The Hindu Business Line : A faulty system

Last Saturday, the newspapers carried a report of an elderly man who fell off a speeding bus and lay unattended on a crowded Kolkata Street for nearly 30 minutes before he was taken to a government hospital a few metres away. The papers carried photographs showing the man, wearing a shirt and a dhoti, lying on the road with scores of people looking over the roadside railing at him but, of course, none among them coming forward to lend a helping hand.

The injured man was finally admitted to hospital by the police. According to the reports, a police van which was passing by (and which was "returning from another accident scene") stopped and took the man to hospital. The report quoted a police officer as saying: "This area does not fall within our jurisdiction but that does not prevent us from taking him to hospital". The injured man was put into the van and taken to the emergency ward of the hospital where doctors attended to him.

A week earlier, on Sunday evening, a 30-year-old young man was hit by a bus in the Howrah railway station area immediately after having arrived from Bihar - and lay on the road in full view of passers-by and vehicular traffic throughout the night and for the better part of Monday before being taken to the Howrah district hospital which was "500 yards from the accident spot".

One onlooker was quoted as saying: "The man was writhing in pain on the ground, at the base of a road divider . . . and was (pleading) for water in a feeble voice. We gave him water and called the . . . police station. But the cops did not turn up till 4 p.m. on Monday". The police said they were unaware that a "mishap victim was lying on the road" - throughout the night and till late afternoon the next day!

Inaction of civil society

The basic issue here is the inaction on the part of civil society to rush to the aid of someone felled in a road accident, which is a vastly different situation from one where a crowd is numbed into momentary paralysis induced by fear by gun-toting and grenade-brandishing terrorists, say, in a bank, a train compartment or an aircraft.

What is it then that, in the two accident situations recounted above, normal human beings in two localities of Kolkata - which has the well-earned reputation of being a friendly and helpful city - were transformed into mere onlookers (for nearly 20 hours in one instance), with the victims lying on the road for an unconscionably long time?

Surely, destructive politics, which has become the bane of West Bengal, had nothing to do with the two incidents because politicians were not involved. Then why did the Kolkata public react in this uncharacteristic way?

Wary witnesses

One clue to the answer probably lies in the following report on last Saturday's incident, namely, that when the police returned to the spot of the accident after admitting the victim to hospital for an eyewitness account, there was a pronounced unwillingness on the part of those who had come forward to speak to give their names and addresses. As one person reportedly said: "You see I am a student of human rights and understand how important all this is. But my mother is ill. Please spare me".

Spare him from what? Obviously, from the police and court hassle that normally dogs people who have stood witnesses in such cases. If this is indeed so, at least in Kolkata, there is an urgent need to change the way the legal system is applied to "eyewitnesses", etc., if people are to behave in the way they should in cases like these. One wonders whether people elsewhere in the country face the same problem.

RANABIR RAY CHOUDHURY

More Stories on : Accidents | View Point

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
A faulty system

Green in patches

Why not covered agriculture?

The worsening power crisis

Monetary policy and fiscal consolidation

Nation expects transparency

Indira and India

’Other income’

‘Cane truths’