It is not hard to understand the anger of the people in Petlawad, in Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh, which was the scene of a terrible explosion in the local market which claimed nearly a hundred innocent lives last Saturday. If Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan faced angry protests from the local people when he visited the blast site a day later, it was only to be expected. For, allowing the storage of highly explosive materials, including gelatin sticks and other such explosives, in a shop in a busy market on the town’s main road was itself an act of criminal neglect. The owners of the shop were willfully neglectful in keeping such highly hazardous materials in a busy market. That a local eatery abutted the shop and whose patrons were among the dead is also proof of the way basic safety provisions were violated with impunity. The three-storey building housing the shop where the explosives were stockpiled and an adjoining building were completely destroyed. Even if there was a valid license to store such explosive materials for blasting mines, wells and other rocky surfaces, he had no business to play with the lives of innocent people by storing them in a shop rather than in a safe and steel and concrete reinforced vault far away from the busy marketplace. Complicity of the local authorities which are supposed to ensure the observance of the prescribed safety procedures in the storage and sale of explosives is of course undeniable. As a rule, the authorities do have in place all the required do’s and don’ts governing the storage and sale of such highly dangerous materials but unfortunately once the initial permissions are granted there are no periodic checks to ensure that these are being followed. (For instance, not many people would know that the license to run a chemist shop requires the presence of a qualified person on the premises but a vast majority of chemist shops, after initially listing the name of such a person, manage the operations without one. Check your neighbourhood to find that the local grocer or photocopier has overnight turned into a flourishing chemist.) Small wonder then the owners of the shop where the blasts took place causing a horrendous human tragedy have gone underground. Expectedly, the Opposition Congress has rushed to claim that the store-owners had close links with the BJP, a charge denied by the ruling party. But whether it is the Bhopal Gas leak case, which is the world’s biggest industrial accident, or the Jhabua blast last Saturday, there is a terrible lack of respect for human life in the country. Neither the operators of the Bhopal-based Union Carbide plant or the owners of the shop selling explosives in Jhabua seemed a wee-bit mindful of the highly hazardous nature of their businesses. Cutting corners with safety rules is the norm with the high and low in the land. In the case of the Bhopal gas leak, factory inspectors, particularly the boiler inspectors, were amiss in not doing their job properly. In the case of the Jhabua blasts, the concerned department which was supposed to monitor the sale of gelatin sticks and detonators was guilty of dereliction of duty.
Whether or not the storeowners are caught and punished, the Madhya Pradesh Government and the concerned Central government department dealing with inflammable substances and explosives must penalise those who were duty-bound to monitor the sale of these explosives. Suspending the local Station House Officer is hardly a corrective. Illegal sale and stockpiling of explosives is a country-wide problem since prescribed procedures are violated with impunity everywhere. Monitoring the sale of explosives for valid uses such as for sinking wells or blasting hills for roads, etc., should have become relatively easier with the computerisation of the government departments. Unfortunately, modern technology is unable to change the irresponsible and corrupt ways of the officialdom. Meanwhile, a compensation of two lakh rupees to the next of kin of the victims announced by the Madhya Pradesh Government needs to be doubled. Human life cannot be considered so cheap, even if most of the people who died were unskilled labourers.
