INDIAN CITIES NEED MORE THAN JUST A TOUCH-UP

Recent bridge collapse and flooding expose cracks in infrastructure and civic priorities

- BY NIDHI RAZDAN | Special to Gulf News

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, nine 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.

The monsoon pattern