Kumbakonam school tragedy isn’t the only one
Ten years after 94 children were charred to death in Kumbakonam, Tamil Nadu, after their school building caught fire, the process of justice has finally begun to deliver. On Wednesday, the Thanjavur Principal District and Sessions Court convicted 10 persons, including the school's founder who has been sentenced to life and fined Rs 51.65 lakh. Of course, this will not be the last word in the case, as the convicted will appeal against the verdict; also, the victims' families can be expected to move a higher court as they are unsatisfied not only with the quantum of punishment handed down to the guilty but also with the acquittal of the 11 other accused. Still, the progress is notable given that it took more than eight years for the trial to even begin. Ultimately, the legal process must take the case to its logical conclusion and those responsible for this gruesome tragedy — from members of the school management, staff and teachers, to Government officials — must be held responsible. The State Government-initiated committee which investigated the tragedy found that the school fire as well as the consequent high death toll were a result of multiple failures by almost every stakeholder. The school management, for one, seemed to have broken or twisted rules in the book: With more than 900 students, registered with three different institutions, all operating from the same premises, the school was over-crowded. Forget about mandatory fire extinguishers, the classrooms as well as the school kitchen had thatched roofs. And, there were no emergency exits. Equally responsible for the mess were Government officials who didn't care to ensure compliance. The chartered engineer had given a stability certificate to the school building without inspection; the health officer had similarly issued a sanitation certificate; and the education department didn't seem perturbed that the institute was functioning for six years without proper recognition. (On accident day, students from one institute had been shifted to another — read, locked away in another room — to window-dress the student-teacher ratio for visiting officials.) The teachers too were to blame. Some say they fled, leaving the little ones to fend for themselves, others say the teachers thought nothing unusual about the billowing smoke from the kitchen and prohibited students from escaping.
While the high number of casualties in Tamil Nadu had shocked the nation, such accidents are unfortunately fairly routine across the country. On July 28, at least five students of an ashram school in Wada taluka in Maharashtra were injured when a school wall collapsed. In 2012, six children were killed when the roof of their school collapsed in Bijnor district of Uttar Pradesh. Before that, in 2010, 18 died when their school building collapsed in Uttarakhand following heavy rains. Criminal callousness and an unsatiable greed for profit, together breed utter disregard for human life.