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Correspondent

23 August 2024 at 9:59:04 pm

Fatal Negligence

Newborns dying in a fire inside a government hospital is a devastating indictment of a system that is supposed to protect its most vulnerable patients. The Amravati District Women’s Hospital tragedy, where a blaze killed three infants, joins a long list of preventable institutional failures. Thirty-nine babies were inside the three-compartment facility when the fire erupted after a ventilator in the neonatal unit caught fire. Thirty-six were eventually rescued. Parents and eyewitnesses have...

Fatal Negligence

Newborns dying in a fire inside a government hospital is a devastating indictment of a system that is supposed to protect its most vulnerable patients. The Amravati District Women’s Hospital tragedy, where a blaze killed three infants, joins a long list of preventable institutional failures. Thirty-nine babies were inside the three-compartment facility when the fire erupted after a ventilator in the neonatal unit caught fire. Thirty-six were eventually rescued. Parents and eyewitnesses have alleged that the fire alarms did not sound and the automatic sprinklers failed to activate even as the district administration has said the hospital underwent regular fire audits and had applied for this year’s audit. An audit is meaningful only if it establishes that equipment works when lives depend on it. Maharashtra has already witnessed the deadly consequences of fire-safety failures in public hospitals. In 2021, eleven Covid-19 patients died in a fire at the Ahmednagar district hospital even though a fire audit conducted months earlier had recommended a firefighting system. The Amravati tragedy demands more than the familiar ritual of a high-level inquiry, compensation and promises of “strictest action”. The announcement of ex gratia payments cannot compensate parents who have lost a child they had barely begun to know. The investigation must establish not merely what ignited the fire, but why it was allowed to become fatal. Was the ventilator properly maintained? Were electrical and medical devices routinely inspected? Did alarms function? Were sprinklers operational? Was the NICU appropriately located and equipped for evacuation? Were staff trained and drills conducted? And most importantly, who was responsible for ensuring that every safeguard worked? There is another troubling detail: the neonatal unit was reportedly housed on the third floor, rather than at ground level, and questions have arisen over whether the unit was part of the building’s original plan. The state has built an elaborate architecture of laws and child-protection standards which seldom matches the situation on ground. Whether in government hospitals, schools or anganwadis, safety has become a box to be ticked rather than a responsibility to be lived. The most vulnerable children are consequently left dependent not on systems, but on the vigilance and heroism of individual staff members. That is an appalling way to run the childcare infrastructure of one India’s most developed states. A NICU is perhaps the worst possible place for institutional complacency: its patients are immobile, medically dependent and extraordinarily vulnerable to smoke, heat and even brief disruption of life-support equipment. The government must ensure that the Amravati deaths do not become another entry in the grim ledger of hospital tragedies followed by inquiries, outrage and forgetting. The real test will be whether the state can prevent the next newborn from dying in a hospital that was supposed to save him.

Blade Hype

The Maharashtra government has trumpeted the acquisition of 18th C. Maratha leader Raghuji Bhosale’s sword from a London auction house as a “historic victory.” Cultural Affairs Minister Ashish Shelar flew to Britain to collect the artefact, which will arrive in Mumbai on August 18 under police escort and motorcycle convoy, culminating in a public celebration at a cultural academy. A similar swell of fanfare had attended the government’s earlier retrieval (on loan) of a wagh nakh (tiger claw) from the Victoria and Albert Museum, supposedly used by Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj to kill Afzal Khan.


Both episodes have been dressed up as moments of political and cultural triumph. The rhetoric is thick with the language of victory, honour and “bringing home” lost treasures. Yet there is less here for the state to pat itself on the back about than the breathless tone suggests. The sword was not secured through some deft diplomatic manoeuvre or a concession from a reluctant foreign power. It was purchased at an open auction in Britain, just as any wealthy collector or institution could have done. The wagh nakh, too, was not really ‘reclaimed’; it remains the property of the V&A and is in India only on a fixed-term loan. Diplomatic repatriations of cultural heritage, whether India’s retrieval of the Koh-i-Noor were it ever to occur, or Greece’s campaign for the Elgin Marbles, are hard-fought and symbolically charged affairs requiring years of negotiation. Winning an auction is essentially a commercial transaction. The notion that Maharashtra’s ministers achieved some great diplomatic breakthrough is overblown.


As for the wagh nakh, even the V&A had admitted that it was not possible to verify that the claws on display are the very ones used by Shivaji Maharaj in one his most famous exploits. Accounts suggest multiple tiger claws were associated with the episode, and at least three other sets in Satara have laid similar claims. The history of such acquisitions in India is littered with instances where artefacts, once triumphantly unveiled, are relegated to poorly lit display cases or locked storage rooms. If these treasures are to have meaning beyond a week’s headlines, they require more than ceremonial receptions. Proper conservation, detailed historical interpretation and serious public engagement are needed. Without such efforts, they risk becoming props in a passing political spectacle.


This is especially important given Maharashtra’s habit of conflating cultural heritage with political theatre. Raghuji Bhosale’s campaigns in Bengal, Odisha and southern India were significant military achievements, and his Firangi sword is a rare and exquisite example of cross-cultural craftsmanship in the 18th century. But heritage is not well served by bombast. Cultural treasures gain their true value not from the manner in which they are acquired, but from how they are cared for, interpreted and made relevant to the present. Maharashtra’s leaders have been quick to celebrate their role in securing these objects. The harder task is to ensure they serve as living links to history rather than trophies gathering dust.


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