Poonam I Kaushish
As the Budget rolled out and Government patted itself on 7.5 GDP, a key question remained unanswered: Have we become the calamity country of the world? It seems so as we lurch from one catastrophe to another, whereby the death toll from disasters keeps rising, but alarm bells are seldom triggered loud enough for our ‘deaf’ authorities to take timely and preventive actions.
Take the devastating fire that ripped through two adjoining warehouses on Kolkata’s outskirts leaving 29 dead and counting. Instead of finding out who was negligent or bribed, BJP-TMC buried answerability by playing gulli-danda. Accused Union Home Minster, “Whose money is it? Why no arrestes? Replied TMC, “Not possible to check private warehouses.” Understandable, as high stakes State elections is round the corner and raj gaddi is up for grabs.
Or, the horrific fire at a Goa nightclub which left 25 dead December. Turns out it was built illegally on salt pan and operated without licence. A magisterial inquiry noted serious lapses and collusion at multiple official levels but no one was held accountable, only owners were arrested.
Earlier, over 89 patients died in a Kolkata hospital. Predictably, the hospital’s licence was cancelled and Chief Minister vowed “harshest punishment” for those found responsible, read owners arrest. But was mum on mandatory fire checks?
The NCRB data shows over 1.5 lakh fire incidents annually, resulting in above 27,000 deaths, the most vulnerable victims being children. The frightening part? More than 57% deaths occur in residential settings, with most occurring at night when occupants are asleep and reaction time is slow.
Less said the better of lakhs of lives lost annually due to faulty infrastructural planning. Consider road accidents which are overwhelming. India recorded 4.73 lakh road accidents resulting in around 1.70 lakh deaths or 11% even as we have only one per cent vehicles last year. Sic.
An example: Last month a Delhi couple bled to death after remaining trapped for 8 hours inside their mangled WagonR which was hit by an unidentified heavy vehicle on the Delhi-Mumbai expressway. Cars whizzed past but no one stopped to help. By the time they were taken to hospital they were dead from blood loss, which could have been prevented had they been taken to hospital on time.
Shockingly, despite the psychological trauma victims and their families suffer, Government has yet to come up with a single sustained campaign on the pressing need for road safety. Ditto vis-à-vis deaths from fire, where we have no pan-India safety campaign to help prevent accidents.
Pertinently, the chronology of these tragedies follows a familiar pattern. Rather than focus on strictness of daily governance, priority is given to optics of political grandstanding, of Viksit Bharat by 2047.
Indore, celebrated as India’s cleanest city faced a deplorable public health emergency last month as contaminated drinking water caused by sewage leakage triggered diarrhoea and vomiting outbreak. Multiple lives were lost and hundreds took ill. But other than tall talk of taking action against civic authorities passing-the-file from one department to another played out as State protocols for water safety monitoring were washed out.
Besides, Government sorely lacks crowd management skills. Police were completely overwhelmed at actor-politician Vijay rally in Tamil Nadu September which left 45 dead and dozens injured, underscoring public safety is given least priority. Again jubilation turned to horror in Bengaluru as a massive crowd gathered at a stadium to celebrate Royal Challenger’s first IPL title killing many.
Remember, media blitz of Maha Kumbh Mela Prayagraj last year. Of 50 million pilgrims, but Administration shrouded 200 dead and scores injured. A month later, over-crowding erupted in stampede at New Delhi Railway Station, killing 40 and injuring many. Both underplayed. If chaos is made light of how can corrective measures be taken?
Be it road, rail or air accidents or a stampede. Each time it’s a classic case of too little too late. Why? Who will be held accountable? Questionably, will babus have courage to correct themselves? Can competence and integrity, not allegiance become criteria for selection?
Its open secret those in positions of power, specially the powerful bureaucracy lobby are the first to shrug off their responsibility. An obscurantist force often rivaling politicians with its fair share of crooks, criminals and cheats. A majority of who work on the dictum, show me the face I will show you the rule. Which translates into grease my palms else I will read you the riot act and how!
Add to this, States are notorious for having a “committed bureaucracy” or being aligned to Parties, resulting in a spate of transfers and hounding out following a political change. Every change of guard leads to ad nauseum transfers resulting in most officials taking no initiative.
Indeed, the political identification of officials is becoming so marked that even bureaucrats are able to predict who will occupy which top post, if ‘X’, ‘Y’ or ‘Z’ Party or individual comes to power! Confessed a former Cabinet Secretary, “the problem is endemic in States like UP, Bihar and Tamil Nadu, where Chief Ministers have failed to draw a distinction between “political direction and political interference.”
Chimed in another, “Bureaucrats were to be checks in the system. The checks have turned into cheques while the balance is out of the window! The civil service has become an elite self perpetuating club which protects its perks, turf and corners all top jobs. Adeptly they have created jobs like regulators and committees, cornered by them alongside misusing their office to benefit a Party or cultivate certain constituencies while in office.”
Worse, instead of putting the right man in the right job, netas invariably end up choosing a wrong man for the right job for the wrong reasons. Brining matters to such a pass that caste, corruption, pliability and political connections alone count when it comes to promotions. Thus, administration become increasingly weak and arbitrary since there is no time to acquire even minimum knowledge necessary for discharge of functions.
Even late Prime Minister Manmohan Singh confessed: “I am disgusted with the system”, when he discovered even Cabinet decisions remained where they were taken — on paper. Perhaps, file-pushers had to apply their heads to arrive at an agreed conclusion as to who should push the file. And on who’s orders? Cabinet, Minister or political mai baap?
Undeniably, we are in the throes of governance crisis. Primarily, as our bureaucracy is designed for stability and control, not citizen-driven accountability. Two, due to job security without performance pressure, penalzing an officer is extremely difficult and slow. Three, departmental enquiries takes years between vigilance bodies, courts so the time action happens the officer may have retired. Four, weak performance metrics whereby promotions are seniority-based rather than result oriented.
The writing is on the wall. Babudom must give serious thought to determining what action needs to be taken collectively to remove administrative deficiencies, expose political malfunctioning and restore the system. One way is to internalize US’s zero tolerance principle and the “sunset principle.” Under this method, justification for any Governmental activity is all time under scrutiny that no acts of misdemeanour take place.
If our bureaucrats don’t change, a time will come when they will become increasingly irrelevant. Will Babudom rise to the occasion? Or will they allow the steel frame to rot and rust as they revel in non-governance and zero accountability? — INFA
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