DNA Edit: Kushinagar tragedy

Yet another accident. Yet another instance of criminal negligence. Yet another round of condolences. Yet another inquiry committee. Yet another compensation package. And, yet another agitation/outrage over a mournful incident, which, this time, claimed the lives of 13 children and the driver of the school van that collided with a moving train at an unmanned railway crossing in Uttar Pradesh’s Kushinagar.

The site of the mishap merely changes, but the attendant chain of events in the wake of a man-made disaster is indistinguishable. Soon, the Kushinagar accident will be forgotten and relegated to a footnote in contemporary India’s chronicle of its quest to achieve economic superpower status. This is as good as it gets! How does it matter to a state administration, the Indian Railway authorities, and the Central government that this is the second accident in about 16 days in which children were the victims?

The death toll in the tragedy at Himachal Pradesh’s Kangra when a school bus plunged into a gorge was 27 — and all of them were below 10 years of age. On April 21, Railway minister Piyush Goyal had tweeted: Striving towards establishing ‘Zero Accident’ railway system, government, in the last four years, has taken various safety measures & speeded up implementation of the action plan, ensuring commuters a highly secure rail travel. In September, Goyal had said that he would remove all unmanned level crossings — there are 5000 of them — within a year.

Tragedy struck much before he could fulfil his pledge, and this time in the presence of a Railway volunteer manning the crossing. It will be much too late by the time the fact-finding committee comes up with its results. And, little would change in a country where matters of safety and discipline are accorded least priorities.

We have become immune to tragedies, casting them in the light of the inevitable, if only to shirk our collective responsibility in preventing them. The government had admitted to the Parliament that 70 train accidents were reported between April 1, 2017, and February 28, 2018.

Road accidents are responsible for 400 deaths every day. Regrettably, loss of lives is a routine affair in a country of one billion-plus people. Only the families of the victims suffer, whose tears can’t be wiped away even when the government deems it fit to offer monetary compensation. The voices that matter are ‘terribly sorry’ for the Kushinagar tragedy.

For years, they have been expressing regret in the same manner without actually taking the trouble to eliminate the causes leading to ‘unfortunate’ events. In the 2017 global safe cities index, Delhi and Mumbai were ranked 43rd and 45th, respectively. If our metros fare so poorly, imagine the prevailing conditions in nondescript places. If the people of a country seek change, they will have to change themselves first.

Safety regulations imposed by the government can only yield limited results. Will Kushinagar bring about a change in the way people perceive road safety? Let’s be optimistic!