An uncovered deep pit dug by the Delhi Jal Board in west Delhi’s Janakpuri claimed another young life last week. On the night of February 5, Kamal Dhayani, 25, who worked at a private bank in Rohini, was riding home when his motorcycle plunged into the unmarked excavation. His body, still wearing a helmet, and his bike were recovered the next morning. The site had no proper barricades and warning signs.

Police retrieve a motorcycle from a large ditch dug by the Delhi Jal Board at Professor Joginder Singh Marg in Janakpuri, where a biker died after falling into the pit. (Vipin Kumar/HT)Just three weeks earlier, in Noida’s Sector 150, software engineer Yuvraj Mehta, 27, had drowned after his car fell into a water-filled construction pit. While that site has since been secured with new barricades, reflective road studs, warning signage and lights, these back-to-back tragedies are a disturbing reminder of a continuing culture of impunity and reckless disregard for basic public safety, where visible hazards are allowed to persist until they claim innocent lives.

And this, unfortunately, is true of all of India’s major cities, which are riddled with all kinds of dangerous civic hazards—open drains, unfenced construction sites, dangling electrical wires, potholes, broken footpaths, waterlogged streets, and unmarked pits — like the ones that claimed Mehta’s and Dhayani’s lives.

Experts attribute this to bureaucratic apathy, fragmented responsibilities among municipal bodies, developers and enforcement agencies, and urban growth that has far outpaced inspection capacity.

Over the past few years, almost all major municipal corporations have launched grievance platforms—such as MCD 311 in Delhi and PMC Care in Pune—to allow residents to report civic hazards. The stated objective behind such apps is to ensure faster response and accountability. But, complaints often pile up unresolved, inspections are sporadic, and systemic fixes are rare.

“The existing systems for ensuring safety in public spaces have failed because of fragmentation, unclear accountability, and the absence of tough penalties for neglect and inaction,” says Jagan Shah, CEO, Infravision Foundation and former director of the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA).

He believes it is time for a more structured citizen participation to identify and secure urban hazards.

“Citizens can become the eyes and ears of government agencies, including municipal corporations, in identifying urban hazards and ensuring public safety. They can be a vital part of the information network, especially given the severe staff shortages most municipalities and parastatals face across the country,” he adds.

“So far the government has treated citizens as consumers rather than as partners; this needs to change,” says Milind Mhaske, CEO, Praja Foundation, a non-profit that works to improve urban governance.

Why complaints aren’t enough

In cities across the world, citizen participation in urban safety goes beyond online complaint platforms. Neighbourhood or walking audits—structured assessments of local streets and public spaces—are a routine part of urban governance.

In the United States, for example, cities such as New York City encourage local communities to conduct systematic assessments of sidewalks, crossings, lighting, traffic speeds and construction safety through formal street safety audit programmes. Findings are mapped, aggregated and used to prioritise repairs and decide budgets.

European cities offer even more institutionalised models. In London, residents participate in crime-prevention and pedestrian safety audits using standardised checklists. Copenhagen engages citizens in evaluating accessibility and hazards as part of its “living city” approach to street design. Madrid’s participatory audits, conducted as part of its urban regeneration programmes, have improved footpaths and reduced pedestrian injuries in several neighbourhoods.

“The key lesson from these global examples is that citizen audits supplement governance; they do not replace it. In India, adapting this model would require formal recognition of neighbourhood audits within municipal frameworks, not as voluntary activism but as an institutional input,” says Dikshu Kukreja, urban designer and Managing Principal at CP Kukreja Architects (CPKA). “This means clearly defining the scope of audits, standardising what constitutes a hazard, and integrating findings directly into municipal workflows with fixed response timelines. Importantly, the responsibility for action must remain squarely with the state. Citizens should be empowered to observe and report, not forced to negotiate, follow up endlessly, or litigate for basic safety.”

In October, the Supreme Court ordered a nationwide audit of footpaths and pedestrian crossings in 50 major cities with populations exceeding one million, issuing sweeping directions to curb road accident deaths. The court declared that well-maintained footpaths and safe crossings are integral to the right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution.

The directions came amid alarming data showing that pedestrians account for over 20% of India’s road fatalities. According to the Road Accidents in India 2023 report, 35,221 of the 172,890 road deaths last year were pedestrians.

The top court passed the orders while hearing a public interest litigation filed by leading orthopaedic surgeon and road safety advocate Dr S Rajasekaran, along with an application by lawyer Kishan Chand Jain. Invoking provisions of the Motor Vehicles Act, the court held officials and contractors personally liable for pedestrian deaths caused by infrastructure or design failures.

“We treat about 20,000 trauma cases annually from across the country. While 1.85 lakh (185,000) people die in accidents each year, around 7 lakh sustain serious injuries, with about 1.75 lakh left with permanent disability. Over 50% of victims are not at fault, which is quite unfortunate. The Constitution guarantees every citizen the right to live to the fullest of their ability. So, I approached the Supreme Court to ensure this right,” says Coimbatore-based Dr Rajasekaran. “I believe authorities should meaningfully engage citizens in these audits. If officials fail to act properly, we may approach the court again.”

Experiments in citizen-led neighbourhood audits

In India, there are hardly any formal frameworks for neighbourhood audits. Still, a few initiatives offer clues about what is possible. However, they remain limited in scope and scale, and are led by organisations (with citizen volunteers) for advocacy, not enforcement.

In Bengaluru, for example, Sensing Local, an urban living lab, has been conducting citizen-led neighbourhood audits to improve walkability and public spaces. The non-profit works with trained citizen—volunteers with backgrounds in architecture or urban planning—to document conditions using photographs, videos and mapped data.

“About five years ago, we began with detailed street audits in Malleswaram,” says Sobia Rafiq, co-founder, Sensing Local. “We assessed footpath widths, signage, street furniture and pedestrian infrastructure. We found that streets were marked by poor maintenance, uneven surfaces, encroachments and inadequate lighting.”

When these findings were presented to the then Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), she says, the response was encouraging. Several issues, particularly related to footpaths and local streets, were addressed within a year. Over the past five years, Sensing Local has conducted audits across about 20 wards.

Similarly, Safetipin, a social enterprise focused on women’s safety, conducts gender-focused safety audits in multiple cities. While its framework centres on lighting, visibility and public transport access, it also captures data on footpaths and street conditions. Its ‘My Safetipin’ app enables the collection of data through crowdsourcing and other methods to make cities safer.

“This framework can be expanded to cover broader civic hazards such as open pits, potholes and others,” says Kalpana Viswanath, Safetipin’s CEO and co-founder.

And how have the cities responded to these safety audits?

“Well, we have had mixed experiences. In cities like Delhi and Jaipur, authorities have taken concrete action—addressing lighting deficiencies and improving other infrastructure. However, there are cities where the response was not so encouraging,” says Viswanath. “There needs to be a formal, institutionalised mechanism to involve citizens systematically, with a clear legal mandate for authorities to act on the collected data.”

Regarding the current grievance apps from municipal corporations, which have mostly fallen short in preventing risks before they lead to fatalities, she says, “Merely building apps is not enough; there should be accountability, integration with civic systems, and enforceable protocols to resolve issues flagged by citizens.”

Kukreja agrees, saying that complaint-based systems are designed to address individual grievances, not systemic risks. An open pit becomes visible to the system only after someone complains, or worse, after someone is injured. “These platforms are reactive by design and depend on digital access, time, and persistence from citizens. Complaints are rarely aggregated or analysed to identify patterns. A broken footpath is treated as an isolated issue rather than part of a larger failure in street design, contractor oversight, or utility coordination.”

There is also little transparency around resolution quality, timelines, or consequences for repeated negligence, Kukreja adds. “Technology, in this case, has been mistaken for governance reform. Apps are tools, not systems. Without institutional accountability and preventive inspections, they merely digitise delay,” he says.

Shah contends that information technology and geographic information systems can enhance urban safety by facilitating real-time monitoring, engaging in crowdsourced data gathering, and employing AI for hazard identification with automated alerts. Such resources can aid officials in conducting mandatory reviews every two weeks of high-risk areas at both ward and block levels—in a structured, participatory manner that directly engage local residents. “Regular updates, clear prioritisation, and swift complaint resolution will build transparency and trust,” says Shah.

Should citizen recommendations be made legally binding? “Well, I am not quite sure if it is practical because it raises complex questions of prioritisation: which issues are truly urgent? Involving citizens meaningful way is a tricky subject that requires sophisticated thinking and entirely new mechanisms,” says Shah.

RWAs: Untapped potential?

However, Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) contend that it is essential for governments to move beyond mere token gestures and provide them with a more significant role in urban governance.

“RWAs are always eager to contribute. Municipal corporations seek our help during Swachh Survekshan drives and present us with certificates of appreciation, but when it comes to the execution of major projects, our suggestions or viewpoints hold little importance,” says KSR Murthy, chief convener, the Confederation of RWAs (CoRWA), the national representative body for RWAs in India. “What is required is a legally mandated role for RWAs in local governance. The Union government should amend the law to give RWAs a formal place in ward committees and the governing councils of municipal corporations.”

Rafiq adds: “Active citizens are present in all cities. In reality, if the mandate of ward committees is implemented in every city, citizen audits could be formalised with institutional support, allowing them to be integrated into each ward development plan.”

A credible, enforceable citizen-audit framework should rest on three pillars: legitimacy, regularity, and enforceability, says Kukreja. Audits should be conducted by trained local volunteers, RWAs, urban professionals, and civil society groups, supported by a simple but standardised checklist covering common hazards, he adds.

“These audits should be conducted at fixed intervals, quarterly or biannually, and be geo-tagged and publicly accessible. Most importantly, municipal agencies must be legally mandated to respond within defined timelines, with escalation mechanisms if action is not taken. Performance on audit responses should feed into departmental reviews, contractor evaluations, and budget allocations,” says Kukreja. “Urban safety cannot depend on outrage after loss of life. It must be built into how cities are inspected, managed, and governed every single day. Citizen audits, if institutionalised correctly, can help cities shift from reaction to prevention, but only if the state is willing to be held accountable.”

Manoj Sharma is Metro Features Editor at Hindustan Times. He likes to pursue stories that otherwise fall through the cracks.