At least 21 dead, foreign nationals among them, in a fire that gutted a Delhi building overnight. The news hits like a punch to the gut: another industrialised tragedy in a city that dreams of becoming a world-class capital. But let us not reach for platitudes about safety lapses and regulatory failures.
Instead, let us ask a harder question: what does it mean when a civilisation so proud of its ancient wisdom cannot secure the most basic conditions for life? The Victorians, for all their moralising hypocrisy, at least understood that factory fires were a scandal that demanded action. In modern India, we get a statement from the Chief Minister and a flag at half-mast.
The pattern is as predictable as the fall of Rome: each new tragedy, a notch in the decline of responsibility. Foreign nationals are dead, which will surely draw the eyes of the world. But the real scandal is the local indifference, the acceptance of death as a routine cost of doing business.
We have become a nation that mourns in public and ignores in private. Until we treat each factory fire, each building collapse, as a symptom of a deeper rot, we will continue to write these headlines. The gods of history are patient, but they are not kind.
