Disasters in India are as much the wrath of nature as political and administrative neglect. The inauguration of a project boosts a politician’s popularity, but maintenance and ensuring robust quality of work require a deeper level of discipline in the system. As the country braces for coastal erosion, landslides, and glacier bursts, the entire machinery needs a massive overhaul. This 3-part series examines through examples and scenarios what we lack, what we need to build and where we have done well.
Ask who owns a stretch of national highway, or an embankment, or the tunnel wall at Silkyara. The honest answer is often several departments, none of whom will admit it first. A road, a bridge, a drainage channel should each belong to one named office, the kind that gets credit when it holds and blame when it doesn’t.
India shares the same mountains and the same kind of glacial lakes, in Sikkim and Uttarakhand alike. What happened in Nepal last week isn’t a foreign curiosity for Indian readers. It’s a preview of a decision India will also have to make.
There’s no ceremony for a retaining wall that quietly held, no ribbon cutting for a drainage channel that was cleared before the monsoon instead of after it. In maintenance, success looks like nothing happening at all, and that’s a hard thing for any political system to celebrate or campaign on.
Selected issues, clear explanations and thoughtful perspectives—delivered when we publish.
