‘How many casualties?’ the editor would ask with a wooden face. ‘Just two, sir’, the reporter’s cryptic reply would amplify the disappointment of the entire newsdesk at the loss of a dicey front-page news on a dry day; ‘page 5, then … but keep me posted if the toll rises’; the doughty editor has not given up hope yet. The more the merrier for him. He has ‘deadlines’ to meet and nothing makes headlines as mass deaths do, provided they happen in time! Of course, he will likely regain his human touch and feel a pang, once the news has been broken. But then the media’s morbid fancy for numbers is only a reflection of a mournful reality about deaths in India: they are just sensational stories destined to become soulless statistics soon!
Indians are often told that there is no value for life in their country. The inevitable comparison is with the west where even a single avoidable death raises the hackles of an entire nation. Of course, life has even less value in West Asia, but it has been a god-forsaken land from time immemorial, soaked in blood spilt more in fratricidal conflicts and a pervasive deathwish for martyrdom than through acts of nature or accidents. Africa, for long, has remained another land of bulk deaths, owing to disease or riots. Sadly, India, with its large land mass and huge population that have earned it the description, ‘sub-continent’, ranks only next to West Asia and Africa, in its callous disregard for human life.
Some would doubtless dub this fatalist attitude towards life as a sign of spiritual evolution. In a land suffused in philosophy, enlightened as well as escapist, ‘He who giveth also taketh’ is an unassailable dictum: the Almighty simply cannot have blood on His hands. Add to it deep-rooted notions of karma and janma, and death becomes just a temporary stopover in the long journey of the soul. So, deaths owing to earthquakes, floods, tsunamis and sundry other natural disasters fall in the realms of the inscrutable, deemed beyond human control, even if they could be mitigated. Still, since the rest of the world too shares this impotence vis-a-vis nature’s fury, India could be forgiven on this count. Let’s therefore shift our focus to deaths by human acts of commission and omission which have also been instrumental in earning us the dubious distinction as a land where life is cheap.
Terrorists of all hues ranging from green to red would testify to the vast scope in India for mass slaughter. Long before 9/11/01 shook the world, Islamists have been having net practice here, packing kafirs by the hundreds to hell and the nation’s celebrated tolerance and resilience had swallowed it all. The last ten years has seen jihad develop into a thriving indigenous cottage industry with every nook and cranny of India turning as ‘fertile’ as J&K. As terror goes retail, people perish at malls, hotels, roadside eateries, markets, trains, temples or anywhere. Of course, imported terrorists continue to consume their quota of Indian lives lest they lose their passage to paradise, with spectacular displays like spraying gunfire in railway stations and hotel lobbies as if disposing flies with DDT. Giving them a run for their bullets is the other major dealer of death, Maoists, who have of late converted obsure Dantawadas into instant Mokshapuris and have great plans for launching similar mass mortuaries across India. So as the country morphs into a level slaying field for the trigger-happy and the bomb-happy, HM PC’s telling comment after the latest Dante-2 sums up the national consensus: ‘It could have been more’! Aye, aye, Sir, for, are there not so many lives on offer on the sacrificial altar for killers to pick and choose? As they say, India can doubtless take this and more!
That the nation is helpless against nature and terror is now a given. But what of accidents? There are statistics to prove that India ranks at the top of the global charts in deaths due to accidents, the majority of which are owing to human failure and, therefore, avoidable. But do we need numerical data for a tell-tale truth? Man-made disasters seem to be a default setting here and it is really a miracle that there are still lives left, though it sounds ominously close to PC’s pearls of wisdom. Just a week back, 28 bus commuters died in transit after being electrocuted owing to overhead wires coming in contact with steel items stacked on the rooftop. This rather freak accident which went unnoticed not only shows that collective death stalks the land like a gloomy shadow, but makes no mark whatsoever on the collective conscience either.
Some samples that are unique to India, a famously emerging economy and a future world leader, secures its premier position as a deadly place to live. The recent Delhi railway station fracas may have killed ‘only’ two, but scores routinely die in stampedes. Every crowded place, be it a market or mela, theatre or temple, is a potential mass grave. Long past incidents in Qutub Minar, Tanjore temple and during Mahamaham come to mind. A melee at a flood relief centre in Chennai devoured over forty just a couple of years ago. A birthday celebration of a UP leader brought muddy death upon scores some time back. People, often the poor, frequently get trampled upon, in more ways than one.
The daily deaths on city roads and highways are now casual and commonplace occurences that stir no consternation in our minds. The suicidal immunity is so potent that the possibility of recurrence is absolutely no incentive for prevention! Disasters wrought by human folly seem to hold a permanent invitation to visit anywhere anytime! Unlike nature’s havoc on human life which are treated as acts of God or murders attributed to terrorists, mass deaths owing to human error, conscious, careless and callous, rarely get traced to anyone. Those souls remain unavenged due to the anonymity of the killers and unlamented owing to being one among many.
The print in newspapers may be in black, but it is red blood that pervades the pages daily. It is unlikely the media vultures will desist from swooping down and scavenging on a good corpse count, but I also long for the day when those whose negligence caused, for instance, the Kumbakonam fire that consumed kids by the dozen, are hanged. Subject to deadline, that too would make a great headline!
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