India was served a rude wakeup call to its half-baked dreams of resumption of economic activity from the industrial belt located on the outskirts of the serene coastal city of Andhra Pradesh, Vishakapatnam, newly named the executive capital of the state.
The styrene gas leak at a polymers plant operated by South Korean giant LG in Vizag, killed 11 people, including children, and lead to hundreds collapsing on roadsides while attempting to escape. Heart-wrenching pictures and videos emerged but would end up as a blip on the national consciousness radar we will forget it all and learn nothing.
The response was typically Indian, brave but unprepared. There were not enough ambulances to ferry the sick, so police used autorickshaws and motorcycles. Hospitals are unable to handle the sudden surge of the severely sick.
No one knew what to do. There is no rulebook, no trial run, and certainly no process. At best, a madness with some method. Chief minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy did what Indian politicians do declared Rs 1 crore ex gratia for family of those who lost a member.
LG Polymers has now been found in violation of several safety andenvironmental norms, the NGT has imposed an interim fine of Rs 50 crores. But not a single official will lose a job or tried for criminal negligence. Life will resume with nothing changed.
The accident happened even as India was busy debating on when to end the lockdown, split along the axis of lives versus livelihood, a distant carrot has been hanging to assuage our anger at our national economic meltdown American and European manufacturing investments shall shift from China to India.
The vision of scores of companies shifting bases from China leading to creation of lakhs of jobs is a salivating prospect for citizens of a beleaguered broken economy, further crushed to zero level of growth by the coronavirus pandemic and an unprecedented nationwide lockdown.
But rapid industrialisation, however significant, poses a danger of a different kind, the kind India has never learnt to prepare for and prevent, even after Bhopal. Let Vizag be our rude awakening.
