More disasters waiting to happen in Delhi's illegal sprawl (Feature)

Nov 16, 2010, 10:32 GMT

New Delhi - Mohammed Khan, a migrant worker from the eastern state of Bihar, lost five brothers when an illegally built house collapsed in the Indian capital Tuesday.

Khan is one of more than 1 million workers who have migrated to Delhi from villages in poorer regions in Bihar, West Bengal or Uttar Pradesh, in search of a better life.

Most of them live in crowded one-room apartments in buildings erected without permits like the one that collapsed in Laxmi Nagar area, or in other illegal slums dotting Delhi.

Five or more people live in a single room and share the toilets on each floor.

India's capital, with a population that has grown from 4 million in the 1970s to over 10 million today, is unable to provide adequate housing for its growing population.

Greedy landlords build tenement houses of several floors in illegal housing developments, flouting all building codes. Few have approved building plans, fire safety or other mandatory permits.

Many of them also house workshops where the migrants are employed. The building that collapsed in Laxmi Nagar housed a food packaging unit and an embroidery workshop, the Indian Express newspaper reported.

Several developments such as Laxmi Nagar have been built on the floodplains of the Yamuna River, making their foundations vulnerable to water seepage.

According to the municipal government website, there were 1,435 'unauthorised colonies,' as they are locally known, in Delhi as of November 2010, up from 567 in 1977.

The city government has served over 18,000 notices to owners of illegally constructed buildings.

There have been several demolition drives during the last decade, but new buildings spring up every year and additional floors are added in the hope that they get legalized one day, usually before an election.

The Laxmi Nagar development, for one, was legalised some time ago, but many other buildings in the area are illegal, a Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) official said.

'There is a nexus between the landlords and corrupt officials of the MCD who turn a blind eye as all rules are flouted,' Shekhar Dhawan, a resident of Laxmi Nagar, said.

The five-storey house where Khan lived had a foundation suitable only for a two-storey building. It did not have a building plan sanctioned by the MCD.

It was built in the Yamuna floodplain where the houses, officials say, need deeper foundations.

'During recent floods the water reached the foundations of the building and weakened it considerably, and may have led to the collapse,' MCD official Yoginder Chandolia said.

Chandolia said the building had none of the required permits. 'The building was more than 15 years old. The landlord kept building more floors. More than 100 people lived there,' Chandolia said.

Asked when was the last time MCD officials had done a check in the area, Chandolia said he was not sure. 'No one knew the building would collapse,' MCD spokesman Deep Mathur said.

Rescued residents said water had been collecting in the basement for over two months and each time it was drained, more seeped in.

'Every building's basement in this colony is full of underground water. It happens every year, but this year has been worse,' Hindustan Times newspaper quoted Poppy Haldar, a resident of an adjoining building, as saying.

The collapse has led to fears over the safety of other buildings in the neighbourhood. 'Many more disasters waiting to happen,' a headline in the Hindustan Times said.

'I have spoken to the MCD commissioner and told him that a survey of the Shahadra zone of east Delhi, which is on the Yamuna river bed, should be carried out over the next three to four months,' Delhi's Lieutenant Governor Tejinder Khanna said after visiting the disaster site.

'Any building found unsafe will be considered for retro-fitting. But if a building is found not worth that, it will be sealed and demolished,' he added.

Meanwhile, Khan waits at the hospital where he has to identify his dead brothers and get news of two other relatives being treated for head injuries.

At the same time, new migrants arrive and look for cheap housing.

According to the Delhi Human Development Report of 2006, at least 665 migrant workers reach the city each day. 'The population of Delhi has been increasing at a rate that is more than one-and-a-half times the national average,' it said.

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