Bridges are falling, and so is public trust

Bridges in India are not merely structures of steel, stone, and concrete – they are vital lifelines. They connect not just roads, but lives, enabling children to reach schools, farmers to access markets, ambulances to reach patients, and communities to stay linked with opportunity. When bridges stand, they are often invisible. When they fall, they fracture far more than physical connections – they collapse trust in governance.

Recent years have seen a spate of bridge collapses across the country – from bustling metros like Mumbai to remote corners of Bihar, Gujarat, Mizoram, and Jharkhand. These tragedies aren’t just about engineering lapses; they are glaring symptoms of systemic neglect. They paralyse movement, cause deaths, and reflect a larger malaise in how we plan, maintain, and govern infrastructure across both urban and rural India.

In rural and underdeveloped regions, bridges are especially critical. A single culvert can mean the difference between a child attending school or staying home, between accessing a health centre or succumbing to illness. Yet these vital connectors are often makeshift, poorly engineered, or decades old – left to decay without periodic checks or upgrades. With climate change bringing more intense floods and landslides, their vulnerability is increasing rapidly.

On the other hand, urban bridges, often burdened by overloaded trucks and unregulated traffic, routinely exceed their design capacities. While laws prescribe weight limits and penalties, enforcement is haphazard. Yet it would be wrong to blame rogue drivers alone. The deeper issue lies in a culture of reactive governance and institutional apathy.

Across both geographies, the pattern is familiar: poor design, inadequate inspections, lack of repair budgets, and almost no accountability. Most municipalities and rural bodies lack dedicated bridge engineering wings. Bridge maintenance is combined with general road works, despite the far greater risk and complexity involved. Even where inspection manuals exist, they’re rarely followed unless disaster forces a response.

Consider Mumbai. It was only after multiple bridge collapses that the municipal corporation began enforcing its Bridge Manual, which mandates biannual audits. In the first inspection round, 29 bridges were declared unsafe. That the audits followed tragedy, not foresight, is emblematic of a broader failure across the nation.

Rural India has even fewer safeguards. Panchayats and rural development departments often lack the engineering capacity or funding to inspect, let alone repair, decaying bridges. External consultants are expensive, and bureaucratic delays slow even emergency repairs – the result: a widening chasm between need and response, structure and safety.

What India needs is not just a bridge-building spree, but a bridge maintenance revolution – national in scope and systemic in design. Regular inspections, publicly accessible safety audits, trained local inspection teams, and ring-fenced funds for preventive maintenance must become the norm, not the exception.

There are lessons to draw from elsewhere. Japan, for instance, utilises an advanced Bridge Management System (BMS) that incorporates lifecycle cost tracking, AI-driven crack detection, and a legal mandate for timely intervention. In the United States, federal law requires states to inspect public bridges every two years under the National Bridge Inspection Standards (NBIS), with funding linked to compliance.

India must adapt such models and tailor them to its realities. This means empowering local governments – rural and urban alike – not just with funds but with skilled personnel, autonomy, and digital tools. It also means making safety data publicly available, allowing the civil society and media to play a watchdog role.

We are building more bridges than ever before. But until we strengthen the systems that ensure their upkeep – from Mizoram’s hills to Maharashtra’s highways – these structures will remain ticking time bombs.

(The writer is the Vice President and Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in Mumbai)