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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.

Theatrics First

Rahul Gandhi’s latest intervention in the Lok Sabha offered yet another study in intellectual recklessness that the Congress leader apparently enjoys revelling in. By attempting to indict the Modi government on the basis of an unpublished memoir filtered through a magazine article, the Leader of Opposition reduced debate on national security to political ventriloquism. Critiquing decisions using material that cannot be read, verified or contextualised is not parliamentary vigilance scrutiny.


During the debate on the Motion of Thanks to the President’s Address, Gandhi waved a magazine article based on General M. M. Naravane’s unreleased memoir, Four Stars of Destiny and sought to read out purported excerpts. Senior ministers objected by invoking parliamentary rules that bar members from quoting unpublished material. Speaker Om Birla repeatedly cautioned Gandhi under Rule 349(i) but Gandhi persisted and the House descended into chaos.


What Gandhi presented as fearless truth-telling was an assault on the basic grammar of parliamentary reasoning. Memoirs are not depositions. They are retrospective narratives shaped by hindsight and personal framing.


Gandhi’s repeated invocation of Chinese tanks entering Indian territory was calculated to shock. The claim may or may not be borne out when Naravane’s book eventually appears. But Parliament is not a rumour mill, nor a preview hall for embargoed manuscripts.


More damaging still was Gandhi’s disregard for the authority of the Chair. Parliamentary democracy rests not merely on free speech but on agreed procedures that make speech meaningful. By repeatedly defying the Speaker’s ruling, Gandhi conveyed that rules matter only when they suit his argument. It is an irony he seemed blind to. Having long accused the government of undermining institutions, he chose to trample one of the few institutions where the Opposition still commands moral leverage.


The episode also exposed a deeper confusion in Gandhi’s political method. He appears to mistake provocation for persuasion. Raising questions about the 2020 Ladakh crisis is legitimate. The clash at Pangong Lake and the subsequent standoff revealed serious shortcomings in India’s China policy. But serious questions demand serious sourcing. A Leader of Opposition worthy of the title would have marshalled official statements, sought clarifications on record or demanded a structured debate. Instead, Gandhi opted for a shortcut with his ‘shock-and-awe’ tactics.


His defence, that the magazine article was “100 percent authentic,” was absurd. If unpublished books become fair game, the Parliament opens itself to fabrication masquerading as foresight. Today it is a former Army Chief’s unseen memoir; tomorrow it could be any phantom text conjured to smear an opponent.


Gandhi has spent years attempting to shed the reputation of impulsiveness and superficiality. By racing ahead of publication and substituting insinuation for argument, he reinforced the very caricature he claims to resist.


Oppositions exist to test power, not to cheapen argument. In doing the latter, Rahul Gandhi weakened not just his own case, but the standards of parliamentary accountability he claims to champion. 

 

 

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