Repeated Civic Infrastructure Failures Expose Governance Accountability Gaps

Urban local governance in India rests on the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act, 1992, which inserted Part IXA into the Constitution and added the Twelfth Schedule, listing municipal functions such as urban planning, regulation of land use, building construction, and slum improvement. Article 243W empowers state legislatures to endow municipalities with authority to perform these functions, including enforcement of building bye-laws and removal of unauthorised construction. In practice, however, most municipal corporations remain under-staffed, financially dependent on state governments, and vulnerable to political interference, which weakens their capacity to enforce these powers consistently.

A parallel governance gap lies in the transparency of land and property records. The Digital India Land Records Modernisation Programme was designed to digitise cadastral maps and update Records of Rights so that land ownership and land-use status become verifiable and publicly accessible, reducing disputes and unauthorised claims. The same logic, that citizens cannot demand accountability without access to official information, applies directly to building safety. When compliance certificates, fire clearances, and violation records are not publicly displayed or centrally registered, ordinary citizens have no way to verify whether a building or establishment is operating legally, which is precisely the gap this piece raises.

Disaster preparedness for such failures falls under the Disaster Management Act, 2005, which created the National Disaster Management Authority and mandates hazard mapping, building safety audits, and mock drills, primarily for natural hazards, though building collapses and fire tragedies are increasingly treated as man-made disasters requiring similar institutional response.