The Twin Towers of Chennai

Gandhiji said India lives in villages. Today India leaves villages. The main reason for the greed is the unprecedented housing costs escalation which fetches quick and easy money to builders of residential and commercial properties. Builders want maximum apartments in minimum space.  The lop sided growth story of a struggling India is a telling picture how 'growth' should not be. For instance all the major car companies of the world are in Chennai with their manufacturing facilities. If the same were distributed in the other major port cities across the country, the pressure on land and its resources would have come down. For instance Tuticourin in Tamilnadu is a vibrant port and which has abundant lands and human resources aplenty but with no big industry. Hence the people  living around the port town migrate to Chennai in large numbers. Similarly the victims are from Orissa and Andhra Pradesh which too have major ports.  This is just one sample. How after destroying nations and cultures ( read villages) we build mega cities.  Every Indian metro city is with  more population than a continental Australia.  

I hope  the planners want all the assets and resources in one geographical area. After making them assemble in one area the planners will go for sky high buildings, tunnel roads, rails and air/space ports. 







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The death toll in a building collapse in the Indian city of Chennai has reached 47 as rescue workers continue to find more bodies in the wreckage.

Some 27 survivors have been pulled from the rubble, and a few others are feared trapped in the debris.Around 70 workers were in the 11-storey building which was under construction when it toppled on Saturday night.

India has seen frequent building collapses, many blamed on lax safety and substandard construction materials. At least six people, including construction company officials, have been arrested in connection with the collapse in Chennai (Madras), the capital of the southern state of Tamil Nadu. Karuna Sagar, a senior police officer, told the AFP news agency that rescue workers would "continue with the operations until we are satisfied that there are no other survivors and all the debris has been cleared". Reports said that one of the survivors, a 27-year-old man, said there  are "several" people still alive under the mass of concrete.

While the cause of the latest collapse is still under investigation, a lack of construction codes, leading to lax safety, is one reason for frequent collapses of buildings and other infrastructure projects in India. There is also a high demand for housing, pushing up costs and forcing less affluent people to risk their lives in decrepit or badly constructed buildings. Earlier on Saturday, a four-storey building came down in the capital Delhi, killing 10 people, including five children. In January, at least 14 people died when a building under construction came crashing down in the western state of Goa.