Built to collapse

Built to collapse
Coomi Kapoor

The death and destruction in Ahmedabad over 400 kilometres from the epicentre of the quake was the direct consequence of greed and callousness. The 70 odd high-rise buildings which collapsed like a house of cards killing hundreds were man-made disasters waiting to happen. All were constructed in the last 10 years, a majority were less than five years old. In contrast, the buildings in the pols of the congested old city survived. The 350-year old Shahi Bagh Mughul palace requires only minor repairs.

The toppled buildings tell a story of shoddy construction, substandard material and flagrant violations of basic safety norms. Concrete slabs made largely of sand, absence of steel bars to join columns and beams, paper-thin walls, unauthorised swimming pools and huge tanks on terraces, shops where there should have been car parks and no proper fire escapes. How were these death traps resembling cardboard cutouts ever cleared for occupancy by the concerned authorities? It seems that in Ahmedabad no one, including the Ahmedabad Electricity Board, insists on the building fitness certificate before allowing people to move in. Home minister Haren Pandya candidly confesses that some 80 per cent of Ahmedabad’s new high rises do not have such certificates.

The favourite phrase of the Ahmedabadis is ‘‘chalse’’, which literally translated means ‘‘will do’’. But in this free-wheeling highly entrepreneurial society where making money is the strong motivation, between the lines ‘‘chalse’’ also indicates a disdain and disregard for red tape, rules and regulations, which needlessly hold up things. Malika Sarabhai, a rebel against the city’s ethos, feels that the prevailing belief in Ahmedabad is not just that everything can be bought for a price, but that it should be so. It is a mindset which has percolated down to all sections of society whether business, industry, politics or government.

For instance, zoning laws permit only residential buildings on one of the city’s main arteries, C G Road, nursing homes being the only exception. But the entire road is dotted with shops and commercial establishments which have procured permission on the plea that they are nursing homes. High rises are now invariably constructed on pillars with parking space on the ground floor rather than in the basement (not a single high rise with a basement collapsed completely in the quake) because the parking spaces will eventually be sold off as shops. In Mahatma Gandhi’s state prohibition is still in force, but you can get almost every conceivable foreign and Indian brand of liquor delivered to your doorstep by a vendor who moves around with a well stocked bar fitted into his minibus.

Last year the activist Gujarat High Court in response to two PILs by NGOs ruled that hundreds of buildings without proper fire safety regulations and with unauthorised structural alterations should have their electricity and water cut off till the necessary corrections in the buildings were made. There was an outcry among flat owners at the prospect of additional funds being spent on what they felt were mere fripperies. A common refrain was ‘‘Where is the need? Where is the fire?’’ The state government in November last year obliging got around the judgment by notifying an extraordinary measure called the ‘Impact Fee ordinance’. A sweeping amnesty was granted to all defaulters for building violations on payment of an impact fee.

With this kind of licence it is small wonder that flats in Ahmedabad sell at half the price of those in cities like Delhi and Pune even though land prices are comparable. The building boom five years back was not in response to the laws of demand and supply but thanks to surplus profits from share market operations. Today there are a reported 40,000 vacant flats in the city. Many of the builders are sharebrokers with no background in engineering or construction. In Gujarat it is not considered unusual that the builder may have very little technical knowledge about his trade. They give the analogy of the cinema industry where the producer often has no clue about the finer points of film making.

The decline of Ahmedabad city has corresponded to a general fall in the value system and the slipping standards of the city’s political and social leadership. In the past philanthropic textile magnates like Ambalal Sarabhai and Kasturbhai Lalbhai, trade unionists like Indulal Yagnik and politicians like Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel, Hitendra Desai and Babubhai Patel showed vision and perspective in planning for Gujarat’s premier city. Kirtee Shah, director of the Ahmedabad Study Action Group, recalls the old system of Mahajans, respected prominent personalities of the city who played an enlightened intermediary role in resolving conflicts among castes, classes, factions and interest groups. The city fathers’ concern for Ahmedabad was reflected in their efforts in locating such premier national institutions as the National Institute of Design (NID) and the Indian Institute of Management (IIM ) here. Leading international architects like Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn were invited to the city to design publicbuildings in the fifties and sixties and provide an impetus to local architecture.

The leaders of the past wanted to invest in the city’s future, today they seem more interested in plundering it. Typifying the new breed is Surender Patel, the treasurer and fund collector of the BJP state unit who is himself connected with the building trade. Though he is chairman of the regulatory Ahmedabad Urban Development Authority, Patel has stoutly resisted all attempts by the courts to crack down on unauthorised construction. ‘‘We are a development agency, not a demolition agency’’ is his contention.

The word ‘development’ has in fact become a magic password to justify the indefensible, not just in Ahmedabad but everywhere in my home state. The result is foolishly lopsided growth. The state boasts that it has topped all other states as the favourite destination for foreign and domestic investors. Its infrastructure such as roads and electricity is in much better shape than most of the country. But there is a downslide to all this.

The report released last December by the Gujarat government’s Special Infrastructure Development Board paints a grim picture in regard to pollution, health services, infant mortality and life expectancy. The quality of water and air in Gujarat is fast deteriorating. Almost all the state’s rivers have been classified as critically or moderately polluted. Water sources in Gujarat are totally inadequate and the quality of the ground water is slowly deteriorating, with industries, multi-storied buildings and newly developed localities consuming a predominant share of the available drinking water. Small wonder some are beginning to question the price they are being made to pay in the name of the state’s development.