While incidents of rape, murder and other bizarre crimes get the attention required from media and civil society, similar concern is rarely expressed about deaths caused by industrial mishaps, such as the one that took place in Andhra Pradesh on 21 August. Seventeen workers died and several others were injured in a blast that took place in a pharmaceutical unit’s chemical reactor. Such incidents need to be thoroughly investigated not just to know the immediate cause, but also the reasons behind the failure. Was it a maintenance failure, or an operational one? Were the safety protocols identified and pursued, or were they neglected due to poor management? Will the inquiry conducted by the authorities be able to identify the shortcomings? Will the report be made public and not remain under wraps in the manner of the Hema Committee report in Kerala?
It is a fact that the manufacturing sector in India is more or less taken for granted, not just in planning the economy, but also in the attention it gets. This may be because the share of the sector in revenue generation has declined as compared to the services sector. State governments are eager to provide facilities to investors in specially established economic zones but do not pay much attention to workers’ well-being. While unionisation in the past had impeded the entrepreneurial spirit in this sector, its relative weakening has led to the neglect of workers’ well-being. This has been exacerbated by most workers belonging to the migrant category and not being adequately trained. Management practices, too, focus on increasing productivity at the cost of everything else.
It is, of course, a transient phase and, hopefully, with a pick-up in manufacturing and healthy competition, there will be improvement in conditions overall. In the meanwhile, however, it is the responsibility of governments to keep up with the times and update regulations, which in most cases even go back a century. The effort should be made to ensure that workers in these industries are not reduced to wage-slaves through exploitative practices. Apart from ensuring availability of safety protocols and equipment related to the kind of production being undertaken, the close presence of fire-fighting stations and emergency medical aid should be established. The authorities in Uttarakhand should take this latest incident as a warning sign and conduct an audit of its industrial units and do the needful in upgrading facilities as required. Such a step would go a long way in boosting the state’s economy. Nothing is more productive than a safe, skilled and happy workforce.
