The Indian capital's fire safety regulations have been reduced to ash, literally and metaphorically, after a blaze tore through a commercial building in Delhi, claiming 21 lives, including foreign nationals. The building, a labyrinthine death trap of illegal wiring and rolled eyes at code enforcement, was the sort of structure that makes health and safety inspectors everywhere reach for the gin.
Flames, like impatient gods, consumed the building in the dead of night, leaving behind a charred monument to negligence. Among the victims were two Nepalese and one Bangladeshi national, as if the universe needed to add a travel advisory to an already diabolical tragedy. The survivors' stories are the usual dirge: smoke-filled staircases, locked exits, and the sudden realisation that the firefighting equipment was purely decorative.
Local officials, in a move that has become a tragic national tradition, have promised a thorough investigation. They will form a committee, likely of retired civil servants with extensive experience in forming committees. The committee will produce a report, which will be filed away in a dusty cabinet, just as the previous 47 reports on Delhi's fire safety have been.
Meanwhile, the owners of the building are in custody, their expressions ones of baffled innocence. They had, after all, paid off the appropriate inspectors. The disconnect between their reality and the one where 21 people are dead is a chasm that could swallow a dozen inquiry panels.
This latest conflagration has sparked the usual season of outrage. Columnists will pen furious pieces. Politicians will cut ribbons on new safety initiatives. And landlords will quietly rewire their buildings with the same dodgy contractors, secure in the knowledge that public memory is shorter than the average lifespan of an Indian fire escape.
As for the dead, they will become statistics, recited at subsequent tragedies, their names dust on the lips of the outraged. The foreign nationals will be repatriated in flag-draped coffins. The investigation will be a farce. The only thing that remains unwavering is the deep-seated, near-spiritual belief that regulations are for other people.
So raise a glass, toast the martyrs of incompetence, and pray that your own building's extinguisher isn't just a balaclava for a lethal oversight. For in Delhi, the greatest fire hazard is not the flames, but the systemic arson of indifference.
