Where living is costly and life is cheap

Many years ago, newspapers reported an incident wherein an American consulate car ran over a pothole in then Bombay. The vehicle was damaged and a consulate official suffered minor injuries. The American sought damages from the Municipal Corporation of Bombay. This was promptly paid.

Since then, several millions of ‘desi’ citizens would have driven over potholes,  suffered serious injuries and even died.  One never hears of any claim for damages. Why? Well, we are different, aren’t we? Our ‘standards’ are different not only in cleanliness but in many other spheres as well. Why not? Why should we always imitate the West? Our culture is different and so are our standards.

As cultures go, our city has a unique blend of the West and the East. The well-heeled youth speak in accented English and do things that seem typically western. They could also be seen doing things very much Indian, at weddings or while celebrating festivals.

The government too has caught the disease of blended culture. There is talk of the high-tech city, with ‘signal-free’ roads, and use of IT in about everything one could possibly imagine. But while going about making this city another ‘Singapore’, as every politician and bureaucrat would proclaim, the government is unable to rid itself of the malaise of negligence bordering on the criminal. After all, have we not seen a good number of deaths due to the negligence of government functionaries?

There is a cardinal principle called public liability in every public work undertaken by authorities concerned. Proper auditing of such liability involves checking every phase of work to ensure minimum trouble and no loss of life and limb to the general public. In Bangalore, nobody has ever spoken of this public need and official virtue. Sad, indeed!

Here, one sees only neglect, not care. It is difficult to fathom why this should be so. The organisations that are responsible for such neglect have, as their heads, very competent people. Many are from the administrative service, which one presumes is meant to serve the people and not cause them injury through negligence. Perhaps, people and the government are equally apathetic and accept everything however slipshod it may be.

Just walk or drive along the city’s main road, named after the nation’s founding father. There is construction debris strewn everywhere. Drains are left open. Electric cables and steel rods protrude from these open drains. Walking along the footpaths is like going over an obstacle course. Our jawans could be trained there for moving on difficult terrain.

It is a simple thing to ensure that contractors remove the debris and fix the drain covers back in their respective places. Not doing so is a matter of attitude. ‘Why do anything now’ seems to be the attitude. People do not complain because they (rightly?) believe that there is no use in complaining. It would be a sheer waste of time and effort and in the bargain, one might also rub some politico or bureaucrat on the wrong side.

There have been extra-governmental organisations of eminent people with all good intentions and credentials, advising the government on many things, from town planning to good governance. There was BATF (Bangalore Agenda Task Force) once and there is now, its new avatar, ABIDe (Agenda for Bangalore Infrastructure Development). The dignitaries who adorn these impressive sounding bodies surely see the state of affairs.

Perhaps, they do ‘advise’, but their advice falls on deaf ears. How could political or bureaucratic ears be cured of such deafness? 
It is not just in infrastructure construction that one finds such poor attention to dangers to human life. Take garbage collection. This is an area where there is a stream of experts telling how things could be improved. There are civic activists tirelessly working to change the way garbage is handled. Yet, one has never found a single mention of the horrid conditions in which those engaged in garbage collection do their job.

These people toil daily, sift through the muck with bare hands and feet, often sit in the dirt, and travel in vehicles that sprinkle a good part of the garbage along the way. What work-related diseases they would suffer from is still being ignored. They are part of the ‘unorganised’ sector. What diseases they would spread, also does not bother the officials responsible or the public.  

It is not that we do not have laws to punish those guilty of spreading diseases or acting negligently. A number of sections of the Penal Code deal with such conduct. Section 268 is about public nuisance, section 269 is on spreading infectious diseases and section 283 deals with danger or obstruction in public way. It is high time people used these provisions to bring to account their government. Who would like to bell this cat?
— The author is secretary, Citizen’s Action Forum, Bangalore