Seething with anger at the mon­u­men­tal lapses by of­fi­cial­dom in han­dling pub­lic events and tragedies that oc­cur in In­dia, with ref­er­ence to the tragedy on tracks in Am­rit­sar, the au­thor says that per­haps Ra­van has rat­tled us from our deep slum­ber. If we are still asleep, then life will come full cir­cle with a sim­i­lar in­ci­dent some­where else and the blame games will be played all over again.

The glob­ally-re­ported and in­creas­ingly un­fold­ing Am­rit­sar train tragedy at the Ra­van- burn­ing pub­lic event (‘Dussehra’) held on 19 Oc­to­ber 2018, in­volv­ing the grue­some deaths of 60 or so per­sons; once more proves to be a vivid ex­po­sure of the ut­ter fi­asco and chaos that char­ac­terises most such pub­lic hap­pen­ings in In­dia.

The tragedy in­volved uniden­ti­fied ba­bies as sur­vivors, be­ing found ly­ing on their own af­ter the train deaths oc­curred, on or around the Joda Phatak area of the Am­rit­sar city train-track, as their next of kin ap­peared to have been killed in the crush­ing slaugh­ter of the high-speed train rac­ing through densely packed crowds stood on and around the train-track.

The lo­ca­tion of this open air pub­lic event was in prox­im­ity to a ma­jor rail-track. It first and fore­mostly, begs the ques­tion WHY?

This pub­lic event was an open af­fair, with no crowd con­trol, no health and safety checks in ad­vance nor any on the spot health and safety mon­i­tor­ing. Why was it be­ing held in such close prox­im­ity to a high-speed train-track?  Are such hor­ren­dous omis­sions and lapses, the norm in In­dian pub­lic func­tions? 

In true In­dian cus­tom and prac­tise, it was meant to be a fun, frolic of burn­ing an ef­figy, lots of fire­works, noise, cel­e­bra­tion and fan­fare.  Why was there no tech­ni­cal stric­tures of tight con­trols, health and safety in­spec­tors or mon­i­tors, polic­ing?

The tragedy has brought into fo­cus the role of the po­lice, lo­cal au­thor­i­ties, In­dian politi­cians, the event or­gan­is­ers, chief guests like the wife of Navjot Sidhu MP, etc. On top of this, you have mul­ti­ple unan­swered ques­tions and nat­u­rally an­gry and frus­trated in­di­vid­u­als who have lost loved ones in this tragedy of dis­or­der, chaos and di­vert­ing the blame.

“The lo­ca­tion of this open air pub­lic event was in prox­im­ity to a ma­jor rail-track. It first and fore­mostly, begs the ques­tion WHY?”

Much can be ex­trap­o­lated di­rectly from the ex­ten­sive ar­ray of me­dia re­ports from within In­dia and abroad. The prime ques­tion that ag­o­nises and pierces me is, “Do the peo­ple them­selves and the In­dian gov­ern­ment value hu­man life?”. Is this how the In­dian mind-set, of­fi­cial­dom and so­ci­ety it­self con­duct their pub­lic life and gath­er­ings? 

The small tri­an­gu­lar ground, cheek-by-jowl with the tracks left lit­tle room for es­cape in case of an ac­ci­dent. Though the or­gan­is­ers did warn the peo­ple to stay away from the tracks, the very na­ture of the place was like a dis­as­ter wait­ing to hap­pen. With no sur­veil­lance sys­tem of tracks –man­ual or elec­tronic, the de­scent on to the tracks, legally speak­ing was tres­pass­ing and the Rail­way au­thor­i­ties were not “re­spon­si­ble” in any way.

Pass­ing the buck is an es­tab­lished, en­dur­ing In­dian so­cial and po­lit­i­cal game. From mud-houses to com­pany board­rooms to the cor­ri­dors of power, no­body wants to be held re­spon­si­ble. The whole struc­ture of au­thor­ity and del­e­ga­tion is so de­vised that you keep go­ing around, mov­ing in cir­cles and ul­ti­mately ei­ther peo­ple for­get or ei­ther the ex­ec­u­tive or the ju­di­ciary pun­ishes some scape­goats.Thus, the prob­lem con­tin­ues to pester, to re­cur once again, may be some­where else, af­ter a few days, weeks, months or years; with no lessons learnt what­so­ever.

Through­out the cus­tom­ary shift­ing and ex­change of blame be­tween politi­cians, the lo­cal au­thor­i­ties, the gov­ern­ment; some very ba­sic ques­tions ap­pear to be de­lib­er­ately or stu­pidly ig­nored. The most ba­sic and fun­da­men­tal of which is why was this mas­sive scale, noisy pub­lic event be­ing held in such dan­ger­ous prox­im­ity to a ma­jor rail­way track, with a high-speed train im­mi­nent? This is surely a glar­ing ba­sic level lapse, ex­pos­ing the at­ten­dees to im­mi­nent risk of dan­ger. The lapse is dra­con­ian! 

The fact that the event or­gan­is­ers and those that gave them sup­posed per­mis­sion had cho­sen to over­ride this very ob­vi­ous fault-line, and pro­ceed with such a ma­jor event, late into the evening, with loud noise, fire­works and burn­ing of a grandiose con­structed ef­figy of Ra­van, speeches from spe­cial guests like Navjot Kaur Sidhu (mav­er­ick leader Navjot Sid­hu’s wife); re­veals a mo­ronic and cal­lous level of dis­dain for any kind of health and safety and peo­ple wel­fare.

Un­for­tu­nately, mod­ern In­dia is a place which con­tin­ues to shock us all the time with such mon­u­men­tal lapses and tragedies. Such ag­o­nis­ing and dev­as­tat­ing mal­ad­min­is­tra­tion and lapse of pub­lic level safe gov­er­nance, con­trasts enor­mously with the or­di­nary good­ness, kind­ness and af­fa­bil­ity of the or­di­nary In­dian peo­ples, their hos­pi­tal­ity, the di­verse mes­mer­iz­ing phys­i­cal beauty of the In­dian con­ti­nent. Such good and beauty sits side-by-side with such hu­man and gov­ern­men­tal fail­ure. 

“Such ag­o­nis­ing and dev­as­tat­ing mal­ad­min­is­tra­tion and lapse of pub­lic level safe gov­er­nance, con­trasts enor­mously with the or­di­nary good­ness, kind­ness and af­fa­bil­ity of the or­di­nary In­dian peo­ples, their hos­pi­tal­ity, the di­verse mes­mer­iz­ing phys­i­cal beauty of the In­dian con­ti­nent.”

In­deed, the sheer at­ti­tu­di­nal fail­ure and con­tempt shown by the or­gan­is­ers, is epit­o­mised in the recorded com­ments of one of the key event or­gan­is­ers. When ad­dress­ing the event it­self. The chief or­gan­iser, is heard on pub­lished record­ings,  proudly and brashly telling Dr Kaur (the guest speaker) that 5,000 peo­ple are stand­ing on the tracks. “They are not both­ered about the trains – not even if 500 trains cross the tracks.”

This kind of mon­u­men­tally per­verse at­ti­tude is an at­ti­tude which gov­erns, ad­min­is­ters and dom­i­nates the In­dian state: its pub­lic ser­vice de­liv­ery, its polic­ing, its gov­er­nance, its law and or­der, and its down­trod­den, pow­er­less so­ci­ety of 1.5 bil­lion.

The scale of the 360 de­gree In­dian mess, the to­tal ab­sence of health and safety, mal­ad­min­is­tra­tion, care­less­ness and de­hu­man­i­sa­tion char­ac­terises the boom­ing, ex­pand­ing, mil­i­tar­ily mam­moth mod­ern In­dia.

In­dia may have the 4th largest army and maybe it is the sin­gle biggest arms pur­chaser in the world. The pre­sent right wingers want us to be­lieve that it has a “boom­ing econ­omy.”

This is all pa­per and of­fi­cial In­dia. The real, grass-roots In­dia is dy­ing and suf­fer­ing in the real mess that re­mains the core of 70-year un­der­de­vel­oped In­dia. Lack of hous­ing, jobs, clean­li­ness, roads, schools, med­ica­tion, ed­u­ca­tion, law and or­der, hu­man rights re­main the core re­al­i­ties of the or­di­nary In­dian.

Hope­fully, when the blame game over the Am­rit­sar train tragedy, has run out of ex­cuses and ob­fus­ca­tions; the In­dian politi­cians and gov­ern­ment will not turn to blam­ing Pak­istan for a tragedy that is en­tirely of its own mak­ing.

Amidst this hor­ri­fy­ing re­minder of the rot that per­vades pub­lic life in In­dia; is the hero­ism of Dal­bir Singh. He was pre­sent at the pub­lic event, play­ing the no­to­ri­ous Ra­van in the en­act­ment of Ra­mayana. Para­dox­i­cally, this ma­ligned Ra­van of the day, saved 8 lives be­fore he too was killed by the speed­ing train. It ap­pears that the spirit and soul of the ma­ligned Ra­van, who has been mon­u­men­tally burnt for cen­turies, has sent out a strik­ing mes­sage to whole In­dian es­tab­lish­ment and di­rectly to the peo­ple that the en­tire fi­asco and cha­rade that you are liv­ing with is go­ing to turn on you. 

The out­pour of grief, frus­tra­tion and anger of the sur­viv­ing vic­tims of the Am­rit­sar train tragedy, is vis­i­ble and en­tirely un­der­stand­able. Hope­fully, that grief and anger can be di­rected into a pos­i­tive en­ergy for wake up and change against an en­trenched, pu­tre­fy­ing over­bear­ing In­dian es­tab­lish­ment.