New Delhi
Recently in Indore, sewage contaminated a drinking water pipeline passing beneath a residential neighbourhood, killing at least 10 people. Authorities blamed a broken pipe for the tragedy; Angry residents complained about years of negligence.
However, the failure runs deeper – and remains largely unseen.
Above ground, Indian cities are governed by multiple layers of regulations – land use is zoned, building heights are regulated, setbacks are enforced, and environmental clearances are contested and monitored. But there is no such system underground.
So, who rules the city below?
almost none.
Experts say this void should no longer be ignored as Indian cities are digging deeper than ever for metro tunnels and road underpasses, parking basements and malls, water pipelines, sewer lines and utilities.
The lack of underground governance is leading to dangerous consequences. Drinking water becomes poisonous, as happened in Indore. Sewer gases kill manhole sanitation workers with alarming regularity. Basements become death traps during heavy rains. And too often, every incident is dismissed as a local failure – mostly contractor negligence – while the deeper governance void is ignored.
“These incidents essentially reflect gaps in planning, governance and design related to subsurface infrastructure,” said RK Goyal, former chief scientist at CSIR-CIMFR, who is an expert in underground space design and tunneling.
Architect Manit Rastogi, founding partner of Morphogenesis, agrees that basement sinking and tunnel flooding in Delhi, groundwater pollution in Indore and other such incidents are not freak accidents, but predictable consequences of failure to control underground space. He says, “Indian urban planning is largely two-dimensional. We regulate the surface but treat the underground as an unregulated frontier.”
In fact, in India, there is no national policy on underground space, no underground master plan, no legal recognition of underground zoning, no binding safety codes in utilities. And no single authority is responsible for how underground space is allocated, leveled or protected.
In most Indian cities, the responsibility for planning and building underground infrastructure is divided. For example, metro rail corporations plan their tunnels. Road agencies build underpasses. Municipal corporations lay water and sewer lines. Electric, gas and telecommunications utilities dig their own trenches. Each operates in silos, allowing for little assessment of cumulative risk or long-term potential.
Globally, the underground matters
Around the world, many cities have recognized that underground space is limited – and must be planned as carefully as surface land. Countries such as Singapore, the Netherlands and Finland have come up with detailed master plans and 3D zoning frameworks to determine where various functions such as transport tunnels, utilities and storage, basements or energy infrastructure can be located and even how deep they can go. These plans take into account geology, groundwater conditions, flood risk and future demand before allocating space.
Helsinki’s Underground Master Plan, approved in 2010, has become a benchmark. It maps the entire municipal area in three dimensions, reserves underground corridors for future infrastructure, and treats the subsurface as an important urban asset. All public agencies and private developers are legally required to align projects with this framework.
Similarly, Singapore’s 2019 Underground Master Plan, drawn up by the Urban Redevelopment Authority, zones depth underground for utilities, data centers and transportation, freeing up surface land for housing and public spaces in the land-starved city-state.
“There is no comparable comprehensive framework in India. The rules governing underground construction are largely limited to individual buildings,” says AK Jain, former commissioner (planning), Delhi Development Authority.
Although state town planning acts and municipal master plans mention underground infrastructure – often guided by the 2015 Urban and Regional Development Plan Formulation and Implementation (URDPFI) guidelines – they mostly focus on surface land use and two-dimensional planning. They do not provide a dedicated framework for subsurface governance, such as 3D zoning, depth-based allocation, or underground master plans.
Even major urban programs like the Atal Mission for Renewal and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) 2.0, launched in 2021, largely focus on upgrading surface infrastructure and improving GIS-based utility mapping – creating digital inventory of water supply, sewerage and drainage assets such as pipes, valves and junctions.
In the absence of underground governance, officials frequently resort to engineering fixes, attempting to fix systemic planning failures through design changes and repairs.
illusion of quick solution
So it’s no surprise that road tunnels in Indian cities often flood during monsoons. Traffic is repeatedly coming to a halt due to waterlogging in Delhi’s Pragati Maidan Tunnel. The Public Works Department (PWD) recently announced a new round of repairs – structural improvements, waterproofing, drainage upgrades and system restoration – to address water ingress and ensure “operational reliability”.
Experts say tunnels and basements in many Indian cities are built beneath natural drainage paths or near already clogged storm water drains. During intense rainfall – which has now become more frequent and irregular due to climate change – water takes the path of least resistance: underground.
What doesn’t help, experts say, is the lack of integrated underground mapping and a failure to understand the interactions between underground systems.
“In fact, this is one of the most underestimated risks in Indian urbanization. Underground systems do not fail independently. They fail at points of interaction. When basements intersect drainage paths, when tunnels alter groundwater movement, or when utilities overlap without hierarchy, risk silently accumulates. These interactions are rarely mapped or analyzed together,” says CP Kukreja Architects. (CPKA), says Dikshu Kukreja, an architect and managing principal. “As underground construction accelerates in dense urban areas, the potential for cascading failures increases, often occurring during extreme weather events such as monsoons”.
A warning was ignored
Experts have long warned about the risks of neglecting underground planning.
2022 National Institute of Disaster Management (NIDM) report, Underground Urbanism: Reimagining the Role of Underground Spaces for India’s Urban Futureechoed these concerns, calling for more strategic and integrated use of subsurface space through policy, planning and innovation.
“In spatial policies and other strategic plans, underground spaces are often overlooked due to a lack of awareness and understanding by policy makers, decision makers and planners – about how these spaces can help achieve policy goals and contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),” the report said.
In his 2012 book, Underground Infrastructure: Planning, Design and ConstructionWhich deals with the planning, design, construction and maintenance of underground structures, Goyal, along with Bhavani Singh and Jian Zhao, argue that if well planned and governed, underground space can reduce land scarcity in dense cities by housing transportation, utilities, parking and storage below ground, freeing up surface land for housing, green spaces and other public uses.
Goyal says, “There is a need for harmony between surface and underground facilities. Cities must plan the subsurface as an integral part of the urban space from the very beginning, keeping in mind the environment, water, security and future use. Treating underground infrastructure as an afterthought only leads to conflict, risk and long-term urban failure.”
need a deeper vision
Indian cities have failed to plan and manage underground infrastructure not because of technical capacity, but because of institutional fragmentation, says Kukreja.
GIFT City in Gujarat is an example of what coordinated planning under a single city-level authority can achieve. Although it does not have a dedicated underground master plan, the greenfield development has integrated underground infrastructure into its overall master plan. It consists of a multi-utility tunnel spanning 16 km that houses electricity, water, sewage, telecommunications, district cooling and waste systems, allowing most services to operate without repeated road digging. The tunnel network is managed through a central SCADA system that monitors and controls services in real time.
“The tunnel has solved an age-old problem of Indian cities – the constant digging of roads and built-up areas for repairs and utility upgrades,” says Anil Parmar, vice-president (engineering), GIFT City. “The tunnel is up to eight meters wide and 11 meters deep, which is big enough for a small maintenance vehicle to pass through. We regularly have officials from state governments and municipal corporations across the country coming to study how it works. But this model can practically be implemented effectively only in greenfield cities.”
So, what is a realistic first step for legacy cities like Delhi or Mumbai?
“The priority should be comprehensive subsurface mapping and data integration,” says Kukreja. This, he says, includes three-dimensional mapping of utilities, geology, groundwater and existing underground structures, shared between agencies. “Once a common knowledge base is in place, governance mechanisms, rules and underground master plans can evolve meaningfully. Without data and integration, any regulatory framework will remain superficial.”
Rastogi agrees, saying, “India also needs a national subsurface database, made mandatory for building approvals.”
Jain says, as cities become denser and expanding, this need becomes even more urgent. “There is nothing wrong with cities digging deeper to accommodate growth – it is even desirable. But they now have to develop dedicated subsurface master plans to ensure that underground space is used safely, efficiently and sustainably.”
