The 120-foot hoarding collapsed at Ghatkopar on May 13, killing 16 people. (File Photo)
It’s not for lack of visibility that a 120 ft x 120 ft billboard in Mumbai’s Ghatkopar area escaped the eye of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). It was a billboard, after all, and its very job was to announce its presence and promote the brands that rented it. During the storm on May 13, the billboard collapsed and claimed 16 lives. Following the incident, the director of the media company that owned the billboard was arrested and the Chief Minister ordered a structural audit for hoardings. I argue that in the aftermath, we should hold the state accountable and reflect on the enforcement of urban development norms in our cities.
Let us first understand the relevance of safety audits and urban development norms in everyday life. When we interact with the city and its infrastructure, we trust the state with our lives. We travel in trains at high speeds on rails that are built by the state, we walk under high-tension power lines that are maintained by the state, and we walk besides advertisement hoardings that are regulated by the state. A city’s infrastructure is, therefore, the physical interface between the citizen and the state. It is in sidewalks, bridges, and power lines that we experience the state in its most physical form. The quality of our infrastructure forms the core of the quality of our lives, and our safety is the function of its maintenance. Whether we are safe from a giant hoarding while standing at the petrol pump beside it, depends on how much human lives matter to the state. Audits and regulations, therefore, safeguard us from the dangers of infrastructural collapse.
The actions of the state since the tragic collapse of the hoarding follow a pattern that is typical of infrastructural “accidents” across the country. A dangerous piece of infrastructure remains unnoticed by the development authority for a long time. Before tragedy hits, a few concerned citizens or activists raise the issue. The complaints go unnoticed and any action is delayed. Then, tragedy hits, claiming several lives and igniting public outrage. The state conducts rescue operations and law enforcement launches a “manhunt” to nab the private contractor involved. Meanwhile, audits are ordered, and the development authority suddenly notices and fixes other violations in the city’s infrastructure. With the private firm becoming the sole criminal in the tragedy, the state slowly disappears in the background with no accountability for the allocation of contracts, or the enforcement of regulations. In the 2016 flyover collapse in Kolkata, the construction company IVRCL was held solely responsible; in the Morbi Bridge collapse of 2022, the Oreva group; and in the case of the Ghatkopar hoarding collapse, it’s Ego Media Pvt. Ltd.
The pattern tells us three things. First, that the state does not value human lives enough to ensure that public infrastructure is safe. Reports have shown that the Ghatkopar hoarding had a weak and shallow foundation, that the Government Railway Police (GRP) had granted permission for a hoarding in 2021, and that the BMC had issued three notices to the agency over the past year but no action was taken. The state acted in complete neglect of the people of Mumbai, ignored a giant hoarding three times larger than the permitted size, and only ordered structural audits after 16 people died.
Second, that the state does not assume accountability in private partnerships and blames the private players alone. Most development and maintenance work of public infrastructure follows the public private partnership (PPP) model whereby private agencies are engaged to develop and maintain civic infrastructure as the state lacks human resources and the capacity to do so. The officials of the state, therefore, play the role of the people’s representatives in PPP projects and their job is to ensure that safety protocols are followed by the private agency. To put it simply, while private firms indeed share responsibility for infrastructure tragedies, the buck stops with the state. Since the tragic collapse of the Ghatkopar flyover, the government has conveniently used the director of Ego Media Pvt Ltd. as a symbol of their swift punitive action but we are yet to see any state officials being held accountable for criminal neglect.
Third, the pattern tells us that the enforcement of urban development norms is selective and does not ensure citizen safety, let alone promote citizen welfare. Across its history, the BMC, like other municipal corporations of the country, has used laws like the Mumbai Municipal Corporation Act to remove street vendors from public spaces. Such Acts have also been used in a targeted manner against minorities and dissidents as shown in Amnesty International’s February 2024 report. Mumbai saw its own instances of “bulldozer action” in Mira Road, Mohammed Ali Road and Govandi earlier this year. On the other hand, in the case of the giant illegal hoarding in Ghatkopar, all norms and laws were ignored. More importantly, while the law has been mobilised in the case of street vendors and structures that did not pose any threat to citizens’ lives, it was ignored by the same municipal body in the case of the Ghatkopar hoarding that claimed 16 lives.
A giant hoarding abutting a prominent road in one of India’s biggest metropolises governed by the richest municipality couldn’t have gone unnoticed. The tragic collapse of the hoarding and the events thereafter show us the precarity of human life in Indian cities. The incident is a typical case of criminal neglect and the state’s refusal of accountability. In Ghatkopar, the state failed the citizens and broke the trust that city dwellers put in the material elements of public life.
The writer is an architect and a graduate scholar of South Asia at the University of Oxford
