Gujarat’s bridge tragedy

THERE has been heavy loss of life – more than at least 130 – in the collapse of the British-era “hanging bridge” in Morbi in Gujarat.

I fail to understand why it failed because the bridge had just reopened after several months of renovation.

It is said that because of Diwali, the bridge was jampacked with people. But that is not a convincing reason because bridges have a safety factor of three or four.

Now I know something about bridges – or to put it more accurately, I learnt the hard way that I know very little about bridges. One of my university projects was to build a model of a bridge. It collapsed ignominiously before my whole year when it was given a gentle tug. I thought I had designed something cutting-edge but the rivets popping out told the opposite story. I guess at that moment I realised I was not cut out to be a scientist and instead chose journalism.

What happened in Gujarat is a tragedy for reasons beyond the immediate loss of life. We now find that bridge and building collapses (and train crashes) in India are all too common, raising questions about Indian technical competence.

Perhaps Indians should be modest and learn the basics of engineering from their counterparts in Britain. As Kartar Lalvani argues in his very pro-British and fair book, The Making of India: The Untold Story of British Enterprise, the infrastructure left behind by the country’s erstwhile colonial rulers has endured pretty well.

My suspicion is that the Morbi bridge collapsed, not because too many people were on it, but the swaying set up fatal vibrations.