Lesser Mortals

Woke up this morning thinking about conversations with a colleague generally about developmental and economic issues. Was reminded of how 2 neighboring states have a remarkably different way of dealing with certain tragedies that affect the poor. The first thing that hit me on today's newspaper was about the collapse of the scaffolding at a construction site in Infosys campus and resultant death of 5 migrant laborers. This was the exact same thing that I was thinking about 10 mins back. Such tragedies are commonplace as Banglore shapes into a technopolis.

2 weeks ago a storehouse collapsed at Biocon and killed 3. There has been atleast 7 such incidents since I starting counting them form 2005. Anywhere between 3-7 people are killed in each of these incidents. Near the place I used to stay at R.T. Nagar the scaffolding gave in on the day of concreting. 5 dead. At another site in MG road had the land give in when excavating for the basement. 3 dead.

The victims in most cases are migrant laborers from rural Karnataka or the BIMARU states . Political parties ignore them because they don't form a vote bank. The workers are never a part of any union. The media cold-shoulder them since such news don't appeal to their urban target. The TOI for example found it worthy of only a 2 column article in the second page. That is when they can waste reams and reams of paper on Shilpa Shetty's latest beau or on which girl appeared in what skimpy clothes at which all parties. The more socially obliged among them might have one follow-up article. Haven't heard about any NGO's who pursue such cases. And forget about anything coming up in the courts. Nobody seems to be bothered about those 5 hapless, poor souls who pay with their lives to create the pillars of 21st century India.

There are probably no villains in the story. But there is an institutional failure in letting such criminal negligence go unpunished. The building contractors are powerful enough to influence the civic authorities and the police. And even if charge sheeted the case would be so weak. The standard rebuttal by the contractors is that everything mandatory has been done. Don't know if the families of the dead are even compensated properly. In today's case the construction company Sobha Developers which is among the reputed here has announced an ex-gratia payment of Rs. 2,50,000 and that would be last. As an aside the CEO of Soba developers recently did a Thulabaram ( offering to the deity in ones weight) in Gold at Guruvayoor temple worth Rs 7 Crore.

The economic theory doing rounds lately is that India's population is the bouty that will propel it to the superpower league. Does it mean we have more lives to loose than others and we don't care. Does it mean that the rich can subsidize their lifestyles at the cost of the poor. The affluent and middle-class need to really think if violence like one after Rajkumar's death or the most recent Dalit angst in Maharastra are emotional outbursts of the marginilised majority.

I wish Infosys which has set global standards in giving back to the society make an example of this case. The least they could do is to ensure that the families are compensated and children's future protected. The best would be to pursue this case and bring the culprits to book. But that might be too much of a price to pay. The middle-ground could be to create some frameworks so that such accidents don't repeat.