Is anyone there?

Water is a great ground leveller. Add grim, total darkness wrought by the now familiar power outages to the scenario and terra firma mingles seamlessly with the atmosphere above, creating a uniform morbid nothingness that the senses cannot pierce or perceive.

Recently, a colleague of mine waded apprehensively into this emptiness, groping for a foothold and in search of the elusive light at the end of the tunnelly road. He was all decked up for an evening function and in the highest of spirits until he ventured into this street that housed the marriage hall. One tentative step followed another, reminiscent of the just dead Armstrong’s moonwalk and then he – my colleague, not Armstrong – found himself screaming in neck deep slush and dark water. A pothole that had turned into a well thanks to the ‘brief’ shower the earlier night, had swallowed him into its depths. And within seconds after he was fished out by equally clueless and blinded bystanders, there was another cry: A father and son on a bicycle had landed in the same hellhole! Given such a state of afairs, even mankind’s giant leaps will only take one as far as the next crater and into it, of course!

My friend and the father-son duo were lucky to escape with just a few bloody bruises. But more unfortunate ones have lost limbs and even their lives. These are daily occurences and only God knows, though He doesn’t seem to care, how many more are slated for the other world and in what mode. For, if the pothole does not get you, the other unfailing franchisee of Yama, the tanker lorry, will. The latter just added a school girl early this week to its list. But while it is easy to blame reckless driving, even careful and sensible drivers are not insulated from mistakes or roadrage: the landscape offers enough scope for sudden twists and turns of motors and minds alike. The picture gets murkier if you add exposed power cables, open sewers and manholes, jutting iron rods and puddles teeming with flies and mosquitoes that defy supression though the deaths they cause are easily supressed.

All these fatalities, injuries and chaos naturally raise the question of responsibility. When a child dies in an accident on the school premises or a school bus, the institutions’ officials are immediately held liable. The doctrine of vicarious liability holds an employer liable for the wrongdoings or negligence of employees or agents. The criminal culpability of such an employer varies from case to case. Many such accidents, fatal or otherwise, are presently under various stages of judicial scrutiny in TN itself. But the point is the letter and spirit of the law attaches a moral responsibility on a person who runs a private enterprise. And the State too wastes little time in effecting arrests, if only to show some ‘action taken’ or for other motives. Even the HC, in all its wisdom, found it fit to initiate suo motu action in one case. The latest Sivakasi fire too can be expected to yield enough ‘accused’ for the law to take its own course.

But are the geese and gander treated alike? What of the vicarious or criminal liability of persons holding public offices and drafted for the very purpose of executing and maintaining public works from public money? By the Constitution and common law, are they not the ones in charge and therefore responsible for any mishaps that occur in their domain? Or, for that matter, are they also not directly responsible for disasters that occur in private spheres owing to regulatory failures? Sure, in every such event some low level scapegoats get the axe, but the responsibility hierarchy turns hazy as it nears and narrows at the top. How many of the high and mighty, the real ‘employers’ that run (and ruin) the official machinery have been in the dock ever? For instance, does not death on a dark, scarred street make the senior officials, relevant ministers, the mayor and councillor, the political bosses and the elected reps, all of whom wield adequate authority to make a difference, directly responsible and guilty? The crime of negligence is magnified because repeated petitions and newspaper reports are routinely ignored. In any case, can they feign ignorance since they themselves are consumers and commuters in public space?

So, the next time you vanish into a hole in the middle of the street, blame Mother Earth for her insatiable hunger. Let the elements take the rap for killer fires, electrocutions, suffocations and drownings, while rodents, not doctors, are responsible for ‘safe-keeping’ of your body or body-parts in a Govt hospital. If, while driving a car, you knock down a cyclist even if you were only trying to avert hitting a pedestrian who himself was suddenly stranded trying to avoid a garbage pile that the Corporation had dumped after picking it up from another neighbourhood in which it had bred mosquitoes that caused diarrhoea … well, blame inscrutable fate for setting off this chain!

And once you develop a skin thick enough to take all these in your stride, as you eventually will, consider yourself a candidate for power, your stars willing. And finally thank God if you happen to land in the ruling regime for, even as you loot spectrum, coal and sundry other national resources on the sly and spend quality time breaking mikes, tables and other members’ bones in Parli, you will also get to know the secret of ‘public service’: It is Nobody’s business!

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