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The deadly roof collapse after heavy rains on 28 June at the Delhi Airport's Terminal 1 isn’t an isolated incident, but stands preceded by a long list of catastrophic failures of recently-built infrastructure.
Add to this the perennial floods that most of our urban cities, particularly metros, experience and which we have come to accept. All this in a country which heads the global Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI).
In recent days, canopies of two other airports (Jabalpur, inaugurated by Prime Minister Modi in March; and Rajkot) also collapsed. Five bridges have fallen in Bihar in the past few days.
The Mumbai Trans-Harbour Link, inaugurated with great flourish by PM Modi in January 2024, has developed cracks. The Pragati Maidan Tunnel, inaugurated similarly in June 2022, was deemed "useless" by the authorities, after seepage flooded it less than two years after launch.
Worse, the massive Ram Mandir, constructed under the supervision of former Principal Secretary to the PM Nripendra Mishra and inaugurated by PM Modi in January, started to leak at the onset of monsoons, with rainwaters also inundating newly built roads in Ayodhya.