Fix old buildings, save lives

Speaking of home, I often quote American writer, William Arthur Ward, “A house is made of walls and beams, but a home is built with hopes and dreams.” What Ward definitely meant and our own civic body — BMC — definitely missed, was that the walls and beams of the cessed buildings have wear and tear and needs regular repairs, lest the hopes and dreams come crumbling down. They did, once again, at Pydhonie area in south Mumbai as another old building collapsed last week, burying alive four. The blood spill leaves an unenviable record: 34 collapses in two years, thanks to large-scale change of user from residential to commercial, unauthorised expansions, BMC’s failure to detect such changes, and Rent Act provisions that make repairs scarily expensive for landlords.

There are 19,642 cessed buildings in the megapolis, most of them 60 to 100 years old, and which stoop precariously. The housing authorities feign helplessness with an array of unbelievable excuses, while developers and landlords look the other way. When will we wake up?

The question rung sharp yet again as BMC said it had sent notices for vacating the rickety Pydhonie building, but the residents didn’t move out. It’s here that logic wears thin — move out to where? The problem the people face is two-pronged: where can they arrange for alternative accommodation, and two, the amount they need to contribute towards repairs is very high. The government body never wakes up before a building collapses. Instead of sending notices, why can’t it simply vacate the debilitated houses with police protection and reallocate residents well on time?

A further sting is the time taken for redeveloping a decrepit building. Every monsoon, BMC conducts a survey of thousands of cessed buildings, identifying some 100-odd building in a perilous state. In some cases, the tenants are then moved out, may be forcibly, to a transit camp where they spend several years before they come back to their reconstructed homes. There have been cases where people have been living in transit camps for generations together on a thin strand of hope that they would go back to the building where they spent their early life.

Add to that the unhygienic conditions in the transit camps and the concomitant paucity of water and power. Lifts in these camps rarely work and senior citizens have to trudge their way up to fourth or fifth floors. There have also been instances where, owing to inordinate delay in redevelopment, children had to be withdrawn from schools. If this is what redevelopment amounts to, residents can’t be blamed for feeling fidgety about vacating the premises.

Yes, repairs are imperative to a healthy structure. Going by the lackadaisical attitude of the landlords, whose approval and monetary inputs are needed for repairs their will must be reined in to avoid delay. Moreover, societies too must carry out structural audits from time to time. It’s their lives after all, and they must join hands to force BMC to acquiesce whenever the need for repairs arises. Remember, it’s a call of duty — the authorities aren’t obliging us in any way.