SHIVANI SINGH

House collapse takes more lives than any other disaster in Delhi. Yet, it is dealt with the usual sarkari blame-game, perfunctory inspections and enquiries that are rarely followed up with action.

Delhi saw a similar cycle of events after a five-storey building collapsed in northwest Delhi’s Sawan Park on Wednesday morning. Seven people were killed. The Delhi government ordered a magisterial enquiry. The North Delhi Municipal Corporation sought a fresh survey of all buildings under its jurisdiction.

The rules say that the surveyors must look for buildings that are ruinous or dilapidated, likely to fall or are dangerous to passersby or neighbourhood properties. Officials say they try to determine all these by looking for the most visible signs — cracks or a tilt.

But the structural safety of a building is checked only if it is in the most distressed state. The owners are asked to repair or demolish the structure. If they don’t comply, the corporation can evict the occupants and repair or demolish the building at the owner’s cost.

“Usually, a building shows signs of danger. But sometimes, it just collapses suddenly,” says an official. It did in the case of Sawan Park, claimed officials, although residents here said that they had filed complaints with the municipality. Yet the building didn’t make it to the list of 178 ‘dangerous’ structures’ identified in this year’s survey.

Apart from the usual old-age and decay, what threatens most buildings in Delhi is structural fragility. They are simply built badly. Every third resident in the city lives in a poorly provisioned home in an ‘unauthorised’ or ‘unauthorised-regularised’ neighbourhood where houses have been built without any sanctioned plan or design.

Even the so-called ‘legal’ housing is not necessarily built by the book. Unfortunately,