Opinions and Editorials

The duplicity of a saffron brigade – By Ram Puniyani (Dec 31, 2011, Tehelka)

This year was very eventful as far as the political arena is concerned. Anna Hazare’s movement, the government trying to bring in FDI in retail, a Bill for rationalisation of fuel price and the deletion of Ramanujam’s essay in the University text were few of these. In many of the Bills related to FDI and the rest, which were brought up for discussion in parliament, BJP chose to oppose bills that UPA wanted to pass. It is intriguing, why a party (BJP), which stood for the FDI during its days in power, opposed it now? Logically such policies should have gladdened the hearts of BJP as it was an unfulfilled dream of the NDA. The shrewdest move on BJP’s part was its full hearted support to the Anna Hazare movement and tread cautiously in the parliament. It is taking full advantage of Anna’s anti-Congress stance while engaging with the Bill in the parliament. This forked tongue attitude of BJP is part of its character. BJP works toward building its electorate, either r with the RSS or on its behalf. It has to come to power by all means, fair or foul, to pave the way for an RSS agenda of Hindu nation. Its core agenda is totally opposed to the concept of democratic norms prevalent in the country today. Inherently, the BJP had been totally opposed to the state intervention in the economic matters, despite the fact that the public sector was the basic essentiality for India, as private capital was not substantial in quantum at that time to lay the foundation of economic growth.

The BJP and its predecessor the Bhartiya Jan Sangh had been sounding clear opposition of state’ role in these matters. Now since UPA is also following many policies, which BJP wanted to implement, irks BJP around and changes its stance. It does smack of opportunism and it seems that what dictates its public stand most of the times are the electoral contingencies of the time. If it supports the government on these issues it would be sound to toe the government line and would lose the electoral advantage in the coming elections. Apart from the turnaround in the economic policies, its shrewd managers have taken a very ambivalent stand on Anna’s draft after a façade of totally upholding Anna as the person, his movement and his idea of the Bill as the desirable one. As such BJP has a long tradition in these matters of opportunism. It exploded the bomb in 1998, and tilted the foreign policy supporting the US. But when in opposition it again turned around and took contrary positions.

If we go back, we see the same ‘clever’ stance in the matters of the Mandal commission implementation. It did not have the courage to speak against the Mandal commission, to which it was deeply opposed, as that would have alienated it from a large section of voters. So to skirt around the issue, it went in for the Rath Yatra, bypassed the Mandal issue and tried to give confusing signals to the electorate. As a culmination of the Rath Yatra, Ram Janmabhoomi movement, it went on to undertake the criminal act of the Babri Masjid demolition. The BJP asserted that Babri Masjid is a blot on the Hindu India. Let’s note that while taking the oath, it swears by the Indian constitution, a secular India, while operating on a political chess board; it keeps Hindu India as the reference point. This demolition brought it to the seat of power in the centre.

After grabbing power, being in the government it did not build the temple for which it had demolished the masjid and had unleashed the violence that followed. When in opposition it promises to build the temple, when in power it finds excuses and wriggles out of the commitment on which it came to power. So what is the real BJP? Is it for the principles of a particular type or is it a party of Hindu Rashtra, using the democratic space merely to enhance its electoral power? The dilemma of BJP is that it is a political party operating in the electoral arena, in the democratic space, but at the same time to work for abolition of democratic space when in power. So far, it could not come to power without its non-Hindutva allies. So it has used the opportunity of being in power to communalise the education and state apparatus, to give more opportunities for the RSS progeny (VHP, Bajrang Dal, ABVP, Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram to infiltrate into the state apparatus).

The duplicity of BJP has a deeper agenda. It is not just a party of the right wing. It is a party of ‘religious right wing’. The right wing parties aim at the status quo in the society. The religious right wing parties not only aim to maintain status quo but go further and try to reverse the process of social change which has taken place due to the liberal space. The right wing parties may be principled, however wrong those principles may be, while the religious right wing groups are totally bereft of any qualms about principles as they are out to use the democratic space for the bringing in of the fundamentalist regime over a period of time.

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main51.asp?filename=Ws311211duplicity.asp

SEE ALSO:

• Communal riots 2011 – By Asghar Ali Engineer (Dec 30, 2011, Twocircles.net)
  http://twocircles.net/2011dec30/communal_riots_2011.html

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Not in the picture – By Rajdeep Sardesai (Dec 29, 2011, Hindustan Times)

Those who live by the media are often slain by it. At the 2011 CNN-IBN Indian of the Year awards, Anna Hazare candidly admitted that it was the media which was responsible for his rise from a regional figure in Maharashtra into a national icon. “If your cameras had not followed me everywhere, who would know me?” was the activist’s honest response. Today, the same media reports on Hazare’s flop show in Mumbai, on how an anti-corruption stir has become an anti-Congress agitation and how Hazare’s fasts amount to coercive blackmail. Last week, Mani Shankar Aiyar, the ruling class’s last iconoclast, referred to Anna as a “Frankenstein monster”, mirroring the views of several politicians who are convinced that Hazare is a media creation threatening parliamentary democracy. But was the media hype really responsible for Hazare’s larger-than-life image?

There is little doubt that over the last nine months, Hazare’s advisers used the media quite brilliantly. Prime time press conferences, made for TV spectacles, social networking campaigns: Hazare did benefit from saturated media coverage. Yes, some of it was high-pitched, and yes, some journalists did become Hazare’s cheerleaders. But to see Hazare as purely a media phenomenon would be a misreading of the mood on the street. Crowds were attracted to Hazare not because the TV cameras were there, but because he appeared the antithesis of a morally bankrupt political leadership beset with a series of scams. Rewind to April when Hazare first descended on the national capital. Just before the first fast in Jantar Mantar, Hazare addressed a press conference at the Press Club. The attendance was thin, and Anna remained at best an object of curiosity for the national media.

Yet, even before the fast could really take off, Union minister Sharad Pawar resigned from the group of ministers on the lokpal, thereby almost vindicating Hazare’s claim that a “corrupt” Pawar could not be on an anti-corruption law panel. Two days later, Hazare’s cause was further bolstered when the government issued a formal notification in the official gazette, setting up a joint drafting committee that would discuss and draft a strong Lokpal Bill. The members of the committee would be a 50-50 divide of government ministers and a unique concept called ‘Team Anna’. Till April 9, Hazare was just another voice in the ongoing debate over an anti-corruption law. The singular act of agreeing to formally negotiate with his appointees on the lokpal automatically legitimised him and his ‘team’ as the sole spokespersons for ‘civil society’. Suddenly, respected figures like Aruna Roy, Jaiprakash Narayan (of Loksatta) and a number of anti-corruption activists who had also worked hard on the lokpal legislation were confined to the margins. Did the media ask the government to make Team Anna the exclusive interlocutors of civil society, or was this a reflection of a government mindset eager to appease all shades of NGOs and their fellow-travellers? To compound the political error, all nominees on the government side were Congress ministers, effectively making the negotiations a Congress versus Team Anna exercise rather than a wider, more inclusive process.

If April 9 was a bad mistake, what followed on June 5 was another blunder. The Delhi police’s midnight crackdown to end Baba Ramdev’s fast against black money came barely 72 hours after four senior ministers had rushed to the airport to receive the yoga guru. Treating Ramdev almost like a visiting head of State one moment, then as a criminal the very next, was a flip-flop of the worst kind that further discredited the government. The third, and perhaps the most serious, error came on August 16 when the Delhi police arrested Hazare as he prepared for a second fast. By first denying him access to the fast venue, and then sending him to judicial custody, the government ensured Hazare’s transformation from anti-corruption crusader to martyred messiah. During Hazare’s fast in April, a huge Bharat Mata poster had formed the backdrop, with Baba Ramdev sharing stage space and Art of Living guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s supporters providing vocal support. By August, when Hazare fasted at Ramlila Maidan, the Bharat Mata poster had been replaced by a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi, Ramdev had disappeared, and even Sri Sri was a peripheral presence.

Moreover, the arrest provided the trigger for thousands to take to the streets: this was no longer about a lokpal or an anti-corruption law which most Indians knew little about, but an expression of general disaffection with a system that was seen to be arrogant and corrupt. Hazare, as the self-sacrificing ‘fakir’ like figure was the perfect mascot for the angry, anonymous Indian. The ‘I am Anna’ caps and T-shirts on sale marked the complete ‘personalisation’ of the movement: the journey from an environmentalist at Ralegan Siddhi to folk hero at Ram Lila was done. Hazare’s triumph appeared complete when Parliament, in a desperate bid to end his fast, passed a hurried ‘sense of the House’ resolution on the Lokpal Bill. So again the question: did the media push the government to arrest Hazare, or was this also the irrational act of an establishment in panic mode? In the end, both the State and Team Anna mistook the medium for the message. Team Anna saw the frenzied coverage as its main weapon, forgetting that democratic politics is not a repetitive television serial, but a tortuous process of negotiation and conciliation. The State, on the other hand, failed to recognise that cacophony will be part of a media environment in which there are more than 350 news channels and several hundred OB vans across India. The media will be a loudspeaker of grievances, not just of Team Anna, but of many other protest movements in the future. Strong leaders will not be swayed by the noise, a wise civil society will seek legitimacy beyond the camera lens.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print/788847.aspx

SEE ALSO:

• A lost battle? – By R.K. Raghavan (Dec 31, 2011, Frontline)
  http://www.flonnet.com/fl2827/stories/20120113282711800.htm
• ‘No political party wants an independent, strong Lokpal’ – Prashant Bhushan with Kunal Majumder (Dec 31, 2011, Tehelka)
  http://www.tehelka.com/story_main51.asp?filename=Ne311211INCOLDBLOOD.asp
• A pill to cure all ill? – Editorial (Dec 10, 2011, Hindustan Times)
  http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print/781054.aspx

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Bending towards justice – By Tanweer Alam (Dec 29, 2011, Indian Express)

The late Osho was a fine interpreter of social absurdities that destroyed human happiness. At the height of one of the early waves of pro-and anti-reservation stirs in Gujarat he told a mass of his ochre-robed disciples that the argument against reservation was not fair. In his characteristic off-hand way, he said: “You tie somebody’s hand and feet for 5,000 years and ask him to compete in a race against people who have been practising on a daily basis.” Those observations provide some clarity on the contentious issue of reservations for Muslims: If Muslims have fallen to the bottom of the heap, they need to be pulled out of it before they can be able to run with the others, even though nobody had fettered them. There is a broad consensus that reservation would help. However, there is a widespread sense of scepticism about the announcement coming too close to UP elections.

The government has announced a sub-quota of 4.5 per cent for minorities within the existing 27 per cent quota for OBCs in Central jobs and admission to Central educational institutions. Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists and Zoroastrians are notified as minority communities under Section 2(c) of the National Commission for Minorities Act, 1992. This, hopefully, should enable the least developed castes among Muslims to get a foothold and extricate themselves from extreme deprivation. This is being seen as a first, small step towards a more equitable future. Reservation to Muslims is not a new idea, nor is it unconstitutional. Its opponents are saying it is ultra-vires to the Constitution as no reservation is allowed on the basis of religion. However, in the states where they have got reservation over the years, they have got it on the basis of socio-economic backwardness. Already there are various quanta of quota for backward Muslims in different states. In Kerala, it is 12 per cent; Tamil Nadu, 3.5 per cent; Karnataka, 4 per cent; Andhra Pradesh, 4 per cent; West Bengal, 10 per cent and Bihar 5 per cent.

Dr. Abusaleh Shariff, economist and principal author of the Sachar committee report, who also has a legal background, cites the Constitution to say: “There is no bar on state action to uplift the weak on the basis of religion”. Prof. Faizan Mustafa, vice-chancellor of the National Law University, Bhubaneswar, whose opinion on legal and constitutional issues is taken seriously, is also sure that reservation for Muslims does not violate any constitutional provision. To validate the point that such reservation is in consonance with constitutional provisions, he quotes Article 15 of the Constitution, which says, “The State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them”. The reservation for OBC Muslims is not going to be made on the basis of religion, but backwardness, and is a step towards justice to backward minorities.

Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam, chairman of the Delhi-based Institute of Objective Studies says that stalwarts like Ballabh Bhai Patel and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had assured Muslims that their interests would be taken into account and accommodated in the days ahead. “During the formative years of the republic, when the wounds of Partition were still fresh, the two leaders had advised Indian Muslims to forego reservation for sometime, which the Muslims did,” says Dr Alam. “The two stalwarts had clearly assured our elders that they should trust the generosity of the Hindus and India,” to give them reservation when the moment came. “That moment has come,” says Dr Alam. While the general feeling among the Muslims is that reservation is an idea whose time has come, there are differences on the details.

Law professor and former chairman of the National Commission for Minorities, Prof. Tahir Mahmood says there is no legal problem with a quota within a quota . He was a member of the Ranganath Mishra Commission that recommended a 15 per cent quota for minorities and 10 per cent for Muslims. The Ranganath Mishra Commission came in the wake of the Sachar committee report that limited itself to gauging the extent of Muslim backwardness. The Congress party’s 2009 election manifesto had envisaged and promised reservation for Muslims on the model of southern states. The manifesto read: “The Indian National Congress has pioneered reservation for the minorities in Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh in government employment and education on the basis of their social and economic backwardness. We are committed (ourselves) to adopting this policy at the national level”. In that sense, this announcement of a quota is a logical extension of past initiative.

http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/893156/

SEE ALSO:

• What’s Ailing RTI? – By Shonali Ghosal (Dec 24, 2011, Tehelka)
  http://tehelka.com/story_main51.asp?filename=Ne241211Ailing.asp
• Castes of mind – By Sunil Jain (Dec 30, 2011, Indian Express)
  http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/893639/

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It’s All About the Muslim Vote – By Margherita Stancati (Dec 21, 2011, Wall Street Journal)

Once upon a time, state elections in Uttar Pradesh were mainly about the Dalit vote. Today, Muslims are getting a fair share of wooing, too. Just take a look at the full-page ad chief minister Kumari Mayawati’s state government published in the Times of India on Tuesday: “What the previous governments could not do during the last 40 years, the present govt. has done much more in the last four years for the welfare of the Muslim Community,” said the ad, aimed at showing off what her government has done for the “progress and prosperity” of Muslims.

The ad, described as a “brief” account of what Ms. Mayawati’s government has done for Muslims, goes on to list 87 examples, one of which is no communal riots under her watch – a thinly-veiled stab at the Congress party and at the Bharatiya Janata Party, which have less of a clean record on this front. The publicity campaign comes as the election race in India’s most-populous state is heating up. In Uttar Pradesh, Muslims represent around 18% of its roughly 200 million people and are a precious electoral prize. All parties are now courting the Muslim vote. Ms. Mayawati is one of many politicians who recently spoke in favor of expanding the country’s affirmative-action program to include more Muslims.

While Muslims are outside the traditional Hindu caste system, they usually fall among India’s underclass. Along with Dalits, who are traditionally at the bottom of India’s caste pyramid, tribal people and other “backward” groups, Muslims lag behind other classes. As such, these groups are entitled to 27% of central-government jobs and university admissions. Since the Indian constitution does not allow privileges to be granted on religious grounds, the criteria for inclusion among “backward” classes focuses on groups’ socioeconomic standing. Setting aside a quota for Muslims specifically would thus require a constitutional amendment.

Ms. Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party, which is supported by a large minority vote, isn’t the only one pitching for the Muslim vote. The chief minister’s recent overture to the state’s Muslim electorate comes largely in response to Congress’s proposal to introduce a quota specifically for Muslims. It is still unclear whether this would be earmarked from the broader quota set aside for backward classes or whether it would be separate. The Muslim quota – which some reports say could entitle Muslims to 6% of government jobs and university places – is largely aimed at luring the community’s vote ahead of the 2012 elections in UP, political analysts say. With this move, Congress is likely to gain more ground among the state’s Muslim electorate than its political rivals, said Rekha Saxena, associate professor of political science at Delhi University. “Congress is going to be the biggest beneficiary of this,” said Ms. Saxena, with reference to the proposed Muslim quota.

It could help Congress recover some of the support it lost from Muslims after 1992, when Hindu extremists demolished the Babri Mosque, which was located in UP. India’s central government, led by Congress, has been blamed for not having done enough to prevent the incident. Ms. Saxena expects the Muslim vote to be split between Congress and the regional Samajwadi Party, which a recent poll showed is likely to win more seats at the upcoming assembly elections than any other single party. The SP, too, has hinted it would favor a Muslim quota. Even the Hindu nationalist BJP is hoping for a slice of the Muslim electoral pie. In early November, a senior BJP official in the state said the party was also committed to supporting a quota for Muslims. This is a bit of a long shot, but it may help Muslims dislike the BJP a little bit less.

http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2011/12/21/its-all-about-the-muslim-vote/

SEE ALSO:

• Muslims key for Congress in UP – By Aziz A. Mubaraki (Dec 22, 2011, Twocircles.net)
  http://twocircles.net/2011dec22/muslims_key_congress.html

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Legitimising an inhumane discourse – By Prabhat Patnaik (Dec 27, 2011, The Hindu)

The UPA government mercifully has decided to keep in abeyance its decision to allow 51 per cent foreign equity in multi-brand retail. What is disturbing however is the argument with which it sought to justify its earlier decision, which represents a shift towards a palpably inhumane discourse in matters of economic policy. One must protest against this shift before it becomes “acceptable.” The official argument stated that FDI in multi-brand retail would benefit “consumers” (whoever they are), and peasants and small producers from whom the retail MNCs would procure supplies. Let us for a moment accept these arguments, notwithstanding their vacuity (exposed by C.P. Chandrasekhar in The Hindu, Nov. 30). Nobody however has claimed that the induction of retail MNCs will not harm the small retailers. Even the government’s own argument that confining retail MNCs to cities with more than ten lakh people will limit the damage to petty retailers, actually concedes that such damage will occur. There is, of course, an element of dishonesty involved in this argument: since it is not worth MNCs’ while to set up shops in villages, what is claimed as a restriction upon them conforms precisely to what they want anyway; but the argument itself vindicates the critics. And since the bulk of employment in petty retail at present is in urban areas, the fact that FDI in retail will cause substantial damage to the livelihoods of vast numbers of people is indubitable. Promoting it therefore is based on the presumption that distress for them should be acceptable because of the benefits that would accrue to other sections of society.

This argument however is dangerously violative of a humane discourse. It is analogous to saying that since the processing of minerals will bring benefits, by way of availability of manufactured goods, to some sections of society, the distress caused to the tribal population which has to be uprooted for obtaining the minerals should be of no concern. And it is exactly identical to the argument put forward in the colonial context that since imported manufactured goods were of superior quality and benefited the consumers (who would not have bought them otherwise), among whom were numerous peasants, the fact that they destroyed the livelihoods of millions of artisans and weavers, should not be held against the policy that freely allowed such imports. In fact the argument for FDI in retail is a precise recreation of the discourse of colonialism. It is instructive here to recollect the rhetorical question that Gandhiji had asked: If “my brother” the weaver is out of work because of imported cloth, then how can I be better off by it? The humaneness of this discourse was the foundation upon which our anti-colonial struggle was built, and we came into being as a nation. The current official discourse constitutes a rejection of it. Interestingly, the current official position is antithetical not only to the humane discourse that Gandhiji was propounding, which postulated that no section of the population should consider itself better off by some policy if certain other sections belonging to the non-affluent were pushed into greater distress by it, but also to what even conventional economic theorising suggests.

Vilfredo Pareto, the Italian philosopher-economist, had suggested a criterion for comparing alternative states of society, which has acquired wide currency in economics. According to it, between social states A and B, if there are some persons who are better off, and nobody is worse off, in A compared to B, then A is socially preferable. On the other hand, if some persons are worse off in A compared to B while others are better off then we cannot say that A is to be preferred to B. Taking A to be the social state where MNCs are operating in retail, it clearly follows that we cannot consider their operation to be socially preferable to a state where they are not operating. The Pareto criterion has major lacunae, the most obvious being that it flies in the face of egalitarianism. If the poor continue to remain as poor in A as they were in B but the rich become much richer, then A is socially preferable to B according to Pareto despite the increased inequality. Not many would accept this view: egalitarianism may override Pareto, but not the converse. But in the case under discussion, if we introduce egalitarian considerations in addition to Pareto, then the argument against MNCs in retail gets further strengthened. Not only will their operation, no matter whether it benefits some sections of society, hurt others, but those hurt will include a substantial number of the poor. Both Pareto and egalitarianism therefore point in the same direction, namely, jettisoning the move to introduce FDI in retail. What is intriguing is that a government headed by an economist should have ignored this basic bread-and-butter economics.

Even if we keep egalitarianism aside, just to pass the Pareto test, the least that the proposed policy should have provided for is a system of compensations, effected through the government budget, for those who stand to lose by it, to be paid for by those who stand to gain from it. But then it may be asked: who exactly stands to gain from it? The government’s answer to this question is palpably absurd. The insertion of some gigantic MNCs which would act as oligopsonists vis-à-vis the sellers of produce, consisting of a set of peasants and petty producers, and as oligopolists vis-à-vis the buyers, consisting again of a set of relatively small consumers, is bound to act to the detriment of both these sets. International experience, contrary to the claims of the Central government, testifies to this. But let us for the moment accept for argument’s sake the possibility that a large number of people may gain from this move. Of one thing however we can be absolutely certain, namely that the MNCs will gain from it. It stands to reason therefore that the MNCs should be asked to pay for compensating the petty retailers who will lose from their entry, and that they in turn can recoup this by charging whoever gains from their entry. (And if this makes transactions with them unattractive for buyers or sellers, then so much the better, for it will then serve to prevent the supplanting of petty retailers). For the introduction of FDI in retail to be at all a credible measure for consideration, it is essential therefore that it should be accompanied by a system of compensations for the losers, for example in the form of an Income Guarantee Scheme for the petty retailers. Even with such a system of compensations, FDI in retail can still be objected to on grounds of violating egalitarianism; but without such a system it is simply not worth considering at all. And if such a system of compensations is considered infeasible on administrative or any other grounds, then too it follows that FDI in retail is not worth considering at all.

The process of destruction of petty business by capitalist enterprises was referred to by Marx as “primitive accumulation of capital.” While Marx had seen primitive accumulation as occurring at the beginning of capitalism, it obviously characterises the entire history of capitalism which is marked by violence and predatoriness. But unleashing a process of primitive accumulation of capital, such as what FDI in retail amounts to, is not only violative of humaneness, but also undermines both democracy and the foundations of our nationhood. Having a system of compensations, say in the form of an Income Guarantee for petty retailers, is one way of preventing primitive accumulation of capital. It still does not make FDI in retail acceptable; but it makes it minimally worthy of being placed on the table for discussion. What is frightening about the current situation is the way measures which are not even minimally worthy of discussion and which entail primitive accumulation of capital, are being imposed upon society through executive fiat. And, to justify this, as many have pointed out, one section of the poor is being spuriously projected as constituting gainers, so that the distress caused to another section can be conveniently overlooked.

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article2750054.ece

SEE ALSO:

• Looking back – By Bhaskar Ghose (Dec 31, 2011, Frontline)
  http://www.flonnet.com/fl2827/stories/20120113282708300.htm

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Fiery trap – By Suhrid Sankar Chattopadhyay (Dec 31, 2011, Frontline)

Death came stealing in the wee hours of December 9 to AMRI Hospitals, Dhakuria, a prestigious private hospital in south Kolkata, and claimed more than 90 lives in a major fire disaster. There were 164 patients in the annexe building of the hospital when a fire broke out in its upper basement. The toxic smoke rose rapidly up the six-storeyed building. As the windows of the centrally air-conditioned building were sealed, there was no exit for the smoke to escape. This left the inmates completely helpless. Local youth, alerted by the cries and desperate signals from patients, tried to help, but they were turned away by hospital staff who claimed that the situation was under control. It was a disaster that was precipitated by the negligence and callousness of the hospital authorities. The fire apparently broke out a little before 3-00 a.m., but the Fire Department was alerted only at 4-10 a.m., and that, too, by a relative of one of those trapped in the building. According to police sources, hospital staff wasted more than 90 precious minutes by trying to douse the fire on their own. By then thick smoke had spread, killing trapped invalids and convalescents. The staff, it appears, were reluctant to call the fire brigade immediately because in an earlier instance an employee of the hospital had been suspended for calling the fire brigade without authorisation from the higher authorities when a minor fire broke out in the hospital precincts. Police sources said that the higher authorities of the hospital had been alerted by the staff long before the fire services were called. “There was complete violation of all fire safety norms in the building,” said D.P. Biswas, Additional Director General, Fire Services. The basement, which was meant for car parking, was used for various purposes, including housing a pharmacy, a biomedical department and a storeroom. According to the preliminary report prepared by the Fire Department, combustible materials kept in the basement prolonged the fire and added to the toxicity of the smoke.

Subsequent investigations showed that a disaster of this scale could have been averted had a mandatory precaution been followed and a vertical fire stop installed in the building. In centrally air-conditioned buildings, the vertical fire stop seals off the maintenance shaft at every other floor to prevent air from passing through and spreading to the other floors. According to Damyanti Sen, Joint Commissioner (Crime) of the Kolkata Police, smoke and fumes went up the shaft to the upper floors as these vertical stops were not in place. Moreover, the fire also prompted the authorities to switch off the mains, which stopped the air-conditioning. Lack of air circulation in the sealed building hastened the death of those inside. Police sources also suspect that the smoke alarms in the hospital had been switched off; it is not known why. Investigations have revealed what the police called “active omission” on the part of the hospital authorities. On September 5, the hospital had given an undertaking to the Fire Department that hazardous materials would be removed from the basement. “We have found that in a board meeting held sometime in November, after the hospital had given an undertaking to the Fire Department, a resolution was taken to look into the issue of safety measures,” said Damyanti Sen. However, the issue of safety continued to remain ignored. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who holds the Health portfolio, said, “It is a criminal offence. It is a crime.” The police arrested seven directors who were allegedly involved in the day-to-day functioning of the hospital: Shrachi Group chairman S.K. Todi, Shrachi director Ravi Todi, Emami vice-chairman R.S. Goenka and Emami directors Prashant Goenka and Manish Goenka, AMRI director R.S. Agarwal and its executive director Dayanand Agarwal. S. Upadhyay, senior vice-president and the hospital’s safety committee chairperson, and Sanjib Pal, administrative officer, have also been arrested. Mamata Banerjee cancelled the hospital’s trade licence. The patients in the other buildings were shifted to various other hospitals.

The death toll would have been lower had the authorities and the hospital security staff not refused the aid volunteered by the youth of the nearby slum who came rushing to the hospital the moment they heard of the fire. “My friends and I rushed to the hospital around 3-00 a.m. There were people screaming inside and flashing the light on their mobile phones and banging desperately on the windows, signalling for help,” Biswajit Chakraborty, a local resident, told Frontline. He and four other youth then approached the security guards, only to be turned away. “Meanwhile the screams from inside were getting louder and it was impossible for us to remain mute spectators. So we climbed up the building from the back side with bamboo ladders,” said Biswajit. Risking their own lives, they saved five people. One of those who came forward to help, Shankar Maity, had to be hospitalised soon after, having inhaled the deadly fumes. “It was terrifying inside. It was pitch dark with suffocating smoke everywhere, and we could see people lying around and heard others gasping from unseen corners,” said Biswajit. He said many more lives could have been saved had more youth from the neighbourhood been allowed to enter the building. Biswajit, a construction worker, is at present unemployed.

Biswajit’s words are borne out by 77-year-old Anjali Mitra, a patient on the third floor of the hospital and one of the survivors. “It was the people from the slums who saved me and many others. We received no help from the hospital staff,” she told Frontline. She said that when the local people told the trapped victims that they were not being allowed to come in, some of the patients pleaded with them to “enter forcibly”. “As we were choking, the hospital staff kept telling us not to worry and that everything was under control; at the same time we could hear screams of the people from the floors below,” she said. She and the other patients on her floor managed to break one of the thick glass windows, and it was perhaps that little opening which kept them alive. It was past 4 a.m. when the local rescuers carried her down to safety. Among those who died that day were two nurses, Remya Rajappan and P.K. Vinita, who hailed from Kerala. They lost their lives while saving eight patients in the women’s ward. All other staff members, curiously, were unscathed in the tragedy. Most of them, according to reports, fled the scene as soon as they sensed danger. The scene outside the hospital was also traumatic. The trapped patients had called their near and dear ones on their mobile phones and hundreds of them had gathered in the narrow lane leading to the hospital. They were helpless as they could not get in or get any information on those inside. One by one, their phone calls to those inside went unanswered, and their plea to evacuate the patients fell on deaf ears.

The police estimated that more than 3,000 people had gathered outside AMRI that morning. Their apprehension turned to grief and anger as the bodies began to be brought out. People scrambled among the corpses to look for their loved ones. Among those frantically searching was Paritosh Sen from Tripura, whose brother Santosh had been admitted in the hospital. Nine days after the incident, on December 18, Sen had still not traced his brother. As the morning progressed, the situation turned more and more chaotic until the Chief Minister herself arrived on the scene and took charge of crowd control. The tragic irony is that many of the victims had fought off serious aliments and were on their way to recovery. Krishna Chakraborty, 62, had undergone a successful brain operation and had practically recovered when the accident claimed her life. “I had spoken to my mother just the day before and she was fine, and then this happened,” said her son Bhaskar Chakraborty. Then there were those who had come with very minor problems. “Criminal negligence” turned an institution designed to save lives into one that destroyed lives instead.

http://www.flonnet.com/fl2827/stories/20120113282704100.htm

SEE ALSO:

• Playing with Lives – Editorial (Dec 31, 2011, Economic & Political Weekly)
  http://epw.in/epw/uploads/articles/16929.pdf

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