Yet another major festival, yet another stampede. 18 lives were lost in a stampede at a Durga Puja festival in Kolkata, and the story sounds very familiar. An inquiry has been ordered, an FIR registered, heads will roll, the organisers have been arrested, and compensation announced for the family of the deceased and those injured. But it’s a situation that plays out time and again at successive festivals in the country and points to only one thing -- no lessons have been learnt, and nobody really cares enough to do anything about it.
In the latest case, it is believed that an announcement made on the public address system that the pandal was about to collapse on account of the light showers that took place was what triggered the panic and subsequent stampede. Narrow exits complicated the matter, which ultimately led to the deaths of many women and children.
There comes a point when the government needs to start owning up to the fact that stampede deaths are not merely a problem of poor arrangements, overcrowding and narrow exits. It’s also a mentality that needs to be nurtured -- a mentality that is honed over repeated drills such as fire safety drills, evacuation drills and disaster response. Because when the human mind is conditioned on how to respond in the face of danger, the likelihood of panic dramatically drops.
This is not merely a situational response to be honed by people in large gatherings. The absence of such mentality can be seen on the streets of everyday India, where vehicles cluster and crowd around narrow road exits, try to overtake each other when moving in a single disciplined lane, and try to ensure that traffic moves faster at bus ticket counters or even railway stations and train platforms.
It is simply a reaction to lack of law enforcement. When those who rush ahead are not penalised -- be it in traffic or at a large gathering -- and are instead allowed to gain an unfair advantage on account of such rushing, then others too follow suit, leaving everyone at a mutual disadvantage and crowding resulting in the whole process of exit taking longer than it should.
Successive governments have quite conveniently abdicated their responsibility of penalising the lawbreakers who first trigger such chaos -- be it organisers who don’t follow crowd control and management systems, individuals who want to trigger chaos by trying to push their way through, thus aggravating the overcrowding and rush and those tasked with planning and overseeing the movement of people.
The State government and its machinery come to life only after a tragedy has taken place. Those who create conditions for a tragedy across hundreds of religious and Puja pandals, but somehow get away with it since lives are not lost, face almost no consequences.
It is this mentality of unaccountability and lack of oversight that will lead to a recurrence of tragedies unless those in charge of the State take their real jobs seriously. As things stand, they believe that their only job is to hand out contracts, build stuff and make some money along the way. Governance gets left by the wayside. It’s time someone steps up, takes a look at the bigger picture and decides to correct course.
