How the Delhi Airport Terminal 1 fiasco exposes the sorry state of infrastructure regulation in India

DIAL, which operates the Indira Gandhi International Airport’s three terminals, also dismissed the findings of a three-member expert committee, comprising engineering professors from IIT Delhi and IIT Jammu, as “flawed and inaccurate" and based on “inadequate information," according to media reports. It later admitted that certain documents were not made available to the committee while it was probing the issue.

The committee, appointed by the aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation, found serious design flaws, major deviations from design in construction, overall inferior execution, and inadequate maintenance for the canopy's collapse during heavy rainfall in June last year. Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the spanking new terminal barely three months before the accident.

That the incident took place at Delhi Airport, often touted as a showpiece of India’s modern infrastructure development capabilities, is worrying enough. IGI Airport is India’s busiest, with 77.8 million passengers handled last year. As the national capital’s premier airport, it is also literally the first impression of the nation that visiting dignitaries get.

Even accepting DIAL’s arguments at face value—that it followed all building codes, used materials as per specified standards, ensured contractor compliance with best practices, and carried out scheduled maintenance—the fundamental question remains: why did the collapse happen? DIAL has attributed it solely to “excessive rain."

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Familiar pattern of blame-shifting

More worrying, however, is the response from both the operator and regulators. Instead of some serious introspection on the quality and maintenance of public infrastructure, the usual round of blame-shifting has begun. Punitive and corrective actions, if any, will likely get delayed in the morass of India’s judicial system, if they take place at all.

India has launched an ambitious programme to develop and modernise its public infrastructure to global standards as it aspires to become a $5 trillion economy. It plans to spend over $1.7 trillion on infrastructure between FY24 and FY30. Almost all of this is going from taxpayer money. In this Budget alone, more than ₹15 trillion has been allocated for capital expenditure.

Yet, accountability—whether for quality, service delivery, or user safety—is missing from the system. While India is building roads and bridges at record speed, some are collapsing faster than they are being completed. According to a written reply filed by the road transport and highways ministry in Parliament in June last year, 15 functional bridges and 11 under-construction ones have collapsed on National Highways in the last three financial years alone.

Worsening crisis in states

The situation is even worse in states. In Bihar last year, a dozen bridges collapsed within just 17 days. Between 2022 and 2023, an average of one bridge collapse per month was reported. A study by Rajeev Garg of the Central Road Research Institute found that 2,130 bridges (excluding culverts and pedestrian bridges) collapsed in India between 1977 and 2017.

The problem isn’t limited to bridges. Delhi’s Pragati Maidan underpass was closed due to waterlogging just months after completion. An expert committee found such severe flaws in design and execution that the infrastructure was deemed essentially unfixable. Newly built highways have developed cracks and sinkholes within days of inauguration. Bengaluru Airport’s Terminal 2 started leaking in its first rainy season.

In every case, while the disaster briefly dominates headlines, there is little sustained follow-up into root causes or accountability. A maze of overlapping regulations, poor enforcement of codes and standards, rampant corruption in public spending, and weak regulatory oversight of engineers, architects, and town planners ensures that no one is held responsible—even for blatant failures. Even when contractors are blacklisted for shoddy work, they often resurface under new names and it’s business as usual.

Equally alarming is the lack of attention to maintenance. Chronically underfunded public works departments neglect maintenance, which is as crucial as quality assurance during construction. It simply isn’t prioritized. In the case of the 2022 bridge collapse in Morbi, Gujarat, the maintenance contract had been given to a clock manufacturer with no experience in bridges. The disaster claimed 141 lives.

Unless this pervasive ‘chalta hai’ (anything goes) attitude changes, such disasters will keep repeating—along with the needless loss of innocent lives.

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