At one level, the building collapse in South Delhi’s Satya Niketan, which claimed the lives of at least seven people and inflicted grievous injuries on several others, is a routine story of a capital’s shame to which all are inured. Of yet another builder breaking laws and no one there to check. Of the absence of an emergency exit, extra floors, and unauthorised construction. The investigation into the Saidulajab tragedy in June, which claimed six lives, had revealed similar failings.

But Sunday’s tragedy is more than the shame. It is a chapter in the unfolding story since the Jantar Mantar protests. Of the young, the future, being let down by the present. It points to a larger and continuing failure — the........

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