Sivakasi fire: a result of Indians greed for cheap fireworks?

The horrific deaths of over 30 persons due to the fire at a fireworks factory in Sivakasi shows that we have completely decimated institution of governance, said Sunita Narain, director Centre for Science and Environment .

“We have decimated institution of governance,” Sunita Narain told CNN-IBN.

Police in Tamil Nadu have arrested 11 employees of a fireworks factory on Thursday, a day after a massive blaze at the facility in Sivakasi killed 40 workers and injured 60 others.

Narain suggested that the way to to prevent such incidents was to build a new set of regulatory bodies, which has power and is accountable as well.

“We need a new generation of regulatory institutions. For the last 10 years the country has shown that every institution which is suppose to regulate the business of business is treated as inspector-raj,” Narain said.

“You cannot have one or two inspectors in different parts expected to do this volume of work. You cannot expect those inspectors to be so unaccountable and to be so weakened in term of power. A pollution control board inspector, even if he or she is honest, they cannot convict anyone because they don’t have the paraphernalia to collect samples,” she said.

Narain also pointed out how the buyers are also least bothered if a cracker is made adhering to the safety conditions as they are looking for the cheapest product in the market.

“We buy crackers for diwali and we want them as cheap as possible. We do not want to make sure that those crackers meet mandatory safety conditions. We want to make sure we want to have pleasure for cheap, and more we make these things cheap, the more we have Sivakasi type situation,” she said,