Anupam- The Dreamer

Take a few man-made disaster incidents:

1. A 50-year old building collapsed in a city resulting into deaths of children
2. A fire incident in a hotel, with no emergency exits, resulting into deaths
3. A bridge collapsed suddenly due to poor build quality or improper maintenance
4. Roads turned into ponds during monsoons causing inconvenience to all

These disasters didn’t happen overnight! They were waiting to happen since a long time, just that we didn’t care to realize it well within time. We behaved as a “reactive” society, rather than being “proactive” to pre-empt the impending disasters. And then, when the disasters happen, we behave like a bunch of fools living in the disbelief of how such thing could happen to us!

There is no point in blaming God or nature for such disasters, when in many of the cases, it is just human-made! The naysayers, incompetent and self-centric people will say after the disaster- “bhagwan ne bahut bura kiya”, “honi ko kaun rok sakta hai”, “doshiyon ko baksha nahi jayega” etc etc. The response of the authorities, many-a-times, would be to suspend a few officials, give compensation to the deceased, register a few cases against the building owner, put some persons behind the bars. After that, what happens after a few days?

NOTHING! The cases linger on for years, the accused are out on bail, the deceased are forgotten, and the “system” continues as usual! Again, the society waits for another disaster for the same sequence of events to repeat in the same fashion. For example, after 1 year, again one building will collapse, then again you will see the same events! No systemic change is effected on the ground. Everyone’s gets “busy” again in their lives! The politicians in getting power, the businessmen in making money, the authorities in pushing usual filework, the media in search of some other TRP news item, aam junta in their usual daily routine. Just the families who have lost their loved ones in such man-made disasters continue to feel the loss of their bread-winner or beloved member.

You must have heard that the system needs to improve, but the willpower to improve that seems missing. Because “who will bell the cat” is the quintessential question! Noone. While all will agree that “kuch hona chahiye”, but still noone is willing to improve the situation, either because of vested interests or we just don’t care about others!

There maybe a few exceptions here and there, where individuals/NGOs/some administrators/politicians, may have tried to institutionalize the good practices that could prevent such disasters in future, but still as a society we haven’t inculcated the proactiveness in behavior to live in a safe world, free of atleast man-made disasters. We don’t care until the disaster directly impacts us. And we live in denial with heads in sand like an ostrich, believing that nothing bad can happen to us. Instead, the approach should be to pre-empt the disasters and take preventive actions to avoid them in the first place. The culture of proactiveness and safety needs to be inbuilt in the society. And that begins at an individual level. If everyone does his/her work with excellence, devotion and integrity, then many man-made disasters could be avoided. Otherwise, isi baat se kaam chalana padega ki- “doshiyon ko baksha nahi jayega”! The point is- “kya hum khud doshi hain?”