Opinion: Enough Of Buck-Passing: Need To Fix Responsibility After Delhi Flooding Horror

Three young, bright minds were lost in a coaching institute basement incident in India's capital, New Delhi, on 27 July. Shreya Yadav of Uttar Pradesh, Tania Soni from Telangana, and Navin Delvin from Kerala died after the basement of the building housing the coaching centre Rau's IAS Study Circle at Old Rajinder Nagar was flooded. The police arrested five people, including the owner and coordinator of the coaching centre, charged them with various offences, and sent them to judicial custody.

In a typical bureaucratic post-incident reaction, the MCD (Municipal Corporation of Delhi) sealed the basements of many other coaching institutes in the area, and earth movers were pressed into service at Old Rajinder Nagar to demolish illegal portions of coaching institutes. Sadly, no action will bring the deceased students back to life. Just days before the basement drowning, a 26-year-old man had died from electrocution when he touched a colony gate electrified by a naked wire.

The dreams of all three aspiring civil servants ended due to callous, indifferent, and perpetually under-prepared civic agencies. This amounts to criminal negligence. It also highlights the constant political wrangling between the ruling AAP (Aam Aadmi Party) and the LG (Lieutenant Governor) of Delhi, which has deprived Delhiites of effective governance.

Callous Authorities

Local authorities have utterly failed to regulate the growth of coaching centres, which are overcrowded with students and operate in residential buildings, flouting safety norms. There is an entire network of exploitation flourishing in Delhi's Old Rajinder Nagar and Mukherjee Nagar, hubs of civil service coaching. In June 2023, 61 students were injured while trying to escape a four-storey commercial building occupied by hundreds when a fire on the ground floor filled the upper stories with smoke in Delhi's Mukherjee Nagar.

The Delhi High Court had taken suo motu cognisance of the fire and asked the authorities to examine the safety status of all such institutes. The court instructed the Delhi Fire Service Department to check the fire safety certificates of all coaching centres in the city. Likewise, it asked the MCD to review the sanctioned building plans of such establishments.

In the present case, investigations revealed that the basement, misrepresented as a parking and storage area, was actually being illegally used as a library by the coaching institute, violating building and fire department regulations.

The MCD building bylaws specify the activities permitted in basements. Running a coaching centre or a library is not permissible. This is a matter involving criminal liability.

“The officials and staff get away with their errant behaviour because they fear no consequences. They know that after a while, when the issue is no longer grabbing headlines, nothing will change, and they will get away with their criminal acts. It is not an episodic but a systemic problem,” says Ash Narain Roy, Director of the Institute of Social Sciences, Delhi.

The unregulated coaching industry is being run like a mafia economy with huge money at stake and impunity.

“Teaching shops are flourishing under the worst conditions because of the rot in the education system. It is essentially a governance problem where accountability is missing. Citizens suffer as officials dodge their responsibilities,” adds Mr Roy.

Stringent Law Needed

Students, whether in engineering, medical, or UPSC coaching, around the country are compelled to study in unsafe conditions, highlighting the need for a law that can regulate the industry—not just mere guidelines, like those issued by the Union government earlier this year.

In January, the Union government issued guidelines to ease the pressure on students. However, very little seems to have changed on the ground because these guidelines are not legally binding, as they are not attached to an Act. Since education is a concurrent subject, both central and state governments need to amend their laws and create new, binding rules.

Categorising or recognising coaching centres as part of the formal education system would mean legitimising the industry and its business operations, which is definitely a big NO. The Centre and state governments have a huge responsibility to build awareness, improve regular schooling and college education, and reduce dependency on coaching.

Continuous Bickering

Since coming into power, the AAP has been engaged in a constant struggle with the LG's office over various issues. These conflicts have crippled Delhi's development for the past eight years, with three different LGs and several court orders failing to resolve the disputes.

“The daily tug-of-war between the AAP government and the LG is having a demoralising effect on all institutions. Departments and bodies like the MCD, which deal with citizens, are unaccountable and unresponsive at best,” says Mr Roy.

The functioning of our urban local bodies is such that the buck doesn't stop with any one stakeholder. After each serious incident, lower-level officials are punished, arrests are made, and cases drag on for years. Yet no accountability is fixed to prevent the next accident. Lives will continue to be lost, and citizens will continue to suffer until the Union and state governments find a lasting solution to revamp India's dysfunctional urban local bodies.