Mrs Ashi Gaur, Ritwiz Gaur
On 16 July 2004, the Lok Sabha reassembled after lunch at Nineteen minutes past fourteen of the Clock; and the then Minister of Defence, Pranab Mukherjee, submitted to the House in regard to fire accident at a nursery school in Kumbakonam, Tamil Nadu, “Sir, I would like to share the anguish and concern of all the hon’ble Members. In fact, no words are enough to express our feelings at this tragic incident. When we got the information, I had been in touch with the Home Minister and the Prime Minister. Till now, the information that is available is that a school building, namely, Srikrishna Nursery Model School, was housed in a thatched building. A fire broke out. Seventy seven children have expired and 30 of them have been injured. It may be more because detailed information is yet to be ascertained. I think, everybody will join me in expressing our sympathies and anguish to the members of the bereaved family, the parents and all concerned. I will keep the House informed”.
The said Kumbakonam School had a thatched roof in severe violation of building laws. It even had a thatched kitchen close to the thatched classrooms. The fire officials had described the school as a death trap. They said that the victims had no chance of escape when the fire erupted as they were doing their lessons on the top floor.
It is very surprising to note that even after so many lives of toddlers, who were School going children, were burnt alive from Kumbakonam School fire accident; the governance, the judiciary, the bureaucrats, the society did not took any lesson. Again if to believe, the report that in the year 1995, a school prize-giving ceremony in a Northern Indian town turned to tragedy when a fire broke out, killing nearly 400 people, many of them children and teenagers. The fire was caused by an electrical short circuit in the town of Dabwali in the state of Haryana, about 150 miles from the National Capital.
No lessons learnt, no obligation……
Recently, 22 children were killed in coaching Centre blaze in Surat, either due to suffocation or falling off the windows in an attempt to escape fire, the fire which engulfed the four-storeyed building started at the ground floor, forcing students to take cover at roof. But it is not just the cramped conditions that are responsible; the complete lack of safety protocols and the poor enforcement of the regulations that do exist play a big role in such tragedies. Just like most of tragic fire “offences”, even in Surat, the huge loss of life and property was augmented by the fact that the raw material widely used in designing or constructing the stairs & other spaces made it highly prone to a lethal fire accident. The calorific value of the raw material used was much higher and when fire broke, and with no ventilation, children were bound to choke. Almost 90% deaths in fire accidents occur due to inhaling toxic gases. These young Indians are the latest victims of a culture of laissez-faire urbanization that governance have bred and which the courts allow to be pursued without severe penalties.
Moreso, the recent fire tragedy in Surat in which Nation witnessed loss of 23 young lives burnt and charred to unfortunate and horrifying death is a classic exemplar of “disposal Problems” of policy makers & bureaucrats when it comes to urban planning and management. “Disposal Problem” – a phrase well accolade in history of the US foreign policy- refers to how a well-entrenched people, practice or protocol (interest groups, professional cliques, sellers or buyers in a market place, rules, laws, standard operating procedures, institutional matrix, collective mores and folkways, etc.) can end up defeating the very purpose for which it was created in the first place.
India’s abysmal record on fire safety is reflected in the death of 17,700 people countrywide in fires in both public and residential buildings during 2015, according to the latest available data from the National Crime Records Bureau. Year after years, towns after towns, people had lost their life in fire incidents and accidents – a few out of many viz: February 2013-Kolkata (19 people were killed and over a dozen critically injured); September 2012 -Tamil Nadu (a catastrophic explosion in a private fireworks factory at Mudalipatti near Sivakasi in Tamil Nadu claimed lives of 54 while 78 were injured); Uphaar Cinema Fire 1997 -Delhi (killing 59 people and 103 were seriously injured); December 2011 -Kolkata (In the AMRI hospital of Kolkata 89 people were killed); September 2005 -Bihar (Three illegal firecracker factories in the Khusropur village of Bihar caught fire leading to deaths of 35 people and left 50 injured); April 2006 – Meerut
(in Brand India Fair at Meerut, a major fire broke out and killed 100 people); July 2004 -Tamil Nadu (94 children were dead); June 2002 -Agra (in the Shree Lee International footwear factory of Agra fire broke out and 42 people were killed); February 1997 -Odisha (in a religious congregation at Baripada Odisha, a calamitous fire broke out in which 206 people were dead and 148 were injured)
Post such incidences, society jerk out from slumber followed by analysis, debates, protests, aggressions, post-incidents news bytes by politicians, intelligentsia & law enforcement agency; candle marches, judgments, policy reviews; but soon all lost in oblivion and the gravamen of subject matter is left to claimed “innocent recurrence” and “cherished care a fig, badly complacent” approach. Soon enough, things return to normal – both owners and the authorities lapse into their usual way of doing things, and “Hindustani Janta” again creeps back into cocoon of daily life.
Infact State is duty bound to protect and secure lives of students across the country by ensuring the minimum safety standards. The State is liable to promulgate policies, which ensure the implementation of the safety laws and procedures laid down. The State must ensure that the government-certified engineer visits each and every school, colleges and every such place which envisage the life of children (that also includes coaching centers, cinema halls, restaurants, etc) at least once in two years. It is no more a hidden or blasphemous secret that most of the Indian educational arenas are dull, claustrophobic, cramped and often have derelict structures with no fire safety systems, alternate escape routes. Most of these educational institutions are located in a warren of congested lanes and are made of substandard materials to avoid the cost of construction in flagrant violation of the building laws. Majority of the educational institution do not have emergency exits.
The National Building Code of India, 2005, promulgated by the Bureau of Indian Standards, provides detailed instructions on how to construct fire-safe buildings. Tables and drawings set standard for educational institution particularly, including number and type of fire extinguishers, quantity of water necessary for a proper fire suppression system, and many more, providing an engineer-tested, nationally applicable set of standards that our schools could follow. In the introductory materials for the Code, the Bureau of Indian Standards explicitly state, “The hazards of fire in educational buildings can be considerably lowered by adoption of certain predetermined fire safety measures with regard to proper planning of buildings, choice of proper materials and components, electrical equipment and making suitable provisions for fire detection and suppression system.”
It is the fundamental right of each and every child to receive education free from fear of security and safety. The children cannot be compelled to receive education from an unsound and unsafe building.
Legally, neither these were incidents nor accidents, infact all are “criminal omissions and commissions”, even to liberally construe it can be termed as ‘conscious man-made disaster’ and to be more precise, ‘deliberate planning made’ issues created and emancipated from cumulative effect of ill-baked regulations, compromised enforcement machinery, materialistically managed accountability mechanism and powerful lobby of interest groups that has infiltrated the state machinery and have been successful in damaging public interests as a matter of daily existence. A nefarious nexus of politician-business-bureaucracy-mafia exist to exploit the insensitivity of society’s stake holders making the very existence vulnerable. Consequently, our schools, colleges, malls, cinema halls, villages, towns and cities -without exceptions- is repeatedly turning into bonfire of regulations, basic tenets of urban planning and precious human lives. In the opening scene of the Godfather, law-abiding businessman Amerigo Bonasera, believing in America and the rule of law, goes to the police when his daughter is raped. When the system fails to deliver justice, he appeals to Don Corleone, who asks: “Why did you go to the police? Why didn’t you come to me first?” This unfortunately is the dystopian reality of India where people cannot trust the rule of law.
As a parent, educator, law scholar and vigilant citizens; what surprise us most is the fact that the sentinel of Indian Society and Democracy also seems to be insensitive to the cause. Right to Life – as enshrined in Article 21 of the Constitution of India was imparted much wider connotation by “Judicial Activism”; but such an active judiciary also seems to be failing in taking prompt cognizance of ‘what was’ and ‘what is’ explicitly “Suo motto”. Difficult to understand why Edmund Burke put it, ‘the judiciary is to serve as “safe asylum” during times of crisis’; ironically when young children seems to have no Savior! When the Judiciary fails to act-instead deferring to the elected branches or bureaucracy or slow cumbersome processes of subordinate judiciary- it abdicates its role as guardian of enduring principles against the temporary passions and prejudices of popular majorities.
Young lives cannot worth nothing. Crime perpetrators of “criminal fire offences” -including criminal culpability of the administrative machinery and officials who sanctioned unsafe buildings- need to be booked and punished and when the affairs are so much sordid the Watchdog of the Constitution has to emerge and remerge like a bird Phoenix – even from its own ashes (Distrust trap)- and act upon like a strong bulwark against ‘nexus tyranny’.
Of course, the Judiciary should be like Baby Bear: It should get everything just right, engaging in activism when, and only when, We the People act in ways that we will later consider shameful or regrettable.
The observation of Andrew Jackson, the seventh President of the United States, is worth mentioning here: “All the rights secured to the citizens under the Constitution are worth nothing, and a mere bubble, except guaranteed to them by an independent and virtuous judiciary.”
(The authors are Educators, School leaders, researcher, Law Scholars and Social Advocates)
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