India, Feb. 9 -- By Dr. K. Javeed Nayeem, MD

The recent collapse of a second portion of the famed, more than a century old, Maharani's College building in our city has claimed the life of a young daily wage earner, with his two little kids now being left fatherless and his household, left bereft of its only means of sustenance. Thankfully, when this incident happened, more than a dozen of the poor man's co-workers, who too were inside the crumbling building, had just gone out of the area for a break, while he was still inside. So, they missed meeting the same terrible fate by a bare whisker.

The demolition was being done because a few years ago, a portion of the Chemistry Department of the college had collapsed and it was decided by the...