This week we learned a lesson in how far governments must travel to catch up with India today.
Between watching live coverage of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech at the centenary celebrations of a Delhi University college on Saturday, 5 September, and his address to students at ‘NaMo for Viksit Bharat’ in Vadodara on Tuesday, 8 September, fell the shadow of a building that came crashing down, killing five students and two workers. That’s the reality we saw even as the PM’s words about his government’s achievements in infrastructure and good governance echoed in our ears.
Satya Niketan, a Delhi PG accommodation for students, collapsed after work in its basement shook it to rubble, on the afternoon of 6 September.From all that we have heard, seen and read in the news media – TV and digital news or the newspapers—the building had flouted pretty much every building rule in the capital. These escaped detection by the concerned authorities, chiefly the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD).No wonder Republic TV declared, ‘Useless (nikara) MCD’ and asked if Delhi officials were ‘hand in glove’ with the owner of the building. “If this isn’t murder, what is?” wrote The Times of India in a 7 September headline, adding that “seven precious lives lost to greed and lack of enforcement”. That’s the truth about Satya Niketan.To see the video grab of a human face buried under the building’s debris on the front pages of Hindi newspapers such as Dainik Jagran and Navbharat Times on Monday and then watch the PM deliver rousing words while opening a 1,500 km stretch of the Dedicated Freight Corridor (“a historic achievement for 21st century India”) on Tuesday, was surreal. It was like trying to fit together two pieces of different photographs.Page 1 of the Hindi newspaper Amar Ujala on 9 September is an example: The lead story is on PM’s ‘Jhoot ki Goonj’ comments during his speech with a photograph of him waving to students. To its right is the image of students on the street after their eviction from unsafe buildings in Satya Niketan.Perhaps the PM’s speechwriters need a reality check. Before such public addresses, maybe they could read the headlines?That way, the speeches may mention topical issues too, reflecting the distress we heard in TV interviews of students at Satya Niketan. They told us about the appalling conditions they were forced to live in at such PGs despite paying extortionist rates (Rs 10,00-15,000 for a bed, wrote Navbharat Times). The sleeping system
