The fragility of India’s public-hospital safety architecture was cast into sharp relief once again Sunday night when a fire broke out in the neurosurgery ICU of Jaipur’s Sawai Mansingh (SMS) Hospital, one of the largest government hospitals in Rajasthan. The blaze, reportedly triggered by a short circuit in an adjacent storage room, claimed the lives of at least six critically ill patients. Eyewitnesses and bereaved families speak of horrifying scenes of chaos: Malfunctioning alarms, absent fire extinguishers, locked emergency exits, overburdened staff ignoring early warning signs before abandoning patients and their desperate attendants in the pandemonium that followed. In an institution meant to offer care, this failure of basic infrastructure, preparedness and accountability reinforces a deeper chasm — one of chronic neglect and institutional inertia.
That the SMS Hospital tragedy is not an outlier in India’s recent history of hospital fires is evident from the fact that around the same time as the disaster in Jaipur, in Ahmedabad, in two separate incidents, fire broke out at a children’s hospital on Sunday and at another municipal-run hospital on Monday. An investigation by this newspaper into major fires across 11 hospitals in the last five years, following the death of 18 newborn babies in a hospital fire in Jhansi in November 2024, had revealed an alarming pattern: Short circuits caused by inadequate maintenance and improper storage of highly inflammable and hazardous equipment, lack of firefighting equipment and training in evacuation protocols, and negligence of government agencies to conduct audits and enforce compliance. Municipal fire inspections are perfunctory; certifications are rubber-stamped; NDMA and building-code guidelines lurch from paper to oblivion. In the aftermath of Sunday’s incident, investigations have revealed that the SMS Hospital has been the site of several incidents of fire, including as recently as June.
The Rajasthan government has instituted a six-member committee to investigate the circumstances of the fire. The reaction joins a long catalogue of such responses that are not backed by consequences. In nearly all of the major fire incidents in the last five years, most of the accused — hospital owners, administrators and service providers — have been granted bail, slipping back into professional life as though no disaster had ever intervened. It signals impunity, and a devastating indifference to human life, especially that of the poor, who depend mostly on public hospitals. Until accountability becomes systemic and consistent, the next disaster is not a question of “if” but “when”.
