overpass under construction in India collapses

[Lyon Wonder]

An overpass under construction in what looks like a very crowed urban neighborhood in Kolkata, India collapsed onto a street and killed 21 people with many more injured.

http://www.timescolonist.com/21-killed-many-trapped-in-kolkata-india-overpass-collapse-1.2220877

[Jardine]

ABC News showed footage tonite.

Horrifying collapse, this is going to be a mass casualty disaster.

[AlexandriaVA]

Industrial disasters in the developing world take on a different flavor than in the West:

1) The incidence of their occurrences. Given that close to one-half of the world's population lives in the area bounded by India to the west, China to the north and east, and then Indonesia to the southeast, you're going to have more of everything...ferry accidents, bridge collapses.

2) Industrial standards are laxer...bribery is a way of doing business in many countries in the developing world, and the result often is that standards are not met or enforced.

3) Death count...high population densities and subpar emergency response capabilities mean that you will often have deaths higher than a similar accident in the West would face. Often, you can increase the casualty rate by an order of magnitude in comparison to the West.

[Brandon]

...bribery is a way of doing business in many countries in the developing world, and the result often is that standards are not met or enforced.

That's not just restricted to the developing world.  We had a governor sent to prison for that, and no, it wasn't Blago.

[AlexandriaVA]

...bribery is a way of doing business in many countries in the developing world, and the result often is that standards are not met or enforced.

That's not just restricted to the developing world.  We had a governor sent to prison for that, and no, it wasn't Blago.

Yes, thank you for making me aware of known cases of bribery in the West. But bribery here doesn't even approach the scale in countries like India, where it is an accepted part of doing business:

A study conducted by Transparency International in year 2005 found that more than 62% of Indians had first hand experience of paying bribes or influence peddling to get jobs done in public offices successfully.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_India)

[vdeane]

Plus bribery here is more for big things and behind closed doors.  In the developing world, it's often a fact of even daily life... for example, the police might pull you over when you've done nothing wrong and threaten to give you a hefty ticket or arrest you on the spot if you don't pay them a bribe.  I remember hearing from someone who traveled to Russia a long time ago that she needed to have a suitcase of $10,000 (don't remember which currency... hopefully rubles) for those occurrences.  She may have even needed it just to get immigration to stamp her passport.

[AlexandriaVA]

Plus bribery here is more for big things and behind closed doors.  In the developing world, it's often a fact of even daily life... for example, the police might pull you over when you've done nothing wrong and threaten to give you a hefty ticket or arrest you on the spot if you don't pay them a bribe.  I remember hearing from someone who traveled to Russia a long time ago that she needed to have a suitcase of $10,000 (don't remember which currency... hopefully rubles) for those occurrences.  She may have even needed it just to get immigration to stamp her passport.

Precisely.

Imagine if you had to pass cash to get any government official, at any level of government (state, local, federal), to perform their official duties.

[Brandon]

Plus bribery here is more for big things and behind closed doors.

How big?  Are we talking as little as $7,000?  Or people who've been found to have shoeboxes full of cash after they die?  Or just stealing it outright from their governmental employer?

[davewiecking]

Has anybody found this location on Google Earth? Best i can figure it's just across the Hooghly River from the Howrah RR station. Weird truss bridge there-the travel lanes don't go to the end of the bridge, but emerge from the side.

[empirestate]

Has anybody found this location on Google Earth? Best i can figure it's just across the Hooghly River from the Howrah RR station. Weird truss bridge there-the travel lanes don't go to the end of the bridge, but emerge from the side.

Right here:
https://goo.gl/maps/R5EqCRsUhJo