The difference between humans and animals is, well, how you treat other humans and animals. The streets of India that is Bharat, provides daily proof that while humans are among the most evolved of animals, the price they place on other humans is, well, abysmal.
This, here, is proof. On Wednesday at the coffee board junction close to the Vidhana Soudha in Bangalore, a ramshackle goods vehicle carrying steel rods braked suddenly only for the sharp rods to pierce out of the carrier on to the road. Fortunately, the death toll was zero.
Photograph: Karnataka Photo News
I’m happy to see that policeman walking towards the vehicle. Hopefully he will slap a ‘Negligent Driving’ charge on the driver.
In India only “mass deaths” get any attention – like Bhopal tragedy, stampedes or 26/11. Even for such incidents, the response at best is pathetic. There are more deaths happening everyday because
1. people are expected to jump out of buses as drivers dont have time to stop buses.
2, Roads do not taper properly at the end because of PWD officers’ tummies!
3. People are not disciplined enough when boarding trains (check wikipedia, more than 3000 people die every year on Mumbai trains)
and so on.
No body cares about these completely avoidable incidents.
…. or get some 100 rs from the driver
an anon wise person once said:
in the US there are no values in life, in India there is no value for life.
i do agree on the second part, while i think the first part is true of india too..
…and of course standard disclaimers apply if i sound bigoted!
Yeah,
Life in India is cheap.
Even mass incidents like Bhopal, 26/11, train/bus accidents come and go, we do nothing to fix the underlying causes – at individual level or in our system.
Inefficiency and chaos rules us.
One can easily see such vehicles loaded with construction materials almost everyday on every street ? Our Police and law enforcement is truly embarrassing.
Corruption everywhere. Getting a fitness certificate for that goods vehicle, overloading/loading without proper safety precautions..it got thru till coffee board junction without any policman stopping the vehicle. If nothing would have happened, it would reached its destination too and nobody would have given it a thought.
Well for the policman, it was god sent opportunity, give a mouthful to the driver/helper of the goods vehicle “in front” of the public, then quietly take the helper and get some mamool.and life goes on and on
Div:
>In India only “mass deaths” get any attention
In India no death (and quantity of deaths) changes the system. We as a people do not consider lives as precious as we have too many around us.
– Bangalore-Mangalore Highway has been a death trap for years, and nothing gets done.
– Our roads are recipe for disasters, but we still design roads attrociously.
– We see tractors, bullock carts, hand-pushed carts all vying for space in our roads, which is a recipe for accidents.
The primary reason for this – delay in justice and lack of bite in our laws regarding punitive (Deterrent) sentencing. If the Engineers & Contractors involved in Hebbal Wall collapse are sent to prison for 2-5 years and fined in crores (or additional 5 year terms), others will think 10 times before doing rubbish work.
If BESCOM officials are sent to prison for negligence or BWSSB workers for open manholes etc, we’ll start saving lives within couple of years.
It is not difficult to change our laws, but we elect law makers on party lines – not on ability. :-(
Mr. Ahmadi note this point. It is not just the tempo driver who is liable for punishment if some injury/fatality occured, Following are also liable:
The Owner of the material, for transporting unsecured rods in unsafe manner. He should have hired a long bodied vehicle suitable for transporting in stead of saving money and thereby playing with the lives of the people.
The owner of the Vehicle for allowing his vehicle to be used for unsafe and unprofessional transport.
After having said that, the photo shows that the cleaner/driver is again pushing the rods back into the short bodied tempo, which should not have been permitted to carry high length rods to start with. I am sure that the ignorant policeman would have collected his maamool and allowed the tempo to go to endanger the lives of commuters further down the road.
While talking about the ignorance of traffic police department, let me point out a regular and dangerous act of traffic hazard that happens routinely on JC Road. Have you ever seen a vehicle with Two large and heavy tires driven by a single man. This vehicle need no license plate and its driver needs no licence from our learned transport department. If you are wondering, this is about transport practice of truck and tractor tires followed by shops on JC Road. They send their worker who pushes and rolls two big (truck) tires each with one hand. If his hand slips once, the loose tires may cause a chain of accidents and which can be fatal too. Nobody cares ever in this land of ours.
Harkol,
I beg to disagree on your observation on law makers.
There is often this misconception that we have poor law makers and hence we have all these problems. Poor politics is symptom of bad governance and not other way.
Poor judiciary is root cause of all the problem. Let me explain why.
If a routine case takes more than a life time in court people stop going to court. Yet disputes arise and there is a demand for dispute resolution and that is when people start supporting strong arm rogues.
While in India, my family had a land dispute among relatives. One side which had possession of land went to court- rational here was it will take a life time before this case ever comes up for hearing in court.. we can enjoy the possession of land for our life time with no interruption. Other side hired local goon to threaten the first side… Rational here.. they need a faster justice and hence they saw criminals as dispute resolution mechanism.
Once the goons get to decide disputes.. they fill a need in society and become entrenched as fifth arm of our democracy. And that is where the problem starts.. In India problem has become so much that .. executive as well as legislative itself wants services of goons and that is why we have dubious stat that one in every six of our MPs is career criminal.
Added to this is supreme nonchalance of our judges who think they are entitled to live in ivory towers. They have not bothered about delivering real justice but instead want to be a power center on their own. It is this “nobody can tell me what I am supposed to do” attitude of judges that has resulted in frivolous contempt of court orders, frequent observations that PILs are a nuisance.
Judges have become extra constitutional when they subverted constitution to push their own agendas..
They do not want to declare assets.. They want 70 day holiday!!! All this is nothing but deep seated corruption and feeling of entitlement.
Judges had a responsibility to develop tort law in India to accelerate legal process. Instead our CJIs think that working in system is what they should be doing..
Poor law makers and poor executive are a symptom of poor judiciary.
Judiciary is supposed to uphold the law and when that is done people do not go to goons and politics will become decriminalized and executive will become more careful when they know that their recklessness can bite them badly..
I want Indians to think in systematic way and not give in to vague solutions that let us blame politicians for our ill.
System thinking illustrates root cause is poor judiciary. Is it possible to fix the judiciary?
I am firm believer of tipping points. A small change can provide amplified results.
The small change that is required is that legislative has to pass a law that every case in every court needs to decided within two years time. Punishment should be severe on the judge who breaks this.. Third year and you are out!! No need for impeachment.. Just dismiss the judge from service.
Like American constitution things can be simple but effective. Let this be our most simple solution for getting rid of India of its ills.
Third year and you are out!!!
If we have this strict time line we remove the criminal power centers in our life.
Judges may declare that with all the backlog it is impossible give the best justice.. I guess definition of best justice by judges is flawed if it takes 25 years.. Justice delayed is justice denied. So let us not spend time in arguing how more time will give a better justice. More the time.. less will be justice because of death of witness, destruction of evidence, transfer of judges and so on.
Indian judiciary has this aversion to working. So they will come out with umpteen reasons why they can not deliver justice within two years.. If they stick to their guns make changes to the law and introduce alternated dispute resolution mechanism as suggested by Justice Krishna Aiyyar.
And start thinking seriously on how we can get to improve our judiciary.. there may be other more effective solutions than I am proposing. You are welcome to improve upon what I suggest.
But once again poor politics is symptom of poor judiciary.. Don’t you think so??