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9th Anniversary: Free Tote & Mug

Indian news headlines are on BRICS summit and the bricks falling over the future of students

'If this isn’t murder, what is?' wrote The Times of India in a 7 September headline, adding that 'seven precious lives lost to greed and lack of enforcement'. That’s the truth about Satya Niketan.

This week we learned a lesson in how far governments must travel to catch up with India today.

Between watching live coverage of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech at the centenary celebrations of a Delhi University college on Saturday, 5 September, and his address to students at ‘NaMo for Viksit Bharat’ in Vadodara on Tuesday, 8 September, fell the shadow of a building that came crashing down, killing five students and two workers. 

That’s the reality we saw even as the PM’s words about his government’s achievements in infrastructure and good governance echoed in our ears.

Satya Niketan, a Delhi PG accommodation for students, collapsed after work in its basement shook it to rubble, on the afternoon of 6 September.

From all that we have heard, seen and read in the news media – TV and digital news or the newspapers—the building had flouted pretty much every building rule in the capital. These escaped detection by the concerned authorities, chiefly the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD).

No wonder Republic TV declared, ‘Useless (nikara) MCD’ and asked if Delhi officials were ‘hand in glove’ with the owner of the building. 

“If this isn’t murder, what is?” wrote The Times of India in a 7 September headline, adding that “seven precious lives lost to greed and lack of enforcement”. That’s the truth about Satya Niketan.

To see the video grab of a human face........

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