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STATES: SCHOOL TRANSPORT
Wheels Of Apathy
Why Delhi schoolchildren die in road accidents
with alarming regularity
By Shuchi Sinha
Anita Singh, a class
XII student of Government Senior Secondary School, East of Kailash, lies
in a nursing home in south Delhi with a fractured leg. Her only recollection
of what got her there is that on February 17, she was walking home with
best friend Mamta Nagar from school. A private school bus of S.M. Arya
Public School sped out of control and slammed into them. Mamta was crushed
to death while Anita was injured. Her parents don't know how to break
the news about Mamta, whom she keeps enquiring about.
Mamta and Anita are the latest victims of an
alarming rise in road accidents in Delhi involving school children. Last
year 62 school children were killed in the city in similar accidents.
School transport has become a nightmare for parents while the state Government
faces flak for being largely apathetic. What has gone wrong in India's
capital is typical of problems faced in other metros.
LAPSE 1
The City: Warnings ignored
Delhi received its wake-up call six years ago
when on April 21, 1995 two serious accidents took place within 30 minutes
of each other. In one of them, Nirish Dave, 11, of Delhi Public School,
R.K. Puram, was killed and 26 of his schoolmates injured when their school
bus jumped a traffic light and hit a truck. Soon after, 40 children of
Vasant Valley School were injured when a speeding water tanker rammed
into their bus.
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 LICENCE
TO KILL?
Mamta Nagar (right) was returning from school
on February 17 when she was crushed to death by a school bus (left),
which bystanders later burnt down
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At that point, Delhi's Transport Department
had no guidelines for buses carrying schoolchildren. Soon after, the Institute
of Road Traffic Education (IRTE), a non-profit organisation that works
with the Delhi Police, held a workshop with 39 schools, experts, officials
from the Transport Ministry and the police, bus operators and parents.
A policy for safer transport was developed.
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Anita Singh escaped with a fractured leg in the
same accident
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What happened next? The policy inexplicably went
into cold storage till the next horrifying tragedy: the Wazirabad accident
in 1997 when a school bus fell into the Yamuna river and 28 children were
killed. The Supreme Court then stepped in with a set of guidelines for
school buses: minimum five years of experience for drivers, disqualification
of any driver with even two traffic offences and a speed limit of 40 KMPH
for which speed governors were to be installed in the buses.
Three years later, school buses remain largely
unmonitored. Part of the problem is that of the 4,000-odd school buses
that ply every day, only 1,000 are owned by the Delhi Transport Corporation.
Two-thirds are contracted out by private operators who also use these
vehicles to transport office-goers. It's with the always-in-a-hurry private
buses that the accidents usually occur.
LAPSE 2
The Police: With you. For you. Rarely
The Delhi Police has a slogan: With you. For
you. Always. It's beginning to sound ironic now. Last month a Delhi High
Court bench held that it is schools and the traffic police which must
bear the onus for implementing the guidelines of the apex court. Avers
Shyama Chona, principal, Delhi Public School: "This is a joint responsibility.
The police has to step in. There should be periodic certification of buses
and a cadre of drivers trained just for driving of school buses."
The traffic police go hot under the collar when
they hear such talk. Maxwell Periera, joint commissioner of police (traffic),
asks, "How many schools have even tried to implement the Supreme
Court rules? How can we police the thousands of schools in Delhi?"
His point: he has only about 2,000 traffic policemen for manning the streets
throughout the day. There is no way he can post policemen to monitor buses
plying to 4,000 schools. After sustained criticism, however, the Delhi
Police moved on the job. Sanjay Beniwal, deputy commissioner of police
(traffic), told the high court that the force has identified 227 schools
that are in accident-prone areas and 181 men have already been deployed
to check the problem. Though good, this will clearly not be enough, especially
in the long run.
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