The recent fire at the AMRI Hospital in Kolkata on December 8, 2011, claimed the lives of 98 patients. A similar incident at New Delhi’s Uphaar cinema on June 13, 1997, left 59 people dead and 103 injured. None of these were attributed to sabotage or terrorism.
The Mumbai attacks by Lashkar-e-Tayyaba on November 26, 2008, generally referred to as 26/11, claimed 166 lives and left 293 people injured.

Sabotage of railway tracks by the Maoists on May 30, 2010, derailed the Gyaneswari Express near West Bengal-Jharkhand border, with resultant casualty figures of 140 dead and 290 injured, almost at par with 26/11. These acts were definitely attributable to terrorism.
Cyclone Aila swept ashore from the Bay of Bengal in July 2009 and resulted in more than 275 deaths in India and Bangladesh. It was a natural disaster.
Terrorism, civic accidents and natural disasters — the background and circumstances of all these grim tragedies were diverse, but they shared two common features: heavy casualties and mismanagement in relief operations.
Disasters of various types are a hard fact of everyday occurrence in the country. The instances mentioned earlier are a tiny fractional sample to illustrate some issues.
Disasters generally occur without warning or notice, whether from natural causes as in cyclone Aila in the Bay of Bengal, human failure as at the Japanese nuclear power plant at Fukushima, or terrorist activity as in the Mumbai 26/11 attacks and derailment of the Gyaneswari Express. Whatever be the causative factors, containing the aftershock of such catastrophes requires quick-response disaster management that forms an important element of national security system. Also, it is an important responsibility of the government.
Disaster management is a complex activity which requires rapid mobilisation and quick coordination of personnel, equipment and materials from various sources, both governmental and private, and their concentration at the site of incident or in the affected region.
The most important components of disaster relief missions are engineering, communications and medical personnel and equipment, and the relief teams have to be deployed as rapidly as possible and to the best effect in the worst affected areas.
State governments functioning through their district civil and police administrations are the first responder agencies in any disaster or law and order situation. Rescue and relief operations are structured around the police, fire brigade, home guards and the medical infrastructure of hospitals and ambulances in the area, reinforced with requisitioned civil transport where necessary. They are integrated through the police wireless communications network, existing telephone lines and the ubiquitous cellphone.
Command and control channels are already established in the administrative structures, but their functional efficiencies are variable, depending often on the quicksand of local interests, work cultures and political rivalries. Disaster management at the state level is overwatched and where necessary reinforced with additional resources by the Central government. But the Centre-state relations is yet another area fraught with uncertainties. Where Centre-state relations are adverse, political asymmetries often overshadow functional coordination and working relations even in emergency situations like disaster management.
Horror stories about the appalling medical infrastructure abound in the country and seething public opinion focuses primarily on gross negligence and mismanagement in its many hospitals.
The asymmetric responses of the corporate bureaucracy at AMRI are the tip of the iceberg, though they do provide a fleeting glimpse of the harsh ground realities in the administration and management of the hospital. But what has escaped discussion entirely is the lack of effective oversight and timely enforcement by the government of its own rules and regulations governing public safety, thereby allowing major fire, health and other hazards to exist, often over decades, in educational institutions, hospitals, railway stations, movie theatres and other public facilities run by the public as well as the private sector.
Systemic responses from disaster management and civil defence agencies are also inadequate, and if any lessons have been derived from earlier experiences, these have either not been disseminated or not assimilated/implemented in any manner. Of course, there will be an official commission to investigate the causes of the AMRI fire, which will assimilate inputs from various disaster management agencies, and suggest remedial measures to prevent similar incidents in future. However, to be of any constructive relevance, the report must also reflect the state of progressive implementation and remedial action taken after earlier episodes.
It is often glossed over that functional and effective civil defence and disaster management systems are essential for comprehensive national security.
The long-term implications of multiple systems’ failures experienced during rescue and relief operations at AMRI are indicative of the broader malaise of indifferent governance in all regions of the country.
Civil defence is an essential national function that is mainly implemented at the level of state and local administrations. Most, if not all, of the issues highlighted by the AMRI fire at Kolkata would be applicable countrywide as well, and many of them would find mention in similar reports on other civil catastrophes. It would be safe to assume that these are yet to be implemented.
Though the AMRI tragedy may be considered “Kolkata-centric” let there be no doubt that the state of affairs in most hospitals and other public institutions in the rest of the country would be just as unsatisfactory.

The writer is a former Chief of Army Staff and a former member of Parliament