talking heads all over the world. It is easy to dish out, and one can
add any amount of viciousness to it, without any fear of a
proportionate bite back. We are after all the human collective, and
very happy to be in the comfort zone of watching and doing nothing,
and we in India, are the kings and queens of this collective. Not
unless our very existence is under threat do we even bother to open
our eyes to wrong. Of course we are quick to condemn, because it
costs nothing, and it is easy to get away with.
Forty people died two days ago by drowning in the Thekkady lake,
almost all of them tourists. It would have been less spectacular if
some white foreigners were not amongst them, but they were, Thank God!
Now, this is international tragedy! A freaking calamity! So, heads
will have to roll! There's a full fledged investigation into what
happened, and even ex-Navy officials have chimed in with the inside
story on life jackets and lifebuoys, and the first clean chit has been
given to the engine of the "ill-fated" boat!
For some reason, when all people in the upper deck of the boat rush to
one side to see animals, and the boat capsizes, it doesn't seem to
have much to do with the engine. Nevertheless, here we have it, in
our typical Indian incompetent fashion, with the idiotic nerve to even
report something as stupid as this - "The engine of the boat has
received a clean chit"! Great. Do we hear anybody condemning this
nonsense? Of course not. Because it needs a little thought before we
can spew.
The reason behind this tragedy is very simple physics. The boat that
was carrying these tourists overturned because it was simply not built
to have a severely uneven distribution of load. Add the extra height
of the upper deck, and the moment provided by a one sided load from
that height simply turned it over. It had no deep keel, not much of
its structure under water, and certainly not enough balancing load on
the upper or lower decks. No matter how badly maintained the
lifebuoys were, no matter how nobody had lifejackets on, this is the
reason for people dying - using a boat not designed properly for all
people to rush to one side on the upper deck.
It means that safety norms were either neglected or not even known,
given that this is India, where we still think it is "fashion" to wear
seat belts while we drive at mad speeds with licensed murdering
lunatics all around. It won't be so fashionable when you die in a
crash in a head on collision, but never mind accountability, and never
mind this investigation. We don't even have a fundamental
understanding of how to implement standards and specifications in a
simple tourist ferry operation, and that exposes one of India's
fundamental attitude problems. We neglect everything we can get away
with. Forty people didn't get away with this, did they?
It is a good thing our planes are built by Boeing and Airbus, for if
HAL were to have built any of them, we wouldn't even have safety
instructions, maintenance routines and airworthiness checks. If any
plane crashed because of a wing falling off, we'd still give a clean
chit to the engine, which by the way is most likely to be imported.
Remember the Indian Airlines brand new Airbus A330 that crashed in
Bangalore? Indian investigators were quick to blame Airbus for it,
but had to hastily withdraw their claim when all data from the flight
data recorders, and the cockpit voice recorders and other scientific
evidence clearly pointed to the fact that that pilot had fed in the
altitude as the rate of descent, and even confidently answered in the
affirmative to the plane's computer asking him back if he was sure.
Cocky bastard killed over a hundred people.
We have a lot of people in this country who are licensed to murder us.
Drivers who use the turn signal to "allow" a passing vehicle, other
drivers who think this is the rule, fools who don't put their lights
on low beam when another vehicle approaches, the fruit markets that
sell produce spuriously ripened, restaurants that use dubious
additives in the food, and the entire government machinery that
supports the sub standard functioning of all services available to the
Indian citizen are all responsible for the systematic murder of people
- you and I are definitely on the hit list, make no mistake about it.
We Indians are so arrogant in our preoccupied states of being indian,
that we don't consider ordinary things worth maintaining, or others'
ordinary lives precious. A life jacket is called a life jacket with
good reason. If people aren't handed one as soon as they get onto a
boat, or if they are not in a position to get one very quickly, it is
useless to have them. This boat that drowned out forty lives in
Thekkady had life jackets! They were most definitely there to satisfy
the bureaucratic requirements - nothing more than a checklist! This
definitely had less to do with keeping the boat operationally safe and
more to do with having to answer questions in their absence. It is
simply the Indian thing to do. As long as nobody questions us, we
must be perfect. When somebody does question us, how dare they?
For the sake of our own lives, let's condemn our apathy first and
foremost. Let's condemn the stupid statements that come out of our
incompetent politicians and decision makers. Let's condemn the inane
noise that comes out of the mouthpieces of government. Let's condemn
the gap between "requirements" and implementation. Let's condemn the
lack of scientific temper in our approach to development. Let's
condemn the rise of stupidity over knowledge, the rise of noise over
truth, and the rise of nebulous inaction over clear actions. Since we
are so good at condemnation, can we please learn where to aim it?
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