Satya Niketan Collapse: A Former Resident Recalls Years of Neglect

When a building collapsed in Satya Niketan recently, it shocked many—but not those who once lived there. For years, the narrow lanes and ageing structures of this South Campus hub have shown signs of decay that were easy to ignore, especially for the young students who called it home.

One former resident, who moved from Uttarakhand in 2013 to study at Delhi University, recalls her three years in a Satya Niketan paying guest (PG) accommodation. She describes a four-storey building with old wiring that sparked, a shared washroom for eight girls, and a ceiling that once shed a chunk of plaster just inches from her. When she reported the incident to the caretaker, nothing was done.

A year after she moved out, she learned that rooms had been further subdivided with thin boards to accommodate more tenants—what was once a room for four now housed six to eight. The lanes, she remembers, were perpetually waterlogged after rain, a sign of neglected infrastructure in one of the city's most popular student areas.

The author argues that the vulnerability of teenagers—eager for independence and grateful for affordable housing—makes them easy targets for exploitation. Parents, too, are reassured by the presence of a 'caretaker' and a fixed gate-timing, but safety of the building itself is rarely questioned.

She calls the long history of negligence 'policy'—unofficial but understood by everyone except the rent-paying students. The recent collapse, she says, was not an accident but the inevitable result of years of inaction. The question now, she adds, is how many more lives will be lost before safety is taken seriously.