Chennai: Who’s to be blamed for this?

Chennai: Only on Wednesday did Joint Commissioner (East) Sudhakar issue a stern warning to the student community that they would face stiff punishment if they violated the law. He also issued an appeal to the bus crews to stop the vehicles if any student(s) indulged in rowdyism and disrupted public order.

The officer had said just a phone call to the police control room would rush a patrol vehicle in less than five minutes to the spot. His warning came out loud and clear in the TV news bulletins amid the horrid visuals of the students of the Pachaiyappa’s College rampaging with aruvals on the Poonamalee High Road at
Arumbakkam.

The police should not stop with focusing only on the rowdyism of college heroes.

The seniors at high schools are getting to be just as bad, though they are not known to brandish swords as the college students do. These ‘kids’ in the picture, sent to DC by a worried reader, are riding on the footboards of a bus, some of them hanging precariously from a thin rod fixed to the bus’s windows, which could come off in the rain or if it is already rusted.

Obviously the police’s stern warnings have not sunk into them. But what about the bus crew? Why didn’t they stop the bus and report to the police, instead of allowing the kids to ride so precariously by the window bars.

One of the students can be seen with both his legs in the air as he is unable to get to the footboard.

The bus - route M9M from T’Nagar to AG’s Colony, bearing registration number TN-01-N-8098 - was followed by the reader down the Raj Bhavan Road, the turn towards Guindy railway station down the bridge and beyond.
He could click a few shots on his mobile phone while travelling in the passenger’s seat next to the driver in a car. It was about 3.30 pm; peak time for the educational institutions to ‘set free’ their students for returning home. Safely.

So whose fault is it that scenes such as seen in this photograph are still enacted on Chennai roads? These students in their school uniform could ‘graduate’ to patta-katthis and aruvals when they get into college, unless they are stopped now from this brand of rowdyism performing dangerous circus on and off the bus footboards. It’s sad that JC Sudhakar’s police patrol cars were missing throughout the 30-40 minutes that the bus was on the road with its dangerous load of unruly kids.

It’s just as sad that the government transport corporations do not have enough buses to accommodate the students during the morning and evening peak hours, and let their crews let the students hang on footboards - some of those kids even climbing on to the side of the buses and cling to the window rods.