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Jun 5, 20236 min read

The Marathon of Tragedies: whose onus is it?

RECALLING THE MULTIFARIOUS DISASTERS DURING THE MODI REGIME

Posted on 05/06/2023 (GMT 17:01 hrs)

OBMA deeply mourns the extremely tragic loss of human lives in the catastrophic and horrifying Balasore Train Incident. We do not have enough words to express our deepest grief at this darkest hour in India’s history.


However, a question arises in this context:

  1. Who is to be held responsible or accountable for this unprecedented tragedy? Or was it just an accident?

It was not quite an accident is evidently clear from the following relevant points regarding the issue:

  1. The railway tracks have not been changed since long, no infrastructural development in Railways could be observed in the past decades. These age-old tracks cannot always bear the burden of the trains.

  2. There are many job-positions in the railways that are still left vacant. Railways/Government of India is not hiring anyone for these job-roles. Due to this, there is no coordination occurring between the various railway personnel who can indicate impending disaster at the correct time, thus avoid it.

  3. The Government said that it has established certain “suraksa kavach” (anti-collision system for trains) ⤡ to maintain security and safety of all in the railway journeys. Why did not such kavach work in this case? Is it just a make-believe simulation like Regan’s “Iron Dome or Star Wars Initiative” ⤡⤡? (Cf. India’s Mission Shakti in 2019 imitated or aped Regan’s format in terms of a simulated assertion of violent power. Did the Gulf War really occur? Was it “real”? Deaths were real! ⤡)

We must recall the two instances of moral responsibility in this context:

  1. In 1963, Lal Bahadur Shastri, the then railway minister, who resigned from office following a major train accident of the Udyan Abha Toofan Express, which killed 100+ passengers;

  2. Mr. Nitish Kumar resigned as Railway Minister when a train accident had occurred in West Bengal’s Gaisal in 1999 under the regime of Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Dear Mr. Ashwini Vaishnaw, Hon. Railway Minister, cannot you learn something from such instances? We are ashamed!

In connection to this particular incident, one might logically recall the recent collapse of the Morbi Bridge in Gujarat that also led to loss of many innocent lives. Mere compensation for the families of the deceased persons will not be enough until and unless the government is held accountable as to why it involved inexperienced, amateurish engineers for the reconstruction of the said bridge. Isn’t the government accountable in this matter, too?

The “Mahakal Lok Corridor” with the statues of the Sapta Rishis also collapsed quite recently. Who is to be blamed? Isn’t the corrupt government responsible in this situation, too? Not to talk of the Joshimath collapse, news about which is being suppressed by the government.

Our wrestlers along with the farmers are on the roads, prepared to submerge their medals into the Ganges or go for Fast until death. What is the government doing? Is it deaf⤡? Why is the whole administrative machinery defending a rapist criminal by going against our sports medallists? Where did the government’s so-called “nationalist” agenda vanish? Why is it still acting mute?

It is to be noted in this regard that our paradoxical prime minister is solely concerned with his egoistic enrichment and enjoyment while the mass suffers from tragic incidents and disasters like this, be it physical disasters, economic bankruptcies, extreme climatic changes etc. Our dear “king” seems to be unbothered, indifferent and unconcerned about the plight of his citizens!

In order to support this statement of ours, we are citing two recent statements made by the former governor of J&K and by the husband of our Finance Minister:

  1. Satyapal Malik: PM Modi is ignorant, doesn’t know anything and does not hate corruption.


Moreover, as pointed out by the above interview, one can paraphrase the statement (in fact, it is a revelation) of Mr. Malik that BJP’s 2019 Lok Sabha election victory had depended on the deaths of forty Indian soldiers—Modi just encashed the sentiments of the patriotic Indian citizens by the pre-planned deaths of the 40 Indian soldiers—it is matter of shame that occupying a Godi (throne, rhymes with Modi) at the cost of the blood of those 40 youths.




  1. Parakal Prabhakar⤡ (a distinguished social scientist; his secondary identity: he is the husband of Mrs. Nirmala Sitharaman): “Modi is staggeringly incompetent.”


In the last nine years Modi has not faced press conferences except only one, where Mr. Amit Shah acted as a spokesperson. Mr. Modi was then looking like a blunt moron.


These are the few instances of BJP’s (mis)deeds—all these have led us to a sick society—a wounded civilization⤡!

Is India turning into a death valley where the people in power are unaccountably thriving through a killer instinct?

Therefore, we demand “Right to Recall” (along with “Proportional Representation” in the Lok Sabha so that none can claim majority after getting merely 37% first-past-the-post-votes) as a citizens’ right, when they are living within totalitarian crony oligarchy (hence, in effect, we are proposing direct participatory democracy instead of centralized representative democracy). We, the people of secular India, do not expect dialogic democracy from the shameless, crony richest party of India as they are so cruel that they do not even spare their own followers: Accidental “Deaths” (?) of some Hindutvavadi Activists (Morte accidentale di Hindutvavadi Attivisti) VIEW HERE ⤡.

See also:

APPENDIX: THE CRISIS OF SPEED CAPITALISM

“The railways, too, have spread the bubonic plague. Without them, the masses could not move from place to place. They are the carriers of plague germs. Formerly we had natural segregation. Railways have also increased the frequency of famines because, owing to facility of means of locomotion, people sell out their grain and it is sent to the dearest markets. People become careless and so the pressure of famine increases. Railways accentuate the evil nature of man: Bad men fulfil their evil designs with greater rapidity. The holy places of India have become unholy. Formerly, people went to these places with very great difficulty. Generally, therefore, only the real devotees visited such places. Nowadays rogues visit them in order to practise their roguery.”

“Good travels at a snail’s pace – it can, therefore, have little to do with the railways. Those who want to do good are not selfish, they are not in a hurry, they know that to impregnate people with good requires a long time. But evil has wings. To build a house takes time. Its destruction takes none. So the railways can become a distributing agency for the evil one only. It may be a debatable matter whether railways spread famines, but it is beyond dispute that they propagate evil.”

“I do not wish to suggest that because we were one nation we had no differences, but it is submitted that our leading men travelled throughout India either on foot or in bullock-carts. They learned one another’s languages and there was no aloofness between them. What do you think could have been the intention of those farseeing ancestors of ours who established Setubandha (Rameshwar) in the South, Jagannath in the East and Hardwar in the North as places of pilgrimage? You will admit they were no fools. They knew that worship of God could have been performed just as well at home. They taught us that those whose hearts were aglow with righteousness had the Ganges in their own homes. But they saw that India was one undivided land so made by nature. They, therefore, argued that it must be one nation. Arguing thus, they established holy places in various parts of India, and fired the people with an idea of nationality in a manner unknown in other parts of the world. And we Indians are one as no two Englishmen are. Only you and I and others who consider ourselves civilized and superior persons imagine that we are many nations. It was after the advent of railways that we began to believe in distinctions, and you are at liberty now to say that it is through the railways that we are beginning to abolish those distinctions. An opium-eater may argue the advantage of opium-eating from the fact that he began to understand the evil of the opium habit after having eaten it. I would ask you to consider well what I had said on the railways.”

EXCERPTS FROM M. K. GANDHI’S “HIND SWARAJ” (1915)

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