Caution: school ahead

Imagine, if it is possible, a father's anguish as he searches for his missing child's name in a list of the dead. Visualise, if it is possi...

Imagine, if it is possible, a father’s anguish as he searches for his missing child’s name in a list of the dead. Visualise, if it is possible, a mother’s grief at confronting the still body of her daughter whose lunch she had prepared just an hour earlier and placed in a school bag. Fathom, if it is possible, the sheer terror that must have reigned in the hearts of 120 children packed into a school bus as it hurtled over a bridge and into the icy Yamuna. Yesterday’s school bus tragedy, in which an estimated 28 children lost their lives, took place in Delhi, true. But then, around the same time as the Delhi tragedy, 14 schoolchildren had a providential escape in similar circumstances near Coimbatore. In fact, such an accident could have taken place anywhere in a country which thinks nothing of cheating on safety norms, which has through long acquaintance with death grown indifferent to its breath.

In such a world, boats loaded with twice the number they are meant to carry capsize; buses speeding way above the limit mow down pedestrians; trains jump their tracks; aeroplanes collide in the skies and transformers burst in movie theatre basements. The death lists grow but nothing changes.

Regulatory systems, such as they are, are installed in the most ad hoc and cavalier fashion and even these are regularly breached by people who just do not have the time, inclination or discipline to respect them. But the horror of it all comes home when the victims happen to be society’s most vulnerable section. Children should by right be protected as much as possible from the aberrations of the system but, alas, the callousness filters into their lives as well. Every rickety rickshaw, overloaded with school bags and children, every mini-bus with doors secured with ropes and packed to the hilt with little uniformed beings, every chartered bus with unmanned, open doorways, testifies to this. What is forgotten is that a child’s safety is primary, everything else comes later. Education after all is of little use if the educated do not make it to adulthood.

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There are three guardians of a child’s life at school. The first is, of course, his parents. Then come the educational authorities into whose care he is entrusted. Finally, there are the facilitators like bus drivers and rickshaw pullers. All three of them have a role to play in ensuring a safe environment for the child. In the Delhi tragedy, the school bus was loaded to twice its capacity. The parents could not have been unaware of this fact as also the principal and administrators of the concerned school, the Shaheed Amar Chand Sarvodaya Vidyalaya. As if that was not enough, the driver of the bus was evidently in a tearing hurry to reach his destination.

Only further investigation will reveal whether this was prompted merely by the excitement of the ride, or whether the bus was required for other commitments as chartered school buses usually are. Unless parents take it upon themselves to fight for and personally oversee the safe transportation of their children and school administrators are forced to pay scrupulous attention to the safety of their wards, such tragedies will remain everyday occurrences. There are no other speed-breakers on this road to death.

Algerian-French artist’s work vandalised at Kochi art gallery over ‘obscenity’ allegations

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Algerian-French artist Hanan Benammar's linocut prints were vandalised by two artists at an international exhibition in Kochi. The exhibition, curated by Anushka Rajendran and Damian Christinger, was organised by the Kerala Lalithakala Akademi and opened on October 18.

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