3 min readSep 8, 2026 06:00 AM IST First published on: Sep 8, 2026 at 06:00 AM ISTAt one level, the building collapse in South Delhi’s Satya Niketan, which claimed the lives of at least seven people and inflicted grievous injuries on several others, is a routine story of a capital’s shame to which all are inured. Of yet another builder breaking laws and no one there to check. Of the absence of an emergency exit, extra floors, and unauthorised construction. The investigation into the Saidulajab tragedy in June, which claimed six lives, had revealed similar failings.But Sunday’s tragedy is more than the shame. It is a chapter in the unfolding story since the Jantar Mantar protests. Of the young, the future, being let down by the present. It points to a larger and continuing failure — the inability of governance to keep pace with aspirations. Most victims of Sunday’s tragedy — like those in Saidulajab — are reportedly students. Delhi University is a magnet for talent from across the nation, talent that will go on to shape the future, but the university does not have a home for them. So there are hostels, paying guest accommodation and low-cost rental housing — disaster after disaster has shown that these are of poor quality and abysmally inadequate. Property owners cut corners to profit from this demand — basements are altered, additional floors added, and electricity systems pushed beyond capacity. Satya Niketan, developed as a colony for low-income families in the 1970s, underwent a similar transformation as demand for student accommodation grew with the expansion of Delhi University’s South Campus. What was once a low-rise neighbourhood became one of the capital’s most densely populated student hubs, choked with tangled overhead wires and waterlogged lanes. The Delhi Master Plan 2021 did permit the conversion of residential quarters into student hostels, provided safety protocols — emergency exits, basement use restrictions and height limits — were followed. But four building collapses in Satya Niketan in the last 15 years indicate that short shrift was paid to these caveats.AdvertisementIn Delhi, land is under the control of the Union government. Here, the BJP, which also leads the government at the Centre, can arguably deliver most seamlessly on pledges of the “double engine” sarkar. On Sunday, at an event to mark the centenary celebrations of Shri Ram College of Commerce, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to his young audience about transformations under his watch since he spoke at the same institution 13 years ago as his party’s prospective prime ministerial candidate. “Your seniors could not have such dreams,” he said. But today, “you are dreaming these dreams also because today’s India has created an ecosystem that supports those dreams”. Work needs to begin if the PM’s promise to young citizens is to be honoured, and if speeches such as the one at the SRCC on Sunday, are not to take on a hollow ring.