Our cities: Places to die for

There is no accountability for people meant to keep us safe

By Alok Tiwari

Even by usually low standards of safety in Indian cities, the month of May has been bad. A huge hoarding collapsed during a dust storm in Mumbai and killed 16 persons. A few days later it was a fire in a gaming arcade in Rajkot that claimed 27 lives. Then a blast in Dombivli chemical unit resulted in death of 11. As I write this, the headline is about six newborns dying in a hospital fire in country’s capital Delhi.

In between, we were transfixed by a drunk teen without licence driving a Porsche and mowing down two persons in the prime of their lives. These are over and above the usual run-of-the-mill accidents and incidents where individuals continue to die and which barely make the news. As the world’s most populous nation, some devaluation of human lives here is a given. But these incidents stand out not only for the scale of tragedy but also the scale of disregard for norms.

These have not happened in remote godforsaken corner or country where some dilution of governance can be excused. These have happened in our richest cities with big incomes and where the rule of law is expected to be enforced much more diligently than in other places. In any other society a string of such events would have galvanized it and people would have risen to demand answers. But in politics-obsessed nation that we have increasingly become, the biggest question everywhere continued to be how many seats is BJP getting in ongoing elections.

Disturbing as each of these incidents is, they are unfortunately not an exception. Also, they can hardly be called accidents. They are crimes and serious ones at that. Within hours of each such incident, we get to know about a string of violations that led to it. The story is almost identical each time. It is willful disregard of rules and norms, usually a result of ugly collusion between the rich and those supposed to be enforcing the law.

Mumbai hoarding was not only way bigger than permitted but also did not have any approval from the civic body. Buildings involved in fire obviously did not have any effective firefighting systems, yet continued to function. The chemical unit too was in breach of safety norms. To be sure, the police and other officials have moved to take action in the aftermath. But safe to say entire machinery will go into its usual lax mode once things cool down. And they will cool down pretty quickly. Sheer number of disasters rocking us ensures we are unable to focus on any one and follow it to a logical end that results in meaningful changes and more safety.

Arrests are made and politicians and officials dutifully assure us that no one will be spared. But then the system falls back to being protective of the rich and the powerful. As public attention moves on to something bigger and worse or simply weariness takes over, the accused are once again free to manipulate things as they please. They have willing accomplices in law enforcement and courts that allow them endless time to elude whatever passes in the name of justice.

You can safely bet your last shirt that none of the accused in all the incidents I have mentioned will be finally convicted and jailed even five years from now. I’ll be surprised if it happens 20 years from now. A quick and effective criminal justice system is the very basis to ensure rule of law. It needs to come before flyovers and expressways. It is a cruel joke on all of us that our government boasts of completing huge physical infrastructure projects within a few years but is unable and unwilling to create a system that would put those with such callous disregard for human life away within a reasonable time frame.

Our judges and police chiefs need to ask themselves how is it possible that people arrested on charges that later turned out to be politically motivated and cooked up end up spending years in jail even before their trial begins but criminals who cause deaths of dozens of fellow citizens elude justice for years. A society that has no sense of justice may continue to survive but it would not be a happy and productive one.

But we jump the gun here. Justice comes into the picture once a crime has been committed. It is much more important to prevent it from happening. No society can entirely be crime-free but it is entirely possible to prevent such crimes of urban violations that result in mass deaths. We need to begin by taking urban governance much more seriously than we do. For this, our civic and industrial authorities need to be adequately staffed and funded.

We have demonized government staff as lazy and corrupt but that is only partially true. Every agency supposed to enforce safety norms, whether in buildings, on roads, or in industry, is without people it needs to carry out its writ. It often does not have the physical resources as well. Once they are properly equipped we can ask them to be accountable. Right now it is easy for them to mask their lethargy and corruption by genuine excuses.

Once we have got our fire brigades, our anti-encroachment staff, our factory and health inspectors properly trained and in place, we need to then move to break their nexus with those they are supposed to watch over. When each such incident happens, not only should the owner of factory, hospital, or hoarding should be booked but also officials whose duty it was to see they were running as per norms. Our courts should check whether accused are gaming the system using their resources. While they need to ensure liberty of the innocent, they should not let people go simply because they could afford better lawyers.