Context: The death toll in  tragedy in Morbi, Gujarat, has reached 133. Teams of the National Disaster Response Force are carrying out search operations on the water hyacinth-covered river.

Morbi district

• Morbi district was created on August 15, 2013, along with several other new districts.

• Morbi is famous for its ceramic industry.

• Around 70 per cent of India’s ceramics are produced in Morbi, and ceramic tiles manufactured here are exported to countries in the Middle East, East Asia, and Africa.

Machchhu river

• The town of Morbi is situated on the Machchhu River.

• Machchhu is a small river that rises in the Madla Hills and flows into the Rann of Kutch.

• In 1979, a major tragedy occurred after a dam on the river failed, inundating Morbi town and killing a large number of people.

• The ‘Jhulto Pul’ on the river

• The suspension bridge, “Jhulto Pul”, was a pedestrian suspension bridge that was inaugurated in 1879, during the reign of Sir Waghji Ravaji, the Thakur Sahib of Morbi (1858-1922) .

• A suspension bridge is a type of bridge in which the deck is hung below suspension cables on vertical suspenders.

• Sir Waghji is credited with planning and building the entire city of Morbi, which included India’s first art deco palace, and a European-style central square known as Green Chowk.

What is negligence on part of the state government?

• The negligence by the local administration was responsible for the tragedy. Yet, no FIR has been registered against local administration.

• Proceedings against the private contractors who repaired the bridge is not enough.

• The Morbi incident is a symptom of the crisis that lies at the heart of urban governance in India.

What is the crisis of urban governance in India?

• Urban institutions that oversee governance are in poor state.

• There is a dispute over the size of the urban population. It influences the flow of resources and political importance given urban areas. The World Bank agglomeration index in 2010 estimated that 55% of India’s population lives in areas with “urban-like features”. This estimate far exceeds GoI’s estimate for urban population.

• The 74th constitutional amendment was enacted three decades ago. But state governments are reluctant to give control over infrastructure to these bodies. It leads to multiple chains of command, lack of accountability and corruption.

• Municipal revenue is not proportional to the size of urban economies. Municipal revenue remained stuck at 1% of GDP between 2007-08 and 2017-18. Municipal revenues in South Africa and Brazil are around 6% and 7% respectively.

Why is the state government responsible for the incident?

• Under the constitutional framework, the state government should protect the life of every citizen. It is the duty of the state government to prevent incidents like Morbi. Governance is an important element in the constitutional framework. Without accountability, governance is merely a paper exercise.

• Bridges and public ways are state property. State must keep them in perfect condition.

• There were more people than capacity on the bridge. The administration did not provide enough manpower to prevent the incident.

• There is centralisation of power. Gujarat is remotely controlled by the central government in Delhi. There is more than one point of supervision and control in the administration. Appointments of civil and police  in the state are opaque and have political overtones. State machinery is busy in making arrangements for VVIPs visits.

Road Ahead

• Accountability needs to be fixed for the loss of more than 150 lives. We need to take inspiration from leaders like Lal Bahadur Shastri who resigned because of a train accident.

• Compensation and commission of inquiry is not enough. There is a need for good governance on part of the state government.

Additional Information

About Suspension Bridges

The basic structural components of a suspension bridge system include:

• stiffening girders,

• two or more main suspension cables, and

• towers and anchorages for cables at either end of the bridge.

• The main cables are suspended between the towers and are connected to the anchorage or the bridge itself.

• The vertical suspenders carry the weight of the deck and the commuter load on it.

• The design ensures that the load on the suspension cables is transferred to the towers at the two ends, which transfer them further by vertical compression to the ground by way of the anchorage cables.

• All of this balancing has to happen within the permissible weight restrictions for the bridge, given that the deck is hanging in air, supported by the two sets of cables.

• But this is subject to two preconditions:

• there must be no overloading, and

• no excessive swaying.

• The core design of a bridge determines how it distributes the internal forces of tension, compression, torsion, bending, and sheer.

• Suspension bridges are among the most robust structures, starting from the earliest ones made of twisted grass.

• India’s longest single-lane motorable suspension bridge — the 725-metre Dobra-Chanti suspension bridge built over the Tehri lake was inaugurated in 2020.