The May 18 fatal tragedy at the popular Dubare elephant camp in Kodagu offers a grim reminder of a fact in life: that prevention is better than cure. Cure, after a tragedy has claimed lives, may appear positive to prevent negative outcomes in the future, but what good is it for the dead and those grieving for them as preventive or safety measures were never in place in the first place?
Each of the tragedies has a cause, that being lack credible preventive measures, and non-application of common sense. Take the April 29 Bowring Hospital wall collapse in Shivajinagar that killed seven street vendors during a severe thunderstorm that Bengaluru experienced that evening.
A team led by the Superintendent of Police of Karnataka Lokayukta submitted a report to Lokayukta Justice BS Patil, revealing that the wall collapse could have been prevented had the Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) cleared the encroachment of footpaths and if the already damaged compound wall was restored properly by the erstwhile Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP).
The team found that the height of the collapsed compound wall was 2.8 metres, against the standard norm of 1.5-2.4 metres, as per Indian Building Code, besides there was no retaining structure for the wall, and no weep holes to allow percolation of rainwater into the earth — ultimately leading to its collapse, killing the hapless victims. The deaths could have been prevented, couldn’t they?
In August 1992, a five-year-old girl was snapped up by a tiger in the Bannerghatta National Park during a safari ride when her grandfather slightly propped her up outside the open vehicle’s window for her to have a better look at the wild felines.
Her mauled body was discovered hours later. The tiger, named Bill, was put in isolation as “punishment”. It was only after the tragedy that the park authorities woke up to the threat the tourists were exposed to during open-air viewing of the tigers, and mandated that all safari vehicles have protective wire mesh installed.
It is easy to blame the grandfather: “Why did he prop up the little girl?” one could ask. But are tourists supposed to be familiar with the behaviour of animals that are lesser known to them in flesh-and-blood? Isn’t that why authorities are appointed to put in place preventive measures for tourists’ safety? Could the little girl’s death have been prevented? Yes! Only if the authorities had used their common sense that tigers are after all tigers, and can be dangerous to tourists visiting the park if they got aggressive. Unfortunately, it took the life of a little girl for them to wake up!
The Carlton fire of February 23, 2010, on Old Airport Road, claimed nine lives and left several more living in trauma. It was later found that poor quality aluminium cables were used in place of proper copper cables, allowing a short-circuit to ignite combustible materials in the utility duct of the building.
The smoke trapped the victims as the emergency exit doors were locked and the sprinklers were defunct – a death trap that asphyxiated many of the victims while some jumped to their death, attempting to escape. An overall failure of a preventive mechanism which none ensured that it worked! Could these deaths have been prevented? Only in retrospect, one feels they could have been, but not before the tragedy struck.
The Dubare elephant camp tragedy is just the latest in a long line of avoidable deaths! The cure turned out prohibiting tourists from entering Dubare and other elephant camps. Prevention could have – at this very moment – allowed a three-year-old girl to enjoy the love and care of her mother, who died under an elephant when attacked by another at the camp!
We are left with a depressive feeling of how life – or lives – could have been saved had we done this or that to prevent it. Words of consolation and compensation pay-outs to aggrieved families are post-tragedy actions that are pre-emptive defence mechanisms against criticism of the members of the ruling regimes.
“Fate” and “destiny” have no role to play in these. What plays a tragic role is the lack of prevention. ‘Incapability’ should be the correct name for it, and it is on display, whatever the efforts to veil it.
There is a long-lived saying that “We learn from mistakes we make, and ensure that they are not repeated”, but what about using logic and common sense to establish prevention ahead of cures to avoid tragedies themselves? For one, tragedies cannot be “cured”!
They have already struck, extinguishing lives. But why wait for curative steps when tragedies can indeed be prevented? And for that, anticipation and common sense need to prevail over everything else!
Nirad Mudur
Resident Editor, Karnataka
niradgmudur@newindianexpress.com