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Monsoons almost always transport you into another world — a world full of lush greenery, rain-drenched leaves, cool winds and a beautiful clear sky, post the downpour. They lift your spirits and make you sing. But unfortunately, there is another side to the monsoons that is ugly, sad and tragic. While the beauty and the bounty of a heavy downpour is the gift of nature, the ugly side of this is man-made. You have probably guessed by now what I am getting at — the heavy death toll recorded during this season every year from different parts of the country. There are electrocutions resulting from naked, loose wires left carelessly hanging by the roadside by power supply undertakings; deaths caused by lightning in public places and school buildings that lack lightning conductors; the tragic drowning of children and adults in open manholes and trenches left uncovered by the civic authorities; road accidents caused by overflowing water from the drains that camouflage cuts and potholes left unattended on the roads; drowning of people travelling in unsafe boats on overflowing rivers; hepatitis deaths from polluted water supply; deaths caused by a host of deadly diseases transmitted by mosquitoes that breed unhindered in stagnating pools of water by the roadside. Well, the list is long enough to completely obliterate the romantic notion of the monsoons. What is unfortunate is that it need not be this way. If only the administration paid a little more attention to what it ought to do, and if only we held the authorities fully accountable for their actions and inactions, for their criminal neglect, we will certainly have a safe and an enjoyable rainy season. For too many years, we have remained passive spectators to the increasing incidents of tragic deaths caused by the administration’s callous negligence and allowed those responsible for the deaths to get away. In fact, whenever there is a hue and cry over such a tragedy, the administration quickly doles out a small amount of compensation and closes the case. The amount in all such cases is so paltry that it in no way compensates the relatives. Even this money is paid from what you and I pay as taxes and not from the pocket of the person or persons responsible for their negligent action. In fact, there is no system of identifying those responsible for the criminal acts and punishing them.
A positive development in recent years is the increasing public anger over such incidents and the attempts by a few public-spirited persons to hold the civic authorities accountable. However, even here, even though the courts have asked the civic authorities or the contractor responsible for the negligent act to compensate the victim’s family, not much headway has been made in identifying those actually responsible for the criminal negligence and asking them to pay the compensation from their pockets. Just this month, for example, I read about a landmark judgment of the Bombay High Court, holding the civic authorities responsible for the death of a citizen from hepatitis caused by the consumption of contaminated water and asking the Municipal Council to pay Rs 4.40 lakh to the parents of the victim. It is an excellent judgment, except for the fact that the court rejected a plea for criminal action against the officers concerned. In another case, following the death of a 60-year-old woman, Mariamma Nair, on Janaury 5 as a result of a fall into an open trench, a public interest litigation filed in the Bombay High Court sought criminal action against the contractor and the civic officials. Here again, from what I could make out from the media reports, the contractor was asked to pay a small compensation, but the civic authorities seem to have gone unpunished. I am reminded of a similar case in Turkey, where two Indian executives working for a joint venture company had been jailed and faced imprisonment for anywhere between four and 10 years following the death of two children by drowning in a trench dug for laying oil pipelines by the company. It is only the fear of
such imprisonment and the fear of paying heavy financial penalties
from their pockets that will force governments to pay more attention
to safety. For that to happen, our courts need to come down heavily on
those responsible for the loss of innocent lives. Side by side we, as
citizens, also need to force the local governments to provide 24-hour
toll free hotlines on which citizens can complain of open manholes,
uncovered trenches, sparking live wires, just about anything that can
be a safety hazard. Failure on the part of those entrusted with the
responsibility of acting promptly on these complaints should invite
severe punishment. Only then can we breathe easy.
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