For decades, public debate has focused on illegal buildings, unauthorised colonies and encroachments as though they are aberrations that emerged despite planning. The reality is more uncomfortable. The landscape of urban villages, unauthorised colonies, informal rental housing and mixed-use neighbourhoods is not a deviation from Delhi’s development story, but the story itself.

It is this story that the Hindustan Times’s ongoing series has highlighted: how decades of planning failures led to the rise of unauthorised colonies outside any regulatory framework; how the city failed to plan for migrant workers, students, and young professionals and pushed them to neighbourhoods where death lurks in every flimsy building; how encroachments have rendered even access to a footpath an anomaly; and how a cumbersome and corrupt licensing regime has ensured that safety standards are observed more in the breach.

The story starts in 1957 when the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) was set up to manage the severe housing shortage in the aftermath of Partition.

With complete control over land and its development, DDA was tasked with master planning, rehabilitating slums, and providing affordable housing. But the agency’s monopoly over land, along with rigid and dated zoning laws, only created gaps in supply and demand leading to utilisation of agricultural land for unauthorised colonies. As these colonies lie outside the legal framework, their residents are denied basic civic infrastructure. They live with overflowing drains that run through cramped lanes, a mesh of hanging overhead wires, dirty water, and power cuts. They also live with the constant threat of demolitions, building collapses, and fires.

That 60% Delhi lives in unauthorised colonies is not a secret. It’s even acknowledged in several government reports. In fact, the Shelter Baseline Report prepared for the Master Plan for Delhi-2041 states the obvious: “Delhi’s formal housing system has failed to match the city’s pace of urbanisation, leaving the city in a constant state of housing shortage. It has failed to provide ‘housing for all’, as the housing tenure options were rigid (only ‘owned’) and their pricing was unaffordable. This has encouraged the informal housing market to flourish more. The most visible manifestation of the gap in housing demand and supply in Delhi was proliferation of slums and unauthorised colonies.”

When an entire lane is illegal, all policy is just on paper. The last few incidents have exposed the shortcomings of the licensing regime. One department gives a licence, another is expected to inspect. Who’s responsible for enforcement? Everyone and no one.

The system lays bare its utter disregard for human life. A building with permission to construct three storeys has six; a bed and breakfast with a licence to run six rooms has 25; a tea and snack licence is misused to run a restaurant; and a factory operates from a house in a residential colony. The list is endless.

The blame for the mess Delhi is, lies squarely with the agencies tasked with making the national capital livable, and the leaders who — over the decades — made tall promises but have failed on all accounts. Repeatedly. Delhi doesn’t need any more plans, it needs strict implementation of the existing ones.