Indore has been celebrated as India's cleanest city for eight consecutive years. In December 2025, this reputation was shattered when contaminated sewage killed at least 10 residents and 270 others fell ill, a result of sheer negligence.
Activists say that the Madhya Pradesh pollution control board had documented information about faecal groundwater contamination as far back as in 2016-17. A report of the comptroller and auditor general (CAG) in 2019 flagged serious infrastructure flaws. Yet, no upgrades happened. Only when deaths mounted did the administration act: two engineers were suspended; the municipal commissioner belatedly transferred. When a local politician dismissed concerns about contaminated water, the response was nationwide outrage. It is only on 4th January that the state declared an epidemic due to the outbreak of water-borne disease in the Bhagirathpura locality.
In India, civic and infrastructure failures are systemic; but human lives have been reduced to standardised fiscal handouts—ex-gratia payments grandly announced by leaders after every major disaster, accident, infrastructure failure and calamity. In Indore, the price of a life was set at ₹2 lakh; the ill were promised free medical treatment. Decades of history show that ex-gratia payments are about all victims can expect, as legal accountability proceeds at a glacial speed. Worse, the value of life varies wildly depending on political optics.
The most horrific example is from Madhya Pradesh itself. The leak of methyl isocyanate from Bhopal’s Union Carbide plan in 1984 killed over 5,000 people, but the subsequent settlement led to paltry payment of ₹25,000 to each victim, although survivors faced lifelong illness. Criminal proceedings dragged until 2010, resulting in mere two-year sentences; the company escaped full accountability after a change in ownership.
More recent disasters reveal the same callousness. The Morbi suspension bridge collapse in October 2022 killed 135 people during a festival in Gujarat. The government announced ₹10 lakh compensation and the Oreva group, which was in charge of maintenance, was ordered, in 2023, to pay another ₹10 lakh for each death by the Gujarat High Court. Although Oreva, a clock manufacturer with zero bridge engineering expertise, faces trial for negligence, it is likely to drag on for years and will be forgotten by all but the victims.
In July 2025, the Gambhira bridge collapsed, also in Gujarat, killing 22 and injuring dozens. The state announced ₹4 lakh per deceased from the chief minister’s fund and ₹2 lakh from the prime minister’s fund—the cost of these lives was 40% lower, perhaps because it triggered less outrage. As always, a probe was announced, but no significant action followed.
Contrast this with the devastating Balasore triple train collision (of June 2023 which led to 296 deaths and over 1,200 injuries caused by signalling and telecom failures and negligence. The deceased were paid ₹10 lakh each, the severely injured ₹2 lakh and those with minor injuries got ₹50,000 each. A few people were suspended; three junior officials were arrested; and the case drags on in the CBI (central bureau of investigation) court. There was no institutional accountability; no senior officials from the railways or the ministry took responsibility, despite massive public outrage over repeated train accidents.
India has the highest number of deaths tied to poor road infrastructure and enforcement, but other than motor insurance payments or long legal battles, nobody is compensated – especially when caused by infrastructure failure.
The regularity of these failures is rooted in the ‘contractor-politician’ nexus. Public infrastructure projects are revenue streams for political funding; contracts are based on political kick-backs not competence. The result: substandard materials, weak enforcement, zero accountability and disregard for expert advice. The legal system enables this through interminable processes, weak tort law, absent class actions and absence of deterrent penalties.
A rare exception is the Air India crash in Ahmedabad on 12 June 2025, where 260 people died, including 241 on board. The Tata group pledged ₹1 crore per deceased and established the AI-171 Memorial Trust with a ₹500-crore corpus and also paid for other costs and damages. It helped that air passengers are covered by the Montreal Convention which guarantees a specified compensation, along with comprehensive corporate accountability.
Viksit Ways
India now ranks as the world's fourth-largest economy; yet, it has the highest number of poor people globally. Is GDP (gross domestic product) growth a matter of pride, if the quality of life is poor and its value paltry?
Accidents happen everywhere. But developed nations have legal systems that make negligence catastrophically expensive through billion-dollar settlements, substantial punitive damages, strict liability frameworks and swift accountability. Germany holds engineers personally accountable with lifelong profession bans and imprisonment. In Japan, chief executive officers (CEOs) resign immediately by accepting responsibility, often before legal processes begin. Corrective action and policy overhaul follows. The US has robust tort law punishing corporations through damages. In China, accountability is swift and brutal and often leads to capital punishment, as in the case of the 2015 Tianjin warehouse explosions.
In contrast, India does not have a strong culture of tort law where victims can extract punitive damages that would threaten institutions or their management. Class action suits also don't work because litigation drags on for a decade imposing high costs on victims. Fortunately, things have begun to look up a little in 2024 and 2025.
In October 2025, a landmark judgement of the Bombay High Court directed that civic officials be held personally liable for deaths and injuries caused by potholes, open manholes and similar infrastructure negligence. It directed that compensation must be paid promptly and recovered from responsible engineers, contractors or officials, failing which they would face criminal and disciplinary action. It remains to be seen if this order stands and will be emulated by courts in other states.
Earlier that year, the Bombay High Court also ordered the Mumbai municipal corporation to pay ₹50 lakh each to the families of eight persons killed in a fire in Hotel City Kinara in 2015. The litigation lasted a decade, but the municipal corporation has paid up without contesting the order.
The Public Liability Insurance (Amendment) Rules, 2024, that take effect this year offers new hope. The amendment has raised the ‘no-fault’ relief for accidental death or permanent disability from a pathetic ₹25,000 to ₹5 lakh, while the cover for property damage has increased to a maximum of ₹50 lakh. The maximum insurance liability per accident is also increased to ₹250 crore, backed by a fortified Environmental Relief Fund. The increased amounts will coincide with a shift to a risk-based capital (RBC) framework that requires insurers to hold capital reserves proportional to their actual risk exposure. This raises hopes of better compensation but is still far below what a Viksit nation should expect. Also, their effectiveness still rests on the judiciary's ability to enforce timelines and the willingness of regulators to punish politically-connected business and industry houses.
The Bombay High Court orders and the revised public liability insurance rules signal a small change towards adopting a system where the cost of negligence and cutting corners is substantial. A developed nation is not measured by GDP alone, but by how it protects its people and measures the value of human lives – especially in a country that has no meaningful social security systems.
Unless India embraces this principle wholesale, infrastructure disasters will continue their grim march. Pipes will crack; bridges will collapse; and trains will continue to derail, leaving families clutching only the tiny ex-gratia payments as they mourn their dead. The choice is clear: India can remain a nation that counts its dead in rupees, or it can become truly Viksit by ensuring that there is a political price to be paid for each disaster – only that can break the unholy nexus between politicians and business which is dragging us down.
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