Zero vision

It could be scenes from any one of those epic disaster films that Hollywood churns out with banal regularity. Trains collide,the airport turns into a no-fly zone and the city sleeps while wide awake. Behold the wrath of Mother Nature. With one small exception: the fog that caused much of North India to grind to a halt on Friday night and Saturday morning,is an annual occurrence that is entirely predictable. This disaster film is re-released every year.

Which is why the devastation it left in its wake needs to be accounted for. Take the trains: 36 trains were rescheduled and 2 pairs of trains collided with one another killing ten and wounding 45 others. These are human errors that need to be investigated and the systems made fool-proof. But pinning responsibility on errant railway officials begs the larger question: what about the big boss,Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee? Her obvious focus on the upcoming West Bengal elections has meant missed meetings,delayed decisions and lackadaisical leadership. The Delhi airport,in the wee hours of Saturday was even more chaotic. 17 flights were diverted,27 departures rescheduled and approximately 200 more flights diverted due to the backlog. Again,the problem wasnt so much the fog as it was system malfunction: the instrument landing system,meant to guide landing in zero visibility,went kaput. Besides,much of northern India suffered in darkness,as 35 lines of the northern grid tripped due to the fog. One of the officials in charge actually said he was expecting the situation that developed.

It would be unreasonable to expect public services to function glitch-less in such weather. Some delay,some disruption,is almost inevitable. But the scale of Saturdays shutdown questions the effectiveness of our disaster management plans. If we cannot plan for routine,expected emergencies,then what happens when an actual,unforeseen disaster strikes? Besides,the plane delay and train collisions took place due to specific mistakes a malfunctioning all-weather landing system and skipped red signals. Blaming the vagaries of the weather for the errors of humans is the easy way out. But it wont prevent a repeat performance.