Recurring building collapses in Indian cities point to systemic failures in municipal building-safety enforcement. Suggest reforms.

The National Building Code of India, 2016 lays down detailed structural and fire-life-safety norms [2], yet collapses recur — Delhi alone saw the Satya Niketan collapse, six deaths at Saidulajab and 22 in the Hauz Rani fire within months [6]. The failure lies not in the absence of standards but in the enforcement chain that operationalises them.

Systemic failures in enforcement

• Advisory, not binding, codes: NBC 2016 is a model code, enforceable only when adopted into municipal building bye-laws [2]; adoption remains uneven across states.
• Sanction without life-cycle oversight: municipal law empowers corporations to sanction plans and demolish unsafe structures [1], but there is no statutory duty of periodic structural audit after occupancy.
• Fragmented accountability: Delhi's split between the Union, GNCTD, MCD and L-G — with the MCD itself trifurcated in 2012 and reunified only in 2022 [7] — diffuses responsibility, letting each tier blame the other.
• Hollow enforcement capacity: municipal revenues are dominated by property tax and higher-tier grants, leaving corporations without financial autonomy [3] to staff structural-engineering and inspection wings.
• Reactive disaster machinery: District Disaster Management Authorities under the Disaster Management Act, 2005 [4] mobilise after collapse rather than auditing risk before it.

Reforms suggested

• Mandate NBC 2016 through statutory bye-laws, with third-party certification by empanelled structural engineers.
• Legislate compulsory periodic structural audits for ageing and high-occupancy buildings, linked to renewal of the occupancy certificate.
• Create a single accountable building-safety cell per city with named officer liability, and end the practice of retrospective regularisation of unauthorised construction.
• Scale the Online Building Permission System under AMRUT 2.0 [5] into a GIS-based, publicly searchable building registry.
• Strengthen municipal finances and a dedicated enforcement cadre through property-tax and user-charge reform [3].
• Embed urban structural-risk mapping in DDMA plans [4].

Building safety is ultimately a test of whether the 74th Amendment's promise of empowered urban self-government is real. Codes, funds and clear ownership of responsibility must move together — a city that can audit its own buildings is the surest guarantee of the right to life and of SDG-11's safe, resilient cities.