How can the loss of life be compensated? While the law continues to grapple with this question, the philosophical underpinnings are even more complex. While risk and injury form the bedrock of the idea of compensation, the brazen normalisation of negligence is causing grave systemic and societal harm. Compensation is often used as a de facto response to anything that could be avoided but was not.
In India, the first response to any man-made tragedy, like the fire in a
How can the loss of life be compensated? While the law continues to grapple with this question, the philosophical underpinnings are even more complex. While risk and injury form the bedrock of the idea of compensation, the brazen normalisation of negligence is causing grave systemic and societal harm. Compensation is often used as a de facto response to anything that could be avoided but was not.
In India, the first response to any man-made tragedy, like the fire in a bed and breakfast establishment in Delhi’s Malviya Nagar on Wednesday that claimed more than 20 lives, is the announcement of monetary compensation from the government. In disaster after disaster, victims get sops in the name of compensation instead of any systemic changes or infrastructural overhauls.
Worse still, the alacrity with which the compensation is announced goes missing at the time of disbursement. The Delhi high court has recently sought policy over prompt grant of compensation in the cases of lives lost due to negligence of public authorities, but there is a larger, deeper problem.
Compensation is treated not as a penalty for neglecting processes but as the process itself — one that, unfortunately, often punishes the victims. Throwing money, or the promise of it, effectively absolves the culprit. Little comes out of efforts to pin responsibility and usually a junior officer is scapegoated.
Demands for reform need to be sounded in a different register to hold the guilty truly accountable. Moving on to business as usual after paying blood money for tragedies occurring purely due to the confluence of avarice and systemic corruption must stop.
One Subscription.
Get 360° coverage—from daily headlines
to 100 year archives.
Archives
HT App & Website