The real price of the price of land.

The brutal earthquake in Nepal has suddenly made people realise that most buildings in Indian cities will not withstand a quake, much lower on the Richter scale. Buildings in Ghaziabad have apparently been built on sand along the Hindon river and 80% of buildings in Delhi will probably collapse. The Commonwealth Games village was built on the floodplains of the Yamuna river and apartments are selling at over Rs 50 million. It is not as if warnings are not issued from time to time about unsafe buildings in Delhi but nothing has ever been done and a few weeks from now everybody will have forgotten about Nepal, except those who have suffered, and moved on. The 1993 quake at Latur in Maharashtra killed 10,000  while the 2001 quake at Bhuj in Gujarat killed 20,000 but that is nothing compared to the millions that will die if a major one were to hit Delhi. The reasons are many. The most important is the enormous rise in the price of real estate which is the only avenue for investing black money, generated by crime, humorously called scams by the press. Mr Robert Vadra, son in law of Ms Sonia Gandhi, is reputed to have made hundreds of millions by simply facilitating the use of agricultural land for building purposes, for a real estate company. At the time Haryana had a Congress government. The effect of black money maybe seen by the numbers of properties lying vacant all over India. Clearly they were bought as investments for future price appreciation. There were 331 million houses to 247 million households in 2011, an excess of about 80 million. New houses are not selling but brokers do not think that prices will fall by 75%, as they did between 1995 and 2001. Very few people can afford to buy at these prices and this is where the land mafia, with help from politicians, grab public land and build poor quality houses, without electricity or water connections, which are sold off to poorer people. These are called unauthorised colonies and politicians make them legal before elections, a process known as being regularised. Strangely our sagacious judges find nothing wrong in this blatant grabbing of public assets but came down like a ton of bricks on the Campa Cola compound residents who had been duped by builders. To maximise profits most of the land is built over, leaving very little space for roads, which means when these houses collapse emergency vehicles will not be able to enter the narrow lanes to rescue the wounded. Delhi and Mumbai have millions of migrants from other towns who have come looking for jobs. Landlords have built 3-4 additional floors on their houses and given rooms for rent. These rabbit warrens do not have proper foundations and will collapse into rubble at the slightest shaking. Can anything be done. No. Where will all these people stay while buildings are being strengthened and who will pay for them? So, nothing will be done and we will wait for mother nature's wrath, hoping that she will be gentle.