UPSC Mains 2017 GS Paper 4 Q13: model answer

Cash relief and one arrest are the usual script after a collapse. The script is repeated because the system that allowed three extra floors is never put in the dock.

Why such incidents happen

• Nexus: builders, local officials and politicians gain from illegal floors.
• Weak enforcement: too few inspectors, and inspections done on paper.
• Regularisation schemes: repeated amnesties tell builders that illegal floors will be legalised later.
• Housing shortage: demand for cheap housing makes illegal buildings profitable.
• Poor materials and design, with no structural audit.
• Invisible workers: migrant labourers are often unregistered under the Building and Other Construction Workers Act, 1996, so their safety is nobody's business.
• Slow justice: cases drag on, penalties are rarely applied to officials. Moulivakkam, Chennai (2014), where 61 people died, showed how long accountability takes.

Measures to prevent them

• Transparent approvals: online sanctions, with plans and permitted floors displayed publicly at the site.
• Geotagged inspections at fixed stages, with photographs uploaded; drone surveys for unauthorised floors.
• Third-party structural audits before occupancy and for old buildings.
• Accountability of officials: if an illegal floor comes up in an inspector's area, he answers for it.
• No regularisation of structurally unsafe construction.
• Worker safety: compulsory registration of workers, safety gear and insurance under the OSH Code, 2020; the builder liable for compensation.
• Citizen reporting: an app to report illegal construction, with protection for the person reporting.
• RERA registration and fast-track courts for building violations.
• Relief that reaches migrants: compensation that can be claimed from the worker's home State, without a local address or bank account.

The labourers who died had no say in the extra floors. Prevention means giving them, and the city, someone who answers before the concrete sets.