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Journalism of Courage
Imagine, if it is possible, a father8217;s anguish as he searches for his missing child8217;s name in a list of the dead. Visualise, if it is possible, a mother8217;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. Yesterday8217;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.
There are three guardians of a child8217;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.
