Compensation

The hospital fire in Kolkata and next steps – any lasting effects ?

True learning from a disaster means that steps are taken to ensure that the reasons for the disaster are learnt, and the possibility of future disasters similar to the existing one are drastically reduced. Somehow, the confidence that we will learn a lot from the disaster does not really seem apparent. The recipe for deaths from most fires in India fall under the following heads:
- Fire safety equipment not installed; or installed and not maintained
- Staff not trained on usage of fire equipment and no senior member who can lead staff in case of fires
- No regular inspection by fire safety officials, or no follow up
- Hazardous materials placed in such a way that they can quickly catch fire
- No proper exit routes in case of a fire
There may be a few others, but these are the common reasons for why fires kill so many people – either from the actual heat of the fire, or from the smoke caused by the fire.
When you consider the deadly fire in a hospital in Kolkata, a lot of the above factors were valid. There was a lot of waste flammable material kept in the basement which was flagged by the Fire Service, but after the hospital asked for some time, there was no follow up.
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High Court strikes down more land acquisition deals by the Noida administration

For many years now, the areas of Noida, Greater Noida, and Noida Extension near the capital city have been the center of a building boom. The many Governments of Uttar Pradesh in the past (run by different political parties such as the BJP, SP, BSP) have all played a part in this building boom, leveraging their closeness to Delhi and meeting the needs of a huge number of people who were bound for the national capital but could not afford to buy homes in Delhi. So, the Government would acquire land and give this to society and builders, who in turn would build a variety of residential units and sell these to an eager crowd of buyers.
Now, one would argue that this is part of development. After all, agriculture is seen as the starting point of economic activity, and in order to progress further, you need to build industry and residential units, and those need land. So, acquiring land for this purpose is necessary, and it would seem that the Government would be in the best position to get into the role of acquiring land and then handing this over to the people doing the building.
However, the recent past in India has been hit by a number of issues related to this very purpose, with land acquisition coming under dispute in a number of states, and the situation seems to scream out for a land acquisition act that promised to be equitable to all. The Congress has not been able to come up with such an Act because of its political issues with its allies, most notably Mamta Banerjee; and it would also seem that the Congress may be delaying such an Act so that it can apply political pressure in the prime state of Uttar Pradesh.
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Farmer’s agitation in Noida gets all the parties involved, but who knows the real issues ?

The ongoing agitation by farmers in the Western Part of Uttar Pradesh is now rocking the entire polity. A few days back, farmers were protesting for a higher amount of compensation / unwilling to surrender their land for commercial purposes in the Greater Noida area of Uttar Pradesh, and as a part of this agitation, there were clashes with the police. The farmers here have a number of retired armymen along with them, and are also fairly active, and as a part of preparing for confrontation, they were prepared with stones, as well as arms. The police swooped down on them, but met active resistance, and in the ensuring clashes, along with the farmers, there were injuries to people on the Government side, including the deaths of 2 policemen. Now, Uttar Pradesh has a police force that is complemented by the PAC (Provincial Armed Constabulary), which is pretty infamous. In an earlier such confrontation, the PAC was attacked, and it went on a rampage. In the current case, one does not really know the composition of the attacking Government forces that went on the rampage in the village of Bhatta Parsaul in the Greater Noida area, whether it was a mix of the PAC and other police forces, but the end result was that the village was cordoned off, the media was not allowed to enter for some time, and when the media came in again, they met a scene where the villagers alleged that the police force went on the rampage, attacking everybody, forcing the menfolk away (to the extent that for the last few days, there were no menfolk to be seen in the village). In addition, the leaders of the agitation farmers was being hunted, with a price being set on his head and information being sought for his arrest.
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