as 2019. Similarly, in a 2021 report, the CAG had detailed out irregularities and corruption in the unlawful sale of plots and non-development of community infrastructure in the Noida Sports City, where the tragic accident took place. The sale of plots after sub-plotting through collusion with builders has resulted in a loss of Rs. 9K crore to the government, and has hampered the development of residential areas. However, the Noida Authority has been unable to identify the owner of the site of incidence. The ongoing CBI investigation on the nexus between builders, banks, and officials is advancing at a sluggish pace. While the Police has filed sporadic, performative cases against builders, true accountability and punishment remains missing.
4. Why accountability still fails: Based on government disclosures in the Legislative Assembly, 89 people have lost their lives in Delhi in the last two years, due to drowning in sewers and drains. The sense of urgency sharpened after the abject institutional failure in Noida, where the police, fire department, NDRF, and even the Air Force were unable to rescue the young man despite efforts spanning over two and a half hours. Even the new system by the central government to assess work by officials through a monthly scorecard is unlikely to improve performance and accountability at the lower rungs.
As the Indian government prepares for next month’s AI Summit, the government can deliberate leveraging AI to parse through past committee reports and studies to understand systemic issues, instead of proposing a setting up a committee after every incident and mishap. This can also help identify pending tasks and unresolved grievances, while enabling quicker accountability of officials.
(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author’s own and do not reflect those of DNA)
(Virag Gupta is a Supreme Court Advocate and Cyber Law Expert. His cases and interventions have brought Landmark changes in the IT, Cyber and Telecom Sector, such as the protection of children in cyberspace, National Email Policy, appointment of Grievance Officers by Tech Giants, E-commerce, Digital Signatures and Online Gaming.)
