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Mean streets

  • 14/04/1995

GRUESOME highway accidents are so common in India that they are routinely relegated to the inside pages of newspapers. But the month of March took, as it were, the cake (see pages 18-19): in the first, which occurred outside Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh, 22 people died of concentrated sulphuric acid burns carried on a truck that was giving them an illegal paid lift. Much worse, on March 12, about 100 people were charred to death at Sendhamangalam village in Tamil Nadu when a tanker carrying an inflammable benzene derivative rammed into a bus while overtaking a tractor trolley with a marriage party and exploded.

Nothing prepares the Indian public for a blast of bureaucratese than a disaster that doesn't lend itself to letting the government off the hook. While the authorities here seek to clear their conscience by showing how meticulous provisions have been made in the Central Motor Vehicles Act of 1989 and the Central Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Rules of 1993, etcetera, the fact remains that the words in the rule book are just words. The rules are observed more in their violation. There is nothing -- nothing -- that regulates transporters from moving hazardous substances by road.

As the report in the accompanying pages shows, even the most basic provisions of the law are not being observed. One of the problems is that virtually every city and mofussil town in the country has units that use what are called hazardous chemicals in their daily functioning, in contravention of zoning laws. The developed countries have laws that strictly govern not only the transfer of such chemicals across thousands of kilometres but within cities. Often at war here are local, state and Union government officials, with the last claiming that the first 2 don't give a damn. That is clearly passing the buck: even the Central government -- the ministries of industry, transport and environment -- has done little to exercise its powers to minimise the many risks, given the dismal state of Indian roads, in carrying hazardous substances from point to point.

The Central Motor Vehicles Act merely lays down the safety requirements on the road. What is evident here is that in a situation where congestion on the roads is growing and the number and volume of hazardous substances -- used more by private parties than the government -- is rapidly multiplying, the safety efforts have to clearly originate from the manufacturer. Ideally, there should be an effort to minimise the distances over which toxic chemicals have to be transported, but geography is often not in consonance with industry. Also, this would mean a clear mapping of producers and users all over the country, and optimum and safe routes of transfer, but clearly nothing of this sort yet exists.

The 2nd essential requirement is that of transporters who have the technical capability to carry out such risky assignments; there are few transporters, however (except in the case of petroleum products which, as the facts clearly show, are not the most lethal consignments on Indian roads), dedicated to the transport of hazardous substances.

An even more important issue is that of the responsibility of the producers and the users. Hazardous substances are labelled hazardous precisely because they routinely endanger people. It is the responsibility of the manufacturers to ensure that their business activities do not kill people. As records show, neither of the 2 trucks carrying chemicals were equipped with the necessary safety facilities, or even warnings. It makes them accomplices to a major crime. Then again, while the law may on paper provide for adequate safeguards to be taken in transit, it is obviously by no means comprehensive in identifying liabilities: it does not make violation very difficult and expensive, the 2 most punitive deterrents.

Finally, despite the Act, little has happened in India to improve post-accident emergency relief. As reports from Muzaffarnagar point out, even the medical team that belatedly arrived on the scene had not a clue about what should not be done; as a result, they ended up aggravating the tragedy, dumping water and milk on people burning with acid.

The transport of chemicals in India is slated to jump from 4.5 million tonnes in 1982-83 to about 12 million tonnes by the turn of the century; that of the petroleum products is set to double during the same period. Given this scenario and the unpreparedness of both government and industry to monitor the growth, it can be nobody's case that accidents involving them will not rise, too. This is taking a dark view of things, but the only thing that can be done is to streamline and modernise ways of minimising the fallout from the accidents.

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