Oddly, a disproportionately large number of schools collapsed as a result of faulty construction practice in the region’s government-funded projects. In Yinhua, a woman who lost her 13-yr old daughter complained that the school building had illegally added two more floors. “When it collapsed it crumbled into fragments. That shows just how it was built”. Local residents call such buildings Tofu construction, as soft as soybean curd. In Dujiangyan, near the quake’s epicentre, a secondary school collapsed while surrounding structures suffered little damage. Among the 20,000 buildings destroyed throughout the region, 700 were schools. Petitions circulating in several Chinese towns in the province are now demanding the arrest of builders responsible for such construction.

The scene has an all too familiar echo at home. Builders in Gujarat, once inundated with similar accusations and a flurry of legal cases, took the quick and painless route out: they settled out of court, so they could resume their work. Today many of the illegal constructions that collapsed during the 2001 quake have been replaced by more illegal constructions. Who among the new residents of the multitudes of highrises in Ahmedabad is in a position to check on the seismic flaws of their own building?

The practice of construction bestows great profits to the builders; the practice of illegal construction, even more. The state of corruption in the industry goes unnoticed, till such a calamity as an earthquake. In the normal course of construction, for any large project — say a school, housing or an office building — the steady movement of thousands of kilos of steel reinforcement, bags of cement and acres of expensive granite from a building site into the contractor’s pocket is the natural sequence of a long building process. Builder-contractor-architect, together forms a small club of beneficiaries. False bills are raised by the contractor, sanctioned by the architect, and sent to the owner for payment. Unable to verify the vast quantities of materials required, he pays quickly, so as not to stall construction. The club prospers.

In 25 years of practice, the perils of this association are daily brought into sharp focus. For a high rise public housing project, the extra beams required for seismic support — if left unbuilt — could yield an additional profit of two crore on a 40-crore project. Substitution of cheaper wiring and cables — though a fire hazard — can add to the kitty. What’s more, the mere omission of fire stairs — indicated on the approved plan, but left out during construction — may destroy many lives, as they often have, but save a few lakhs for a Goa holiday. In matters of savings, the builder is a devoted banker, without conscience or compromise.

The northern region of India falls in Category 4 and 5 of seismic probability. The figure is an indicator of the strength of the quake anticipated, and consequently its need to be sufficiently countered by the structural strength of buildings in the region. It is a well-known fact that only 12 per cent of the approved structures conform to the seismic code, many only on paper. That doesn’t include the almost 60 per cent of illegal homemade constructions in towns throughout north India that are precariously balanced on three and four stories, waiting merely for a mild shake of the earth. It also doesn’t include thousands of others built before the seismic code came into existence. In lieu of new construction materials and practices, a serious seismic assessment of Indian buildings — existing and proposed — needs to be made. Rigorous strengthening of the old and a policing of the new could reduce the impact and allow people enough time to escape a high Richter quake.

The possibility of fatalities and the sheer scale of numbers, if a Sichuan type earthquake were to strike the region, are too numbing to contemplate. But if the bleak scenario has any silver lining, it is that the builder nexus may also be buried under the rubble.

The writer, a Delhi-based architect, is author of ‘Punjabi Baroque and Other Memories of Architecture’