Bses May Seek Rs 150cr Ifc Loan

Accidents can happen and frequently do. Acts of God are well, acts of God. People get turned into dog meat by a cyclone in Orissa, they get minced into keema by a train collision in Gaisal. Transformers explode in movie theatre basements. Chemical factories release methyl isocyanate into the atmosphere. Little girls get mangled by malfunctioning escalators in airports.

Disasters aren't unique to India. Hurricanes routinely devastate Florida and British Rail had its worst accident in four decades a few months ago. But in the rest of the world, society seems to pick up the pieces and at the very least attempt to ensure the problem doesn't recur. Every Florida hurricane is preceded by a huge evacuation. It is followed by an enormous relief and reconstruction effort. British Rail holds an instant enquiry. The real tragedy in India is that the tragedies recur ad infinitum. And, future victims possess as little recompense or recourse to punitive compensation as the last nameless sufferers. Instead of solving the problem, the knee-jerk reaction of the authority is to pass the blame around.

I remember the aftermath of Bhopal. The administration was completely overwhelmed and incapable of coping. Hundreds of young volunteers from all over the country were sickened by Arjun Singh's demeanour as he produced the slickest buck-passing performance of his career. So he ordered their arrests. Young women, yes women, were charged with rape and attempted murder in an attempt to hold them on non-bailable offences. Carbide walked away with paying a pittance and a random walk through Bhopal's slums will tell you how inadequate that was. Orissa is a tragedy in five acts. First Act was the cyclone which saw an administrative failure when no attempt was made to evacuate the vulnerable coast. Act Two saw fullpage ads in the papers requesting civil servants to report back for duty while survivors starved. The Third Act featured Gamang and Biswal doing a Mutt and Jeff cross-talk routine as people continued to starve. The Fourth Act is currently starring people dying of assorted diseases. The Fifth Act will feature the next cyclone.

Gaisal saw railway officials running away after outright human error caused the collision. A significant number of the dead will not be identified. No compensation will accrue to their families. More importantly, no real measures will be taken to ensure that this switching error doesn't happen again. A couple of officials will be transferred, and then it will be life as usual for the Indian railways. Not for the victim's families of course.

The tragedy at the airport featured a malfunctioning escalator. There was no emergency fail-safe switch that could freeze the machinery. The intercom was malfunctioning and that meant further delay while engineers were located. Medical aid arrived in leisurely fashion. This is not the first death due to n