Going to work should not feel like going to battle. But in many Indian factories, it does.
In just over a week, more than 70 workers have died in three big explosions. In a sensitive country, such tragedies would lead to serious thinking and better safety rules. After a chemical leak in Seveso, Italy, in 1976, Europe created strong industrial safety laws. Between 2019 and 2022, the whole European Union had only about 22 industrial accidents a year.
In South Korea, the CEO of a lithium battery company was sentenced yesterday to four years in prison after a factory blast killed 23 workers.
In India, we seem to have become used to such deaths. Last week there was a boiler blast at a Vedanta plant. This week, firecracker factories exploded in Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
These shocks now affect us no more than bus fires that kill hundreds, or road accidents that kill 1.8 lakh people every year. Risk has become normal. When the Kerala cracker unit exploded yesterday, a shoe factory in Delhi was also on fire.
Our capital has seen some of the worst factory accidents, including a 2019 fire that killed 43 workers while they slept. Those were small factories. But even large, modern plants are unsafe. A brand-new HPCL refinery, waiting to be opened, recently went up in flames.
Two things are clear. First, we don’t value life enough. Many factories have no fire exits. Electrical systems are overloaded. Boilers are poorly maintained. Dangerous chemicals are stored carelessly. We have seen this before — remember Bhopal?
Second, the system meant to check safety is weak. In 2020, Delhi had only one inspector for every 973 factories. The auto parts industry is known for accidents that cost workers their hands and fingers. Yet inspections dropped sharply between 2012 and 2020.
We cannot fix a problem if we pretend it doesn’t exist. A 2017 study said 48,000 workers die in job-related accidents in India every year. The government disagreed. Its own data shows only 1,109 deaths on average — but that covers only registered factories.
About 90% of Indian workers are in the informal sector, where conditions are much worse. Even in formal factories, many accidents are never reported because employers, police and hospitals try to “settle” matters quietly.
There’s a reason India is often called one of the most dangerous countries for workers. It’s time we did something about it.
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
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