The irony is not lost on us, even if it is lost on the men who rule us. Indore, the glittering trophy child of the Swachh Bharat Mission, the city that has proudly worn the crown of “India’s Cleanest City” for eight consecutive years, has just handed its citizens a glass of poison.
In Bhagirathpura, over 16 people are dead and many are waiting their turns.
They did not die in a war, nor in a terror attack. They died because the pipes that carry their drinking water and the pipes that carry their filth decided to embrace each other underground—a lethal bureaucratic copulation that the municipal corporation was too busy collecting awards to notice. In the “cleanest” city of a rising superpower, in the year 2026, human beings are dropping dead because they drank sewage. So much for the integrity of this PR exercise of ranking cities.
If this happened in a Sub-Saharan country in the throes of a civil war, the UN would be air-dropping aid. Here, we get a minister asking journalists not to ask “unnecessary” questions.
This is not a tragedy; it is a crime scene. And like all crime scenes in this country, the fingerprints of the state are everywhere, yet nowhere. We have been here before, haven’t we? This script is so tired it practically recites itself.
Do you remember the children of Gorakhpur? They gasped for air and turned blue because a government hospital couldn’t be bothered to pay its oxygen bills. We cried then. We raged. And then we moved on. Do you remember Surat? Young, hopeful students jumped to their deaths from a burning building because the fire department and the municipal bodies had turned a blind eye to illegal constructions. We screamed then. And then we moved on.
And now, look at Gandhinagar. While we were busy moving on, the capital of Gujarat decided to join this macabre parade. A city that boasted a Rs 257-crore investment for a “24/7 water supply” project is now counting typhoid cases instead of blessings. Seventy active cases and counting. A 30-bed paediatric ward in the Civil Hospital has been flung open, not for healing, but to catch the steady stream of children falling sick from the very water the state promised would sustain them. And why? Because in their infinite wisdom, the planners laid the new pipelines right next to the sewer lines. Seven leaks later, the sewage is mixing with the drinking water, and the citizenry is left clutching medical bills. We spend hundreds of crores not to deliver water, but to deliver disease.
The pattern is nauseatingly predictable. A disaster strikes—usually hitting the poor, because the rich can afford RO purifiers and private generators. The bodies pile up. The media descends. And then, the piece de résistance: the arrogance of the elected representative.
When a journalist dared to ask Madhyapradesh Minister Kailash Vijayvargiya about the lack of arrangements and the unpaid bills of the dying poor, he lost his temper. “Don’t ask free questions,” he snapped, reportedly using an expletive that would make a sailor blush. This is the face of our democracy today. A minister, whose salary is paid by the taxes on the very water that killed his constituents, treats accountability as an insult.
Why shouldn’t he? He knows, as does every politician in this communal cesspool we call a democracy, that his seat is safe. This arrogance is not accidental; it is earned. It is earned because we, the people, have stopped voting for governance. We vote for caste. We vote for religion. We vote for freebies. We are quite happy to drink toxic slush and breathe air that tastes like burning tyres, as long as our “side” is winning the culture war on X (formerly Twitter).
The politicians know this. They know they can let children die in hospitals, let fire traps flourish, and let typhoid rage through new pipelines, and come election time, they will toss a few free sacks of grain or stoke a communal fire, and we will line up like sheep to press the button.
The tragedy in Indore—and the outbreak in Gandhinagar—exposes the hollow shell of our “development.” We polish the surface—the streets are swept, the walls are painted, photos of politicians are put in every corner to make us feel grateful for the pittance they give us from our tax money—but the veins of our cities are rotting. Our government hospitals are glorified mortuaries where the poor go to die with dignity, because living with dignity is out of their budget.
The executive has failed us. The legislature is too busy shouting in the well of the house to care. Who is left?
It is high time the courts step in. We are past the point of expecting shame from our politicians. We need the judiciary to take suo motu cognisance of this massacre. Not a committee, not a probe, but a criminal trial of the entire chain of command—from the municipal engineer who ignored the leaks to the minister who thinks questions are “unnecessary.” The government must be forced to pay a compensation so massive that it shakes the treasury. Bankrupt the department if you must, but make them pay. Pay from their provident funds, gratuity, salary and personal wealth and ensure they rot in jail for the rest of their lives.
Until the cost of a citizen’s life becomes higher than the cost of a bribe, nothing will change. If we do not demand this now, look at your children. Look at the water in their glass. Look at the air in their lungs. Today it is Bhagirathpura. Today it is Gandhinagar. Tomorrow, it could be your colony.
The choice is yours—will you be a citizen, or will you just be the next statistic in India’s endless files of apathy?