Opinion Why have we become so callous?

Limbless,but not hopeless,Samir has been leading a more active life after the tragedy than before. Supported by artificial legs,he has discovered an altogether new meaning and purpose in life—he has chosen to be an indefatigable activist for the cause of preventing the colossal loss of lives on Mumbai’s railway tracks. With missionary zeal,he and fellow activist Bhavesh Patel,who runs an NGO called Manavata,try to mobilise “golden hour” medical assistance to accident victims. They have both seen too many people die because of the absence of an efficient and caring service to ensure immediate medical treatment. They try to contact victims’ relatives (not an easy task),and get authentic information about the accident for further action (an even more difficult task). Beyond continuing their life-saving efforts,they have also been fighting against a railway system whose institutional response to deaths and injuries on its tracks—and also the response of the related system of police,hospitals and courts—reveals a level of apathy that borders on the criminal.

For example,Samir,who has filed over 50 RTI applications for the benefit of accident victims,and several PILs/petitions in the High Court and Supreme Court,has documents showing that,out of the 9,049 accidents in 2008-2009,Railways provided ambulance service in only 7 per cent of the cases. He and Bhavesh have been unsuccessful in their campaign to force private hospitals,and even railway hospitals,to admit railway accident cases. They have scores of tales about how money and other valuables are stolen from the bodies of victims. They know of too many cases of the police demanding bribes from victims’ relatives for giving copies of the panchnama. Hearing all this made me sick. But I wasn’t prepared for the numbing experience when Bhavesh,who has been instrumental in saving several hundred lives,showed me gory photographs of unclaimed bodies of accident victims stacked in the mortuaries of our public hospitals. “How would relatives feel if they had to search for their near and dear ones in this macabre environment?” Bhavesh asked. “Are we a civilised society?”

Preventing fatalities on Mumbai’s railway tracks is the subject of an ongoing study that my colleagues and I at the Observer Research Foundation have been doing. However,the questions that the study has provoked in me go beyond this specific problem,for which the governments in New Delhi and Mumbai seem to have no solution—and also no time to think of a solution. Why has the government machinery in India become so insensitive to the pain and suffering of common citizens? Why doesn’t it show any concern for their dignity,both when they are alive and also,often,when they are dead? Why has corruption become so ubiquitous in every branch of government,not leaving even the judiciary untouched? And why are even good Samaritans like Samir and Bhavesh—and their number is not inconsiderable in our society—made to face such hardships at every step that,in frustration and anger,they too sometimes feel that non-violent methods are useless?

Answers to these questions are not difficult to find. The bottom of the government has become rotten because the top has become heartless and corrupt. After all,the policemen and railway personnel who have no qualms of conscience in making money out of the victims of accidents are well aware of the loot of hundreds of crores of rupees by the high and mighty in almost every government project,from the award of telecom licenses to the Commonwealth Games. Moreover,they know that the long arm of the law rarely catches the scamsters at the top.

A far bigger tragedy than the deaths on Mumbai’s railway tracks,therefore,is the death of moral authority in our political and government establishment. Have we ever heard anybody in India’s top leadership expressing anger at the spreading cancer of greed,selfishness,unscrupulousness,inefficiency,dereliction of duty and unconcern for the plight of ordinary citizens? The decomposed and uncared for bodies in the photographs that Bhavesh showed me are indeed a metaphor for the moral decay in our system of governance.

sudheenkulkarni@gmail.com