Just as I was harping in one of my previous blogs, how one news or mishap in India eclipses the previous one. Calcutta fire got eclipsed by Lokpal, and the theatrical manner in which a insincere government skillfully contrived a midnight adjournment. Just before the tale of this gory Calcutta hospital asphyxiation could possibly get etched on public memory, there were about 65 deaths from the Thane Cyclone. Then came the mother of all, the death of 14 children in a bus accident in Ambala. Each story was more sordid than the previous one, and did the work of the making the previous one look small and incidental. And some stupidly eternal optimists call this moving on. The country moves on. Of course it does, as an apathetic people we don’t stop to fret.
There are some people like me, who clamor indefatigably that corruption is not unique to India and go to any extreme to not make their country look so stupid in the eyes of the world, trying also to in some measure banish the already so prevalent fatalism in the people. There are also some like me, who keep drawing from history tales of our past glory and how we are just poised to realize it once again. But each time I read about an accident like the one involving school kids of Ambala, I get too despondent to not eschew my trademark optimism.
It is easy to blame the system, but who makes the system. When we are supposed to elect a city counsellor, his commitment to work and country, his experience are last things that we see in the resume of the person.
As a people, we are so obsessed with authority figures, that we find it extremely difficult to question much less challenge. Did the parents of the children of the Ambala Bus accident not know the type of safety conditions in which there kids were being ferried to and fro from school. If they did not, they are fools and if they did, how many questioned the bus owner or the school. How many wrote to the school about the apparent cavalier manner that killed their loved ones. If in an exceptional case a maverick parent will question, the rest will side with the authority-figure who in this case could well be the driver of the bus or the school transport coordinator.
Making too much fuss about a non-issue, is the usual refrain of the pacifist Indian, but when tragedy befalls, he resorts to chest beating and wailing, but then moves on. He actually moves on another tragedy.
Why is the SP Traffic not suspended? Why is the counsellor and mayor booed out? Why is the principal of the school not arrested? Because the people don’t want it. Why is the resignation of the transport minister not demanded? If they would, they will participate in the process and make this land less hostile to normal living.
Each time there is an accident involving a school bus, the media goes hysterical about the Supreme Court guidelines not being implemented by the school. But what are the Supreme court guidelines? They are not about preventing an accident? They are a hotch potch of lay man thinking.
There is no training school for drivers. Almost anyone can obtain a license sitting at home. Brokers specialize in such service at door step.
I live in the so called millennium city of Gurgaon, where some office buildings are indeed samples architectural excellence, but the roads don’t have names, they are not laned, footpaths don’t exist, the pot holes on the roads emerge no sooner the roads have been completed, red lights don’t work, even big car owning educated people don’t respect even simple traffic rules.
In most countries the obtention of a driving license is so difficult, and one failure results in the date of grant being delayed by 3 months at least.
We are casual but who suffers. Not the children who leave the world. They are our children and we suffer. When would we get serious about our societal obligations, our duties toward our nation, which included demanding good governance? To me this question is best left unanswered by the self serving Indian.
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