बेबाक · Editorial
A bus on the Manendragarh-Kelhari road, a live fence in Moinabad: the cost of everyday neglect
Deaths on roads, beside farm fields and in classrooms are not acts of fate. They follow from safety rules India already has and seldom enforces.
What has happened
In a single news cycle, three incidents in three States have been reported. At least six people were killed and 40 injured when a passenger bus hit a roadside tree on the Manendragarh-Kelhari road in Chhattisgarh's MCB district. Two third-year students of KG Reddy Engineering College died of electrocution in Moinabad mandal of Ranga Reddy district, reportedly after touching live wires strung around a farm field. In Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh, a Class 10 student was seriously injured in an attack inside a school classroom. One report describes the weapon as an electric saw. Another places the incident at a government school in Raptadu and describes the weapon differently.
The common thread
These incidents differ in kind but share a failure: ordinary public spaces were allowed to become lethal. A highway, the edge of a field and a classroom are places where the state's duty of care is clearest. Separately, it has been reported that portions of a classroom roof collapsed at the SC Girls' Residential School in Bonakal mandal of Khammam district, leaving two Class IX students with head injuries. They were taken to a local primary health centre. That incident points to the same gap. India writes safety rules but too rarely enforces them, and official attention too often arrives only after someone is hurt.
The fair objection
The strongest counter-argument should be stated plainly. The country is vast and its roads are crowded. Farmers fence fields because wild animals and stray cattle destroy their crops, and many of them have few cheap alternatives. Schools cannot vet every visitor or every pupil, and a single act of violence may be impossible to foresee. The full facts of each case are not yet established. The Moinabad deaths are described as alleged contact with live wires, and accounts of the Anantapur attack differ between reports. Holding the state responsible for everything risks holding it responsible for nothing.
Why it still fails
Even so, each incident has a known regulatory owner. Bus fitness, driver hours and roadside hazards come under transport departments and road agencies. Electrified fencing on farmland is a matter for power distribution utilities and the district administration, and an illegal live wire is a hazard that can be inspected. School buildings and campus security sit with State education and welfare departments. The Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh announced compensation after the bus crash, which was right. But compensation after a funeral is not a safety policy; it is the bill for not having one.
A way forward
Three steps are feasible within a year. First, every fatal crash should trigger a time-bound technical audit of the vehicle and the stretch of road, and the findings should be published. Second, distribution utilities in Telangana and other States should run seasonal drives against unauthorised electrified fencing. These drives should be combined with subsidised solar fencing that carries only a safe, low current, so that farmers are not left to choose between losing their crops and breaking the law. Third, State education departments should carry out structural and security audits of government and residential schools, and should publish the findings school by school.
Compensation after a funeral is not a safety policy; it is the bill for not having one.
What this editorial rests on
Drawn from our live multi-newsroom feed — read the reporting at source.
An editorial is the considered opinion of the Aad Tak desk, argued from the sourced reporting above and written under our published persona, बेबाक. We name institutions, not parties. If we are wrong, we will say so. How we work →