When Ravan Won

The unwarranted and absurd loss of lives during the Dussehra celebrations in Amritsar has set many of us thinking; the first immediate question in everyone’s mind is: whose fault is it? How could it have been avoided? Much as the human mind is conditioned to look for easy and simple answers, there are seldom any straightforward answers. If we really want to find the causes for this and other similar tragedies like a stampede at the Dussehra celebrations in Patna, 2014, the Kumbh mela stampede in Allahabad 2013, and the Dabwali fire mishap in 1995 to name only a few, we will have to address the various ills of omission and commission which beleaguer our socio-administrative system and erupt in major incidents of death and destruction.

In any well-run system, the administration, judiciary and citizens have to shoulder their given responsibilities and function in cohesion. All must complement the others and function in tandem for optimum well-being, security and progress of the entire system. But somewhere in the race to grab political power, in the abdication of responsibility and moral obligations, immediate personal gratification and hedonistic grabbing, we have lost a wider vision of the disasters we are headed for. Let us look at the more immediate causes of the tragedy first: there is a rule for obtaining prior permission for holding such festivals, which was broken. As his earlier record shows, the local councillor and organizer of the festival was more apt to bully officers and harass them for doing their duty rather than ask permission to hold this event. The senior authorities submitted to him and the locals voted for him. So here we have a system where goondaism and political self-entitlement belittle the law. The politicians, big and small, are in a race to win cheap popularity by feeding such lollipops to people and keeping their attention away from real civic issues.

The district administration should have, on the other hand, taken a prior review of the entire city for any un sanctioned Dussehra festival preparations and stopped them beforehand. But the officers concerned have long conditioned themselves to abdicate their duties at the altar of the political masters who hold the power to order transfers and disrupt their family life. The railway authorities could have issued orders for precautionary safety measures, but failed to be pro-active. Why even bother when one will get one’s salary anyhow? What about the police personnel who were on duty at the venue? Was it not their duty to control the crowd and order them away from the railway lines? But their duties, for the major part, seem to have dwindled to escorting and protecting VIPs and their kin, with a most lackadaisical approach to other assignments.

The majority of Indians are an undisciplined lot and breaking of basic and simple rules like crossing red lights, crawling under railway gates which have been lowered to stop traffic when a train is on the way, breaking queues, tinkering with electricity poles to connect a power cable for unauthorized use, travelling ticketless by hanging on perilously to train door handles or perched on a bus roof are some of the foolhardy, mindless things one sees every other day. This loss of respect for the law, absence of self restraint and self regulation are major flaws that will push us to disaster again and again in various different ways. It begins at the top where 36% of the law makers in the Indian parliament are facing criminal charges (minus those who have managed to get away with their crimes). The common citizen emulates this tendency to cock a snook at the law when he sees criminals and law breakers enjoy power and riches.

Why are there so many people that they spill out of all boundaries? Why was there no better available public place for festivities than right next to a railway line? Because the population of India is bludgeoning at mindboggling rates and it is not even an issue with the government. Why would it be? The labour class families having seven to eight children are the ones who will fill the vote kitty for a few hundred rupees with some colourful dreams of free housing and rations. And why, one would ask, couldn’t the victims foresee the apparent danger of standing on a railway track? Or even, possibly, defecating on it every morning? Because no one probably introduced them to basic logical thought processes or civic sense in schools. Half of them, being migrant labourers, probably never attended school or dropped out after class five; the rest went to crowded classes of fifty students, shouted down by disgruntled teachers who had no time to even learn their names, let alone teach them civic sense and logical thinking.

A mass slaughter of sixty people is a gory incident causing public outrage, deep grief and sense of devastation. But to pelt stones and destroy public property or injure other innocent people is no justified expression of grief and outrage. Yet the government stood and let the law be bypassed once again, validating the very reasons which are at the root of this kind of devastation. Let us wake up to the fact that unless we uphold the law and imbibe discipline above all else, we will continue to pay a heavy price in human lives, mental trauma and material loss.

Dr.Ranjit Powar