NEW DELHI: Fires, bombings and poisonings, the result of lax safety regulations, ethnic violence and an overcrowded transportation system, have killed more than 280 people in recent days,
During fire safety week this week, a train explosion burned 100 passengers to death in the east. Blazes in the capital destroyed 600 shops, 1,300 shacks and the capital’s only convention center.
In faraway Assam state, a wild fire ripped through 1,000 houses and three saw mills.
A food poisoning outbreak during a marriage engagement party killed 150 people near Lucknow, in the north. Another outbreak near Rajkot, in the west, hospitalized 400.
The string of disasters has set India wondering. Asked one leading social scientist, Bhabani Sen Gupta, “what is going on?”
With 880 million people on a land mass about one third the size of the United States; India is prone to major disasters. Population density reaches more than 1,600 per square mile in New Delhi and five times that in the slums of Bombay and Calcutta.
More than 10 million people ride trains every day and passenger cars are jammed with people often perching on the roofs. Colorful buses also move millions a day.
Add ethnic violence to this overtaxed infrastructure and the formula can become explosive.
Article extracted from this publication >> April 27, 1990
