The Indian Concept of Safety & Security

[pkaran]

Safety

Indians, by and large, are known to be notoriously lethargic when it comes to safety. Scores of cases involving safety failures taking huge tolls and wrecking colossal damages are right in front of us. I present below a few cases to exemplify:

1) Of the 803 railway accidents that took place in a 6-year period (2009-2015) involving 2373 derailments, 38 collusions, 349 level-crossing accidents, 29 fires in trains and 14 accidents on other counts killing 620 people and injuring 1855, a staggering 86.4% or 694 cases were due to Human Failures!

2) Nearly 150,750 persons were killed across India (in 2016) in road accidents, registering an increase of 3.2% over the previous year. Light, Medium and Heavy Trucks, Oil Tankers, Tipper Lorries, the monstrous KSRTC Buses on Kerala roads and several other vehicles are devil incarnate of “Yama”, the Deity of Death roaming freely about to seize his next victim in less than 4 minutes!

Accidents happen only out of unsafe conditions. There are various contributory factors, chief among them being the Quality of Driving Licenses issued in India, further aggravated by an utter lack of enforcement of traffic regulations on our roads. Our Driving Schools should seriously focus on attaining a certain level of “Driving Discipline” among learners which should be the sole criterion for issuing Driving Licences. Additionally, stricter enforcement of traffic regulations aimed at achieving an acceptable level of “Driving Discipline” on our roads can reduce deaths by more than half the present. The current policy of the Traffic Department appears to be “Follow Traffic Rules or Court Disaster” which amounts to nothing but shirking responsibility. Its enforcement is confined, by and large, to ensuring Seat Belts and Helmets.

3) Closer home, we have the Periyar Lake tragedy killing 45 tourists, the Vembanad Lake tragedy killing 29 passengers, the Boat tragedy near Thettekkad killing 15 children, the Puttingal Temple Fire tragedy killing 111 people – all attributable to not taking safety seriously.

It is high time we introduced the Basic Safety standards as well as Survival Skills in our school curriculum.

Security

Security is erroneously perceived to be the privilege of the Legislators, the ultra rich and the elite few while, in just one year (2016), there were (across India):

30,450 Murders
49,667 Murder Attempts
88,008 Kidnap & Abductions
38,947 Rapes
31,906 Robberies
11,196 Cases of Arson
111,746 Cases of Burglary
11,615 Extortions
339,854 Crimes against Women
104,705 Crimes against Children
21,410 Crimes against Senior Citizens

Kerala continues to take the leadership position in crimes among all federal states with 6,10,365 crimes in 2014, and 6,53,408 crimes in 2015 and 7,07,870 crimes in 2016.

Kerala is known as "Gods' own Country" OR is it DOGS' OWN COUNTRY?