Ignoring the Depths: India's Urban Crisis

Indian cities are facing a growing crisis due to a severe lack of planning and governance for underground spaces. Tragic events, such as at least 10 deaths in Indore from sewage contaminating a drinking water pipeline, underscore this critical oversight. This issue extends to sewer gas fatalities and basement flooding, often dismissed as contractor negligence rather than systemic planning failures.

Experts argue that India's urban planning is predominantly two-dimensional, regulating only the surface while treating the subsurface as an unregulated frontier. There is no national policy for underground space, no subterranean zoning, and no unified authority overseeing its allocation or protection. This fragmented approach, with various agencies operating in silos, leads to cumulative risks and ignored long-term capacity issues.

In contrast, cities globally, including Singapore and Helsinki, have developed comprehensive underground master plans and 3D zoning frameworks to manage subsurface infrastructure. These plans meticulously consider geology, groundwater, and flood risks. India, however, lacks such a framework, with regulations often limited to individual buildings and existing guidelines focusing on surface land use, failing to address the complexities of subsurface governance.