Kamala Mills fire to Chennai floods: Why India's regulations aren't working

Year after year, people are dying in incidents that are termed 'accidents' but are actually man-made disasters

India’s cities – big and small, in the north and south – are sitting around a bonfire of regulations, basic tenets of urban planning and precious human lives. The December Mumbai fire is the latest reminder. We haven’t learnt our lessons from the gruesome Uphaar Cinema fire that killed 59 people and seriously injured 103 people in the national capital in 1997.

Here are some of the major fire incidents that took place in the last 14 years. Some places that are frequent victims – temples and firecracker units in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, for example – don’t even come under