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Correspondent

23 August 2024 at 9:59:04 pm

Safety First

The death of two people and injuries to five others after a 22-foot Ganesh idol collapsed during its arrival ceremony in Mumbai is a deeply disturbing accident. It is particularly unfortunate that such an incident should occur barely three weeks before Ganeshotsav begins on September 14. A festival that is synonymous with devotion, community and celebration must not begin under such a gloomy shadow. The incident took place in Bhuleshwar, as the idol of Bhuleshwaracha Raja was being...

Safety First

The death of two people and injuries to five others after a 22-foot Ganesh idol collapsed during its arrival ceremony in Mumbai is a deeply disturbing accident. It is particularly unfortunate that such an incident should occur barely three weeks before Ganeshotsav begins on September 14. A festival that is synonymous with devotion, community and celebration must not begin under such a gloomy shadow. The incident took place in Bhuleshwar, as the idol of Bhuleshwaracha Raja was being transported from Byculla to its pandal. Preliminary information points to the unravelling of loose nuts and bolts in the idol’s supporting frame. Whatever the final findings of the investigation, the fact remains that a structure weighing many tonnes and being moved through a crowded urban neighbourhood cannot be allowed to become a lethal hazard. The prompt mobilisation of the Mumbai Fire Brigade, Mumbai Police, traffic police, 108 ambulance service and civic ward staff deserves recognition. But emergency response, however efficient, is no substitute for prevention. By the time emergency services arrive, lives may already have been lost. That is the lesson Mumbai and Maharashtra must absorb before the festival begins. Ganeshotsav is among the biggest public celebrations in the state. Its arrival processions draw enormous crowds, with towering idols, decorated vehicles, music, electrical installations and devotees converging on narrow streets. The scale of the celebrations has grown dramatically, but safety practices must grow with it. Every Ganesh pandal preparing for this year’s festival should treat structural safety as seriously as religious and logistical arrangements. Frames, fasteners, lifting equipment, transport vehicles and securing mechanisms must be inspected by competent personnel before an idol is moved. Organisers should not assume that a structure is safe simply because it has been used before. A single loose bolt can have catastrophic consequences. The authorities, too, cannot leave safety entirely to organisers. Civic agencies should conduct systematic inspections of large idols and their transportation arrangements, particularly where processions pass through densely populated areas. Traffic management, crowd control, overhead electrical infrastructure and emergency access routes need to be planned in advance. Safety checks should be mandatory, documented and meaningful, not just a box-ticking exercise. There is still time to act. The accident should be treated not merely as an isolated mishap but as a warning. Maharashtra has barely three weeks to ensure that every major pandal and procession has robust safety protocols in place. Ganeshotsav should begin with faith, excitement and the unmistakable sense of a city coming together and not with the memory of preventable deaths. The best tribute to those who lost their lives in Bhuleshwar would be to ensure that no family has to suffer such grief during the celebrations ahead.

Pakistan an old sinner

Mumbai: The ongoing ‘Operation Sindoor’ has been punctuated by fresh instances of cease-fire violations (CFVs) along the Line of Control (LoC) by Pakistan in specific border areas, as revealed by the Indian Army this week.


The trend is not new and Pakistan has been adept at CFVs with official data showing an average 13 daily breaches of truce during 10 years from 2010-2021.


During that period, the LoC in the erstwhile state Jammu & Kashmir suffered some 14,411 CFVs, with the figures dramatically shooting up after 2014 when the NDA government headed by PM Narendra Modi took office.


The eye-popping data was revealed to Pune activist Prafful Sarda in a RTI reply, showing 593 CFVs during the erstwhile UPA’s former PM Dr. Manmohan Singh’s tenure, and 13,818 under the NDA regimes post-2014 – totaling to 14,411 in 10 years.


Interestingly, the figure of border infringement was just one (01) in 2004 – when Dr. Singh’s government came to power - which shot up to an astronomical 4,645 in 2020.


This was despite the admirable surgical air-strikes in Balakot (Feb. 2019) and the country acquiring a sleek fleet of Rafale fighter jets (July 2020).


As per the RTI reply, the truce violations pertained to the LoC, and the government had categorically refused to divulge details of CFVs along the India-China borders, including specifics like the Doklam deadlock (June-Aug. 2017).


“The government invoked Sec. 8 (1)(a) of the RTI Act, 2005 to deny the Doklam details. The officialdom feels that such disclosure could affect India’s sovereignty and integrity, her security, strategic, scientific or economic interests, relations with foreign states, et al,” Sarda told 'The Perfect Voice'.


Starting with one CFV in 2004, it climbed to 6 (2005), 3 (2006), 21 (2007), 77 (2008), down to 28 (2009), and thereafter kept soaring each year – 44 (2010), 51 (2011), 93 (2012) and 199 (2013), at the fag end of the UPA’s second tenure.


Under the NDA, things appeared bright as CFV dropped to 153 (2014) and 152 (2015), and after PM Modi’s surprise visit to Pakistan to meet and greet ex-PM Nawaz Sharif on his birthday in Dec. 2015, the truce was flouted a whopping 228 times (2016).


In 2017, after Nirmala Sitharaman became Defence Minister, the rumblings on the borders increased with a staggering 860 CFVs – almost quadrupling over the previous year which also saw the Uri attacks by Pakistan and India’s retaliatory surgical strikes.


The CFV’s kept shooting up – 1,629 (2018), 3,233 (2019), and as NDA 2.0 was settling down in office, there were 4,645 truce violations (2020), and 524 (Jan-Feb. 2021) – the last two at the height of the Coronavirus Pandemic when the country remained under different lockdowns.

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