The Kolkata flyover collapse on Thursday which left 24 dead and many others injured is a tragedy whose fault lines are yet to be determined. Disaster struck in the peak hours on a very congested stretch in the heart of the city. The mishap has occurred four days ahead of the first phase of assembly elections on April 4. The Hyderabad-based infrastructure company, IVRCL group, which was building the flyover, has pleaded ignorance about the causes of the mishap, though it stoutly defended its claim that the catastrophe wasn’t the outcome of sub-standard construction materials.
Apparently, the bridge collapsed because the pillar supporting the overhead structure couldn’t bear the weight of the concrete poured a day before. Vivekananda Setu, commissioned by the former Left Front government in 2009, was seven years in the making, with only 60 per cent of the work done. The locals had objected to the construction of the flyover at the outset because of its proximity to the houses on either side. The arterial road over which the setu was coming up is extremely narrow and the balconies of several residential properties were barely a few feet away from the bridge. Naturally, the collapse of thousands of tonnes of iron and concrete has already compromised the foundations of the buildings in the neighbourhood. Unless civic authorities make a prompt assessment of the impact of the fall and take measures accordingly, it can trigger other major disasters in the near future, leading to more loss of lives and properties.
The incident on Thursday has turned attention to faulty urban planning. Like in other metros, flyovers in Kolkata were projected as a panacea to the city’s traffic woes. The long bridges snaking through the city and suburbs also reflected Kolkata’s aspirational character — that its pace of development is catching up with Delhi and Mumbai. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s catchy pre-poll promise was to turn Kolkata into London. That dream will have to wait, though it must be acknowledged that Kolkata’s traffic situation has vastly improved in the recent years.
But Banerjee’s government is answerable because it had sanctioned continuance of work on the bridge despite its MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay warning the authorities about the inherent flaws in the structural design.
Bandyopadhyay’s logic that 50 per cent of the work was already complete when he had issued the warning, thus making it impossible for the government to dismantle the structure and start afresh because of the tremendous burden of costs on the state exchequer, rings hollow in the face of the loss of lives and injuries the people had suffered. The flyover project will now have to be abandoned.
The Left and the TMC didn’t invest in a vision to improve Kolkata and check the city’s haphazard growth that came about with an increase in population. Wetlands were taken over for construction activities and green spaces disappeared overnight to make room for buildings, leaving the city vulnerable to a host of problems. The current blame game between the TMC and the opposition is a trite strategy for last-minute gains at the hustings. Barring the BJP, a marginal voice, all the three main political parties — the Congress, CPI-M and the incumbent TMC — have enjoyed power in Bengal at different times, but have done little to stem the city’s decline.
