By D N Singh
Now it is easy to feel the highly palpitating nerves of the ruling dispensation in Gujarat. With dates for the Assembly polls about to be announced, the Morbi ghosts are sticking the necks out of the waters of Machchhu river.
No denying the fact that, lapses had been there and some of them were notoriously committed by the district authorities.
Be it re-painting the rusted cables of the suspension bridge or allowing an over crowding on the bridge or, laughably, the contractual assignments were given to companies ( read people) those have nothing to do with such a skilled assignment, but it were all done, and done with reckless ease which the district authorities failed to know or chose not to know.
However, the hospital accommodating the Morbi tragedy patients was getting spruced up on a war-footing because the Prime Minister was scheduled to visit to meet the inmates there.
Even there are rumours doing rounds in a section of the media that, some ruins of the ill-fated bridge are also being re-painted on eve of the said VVIP visit to the Machuchhu tragedy site.
The incident is of very tragic magnitude and the loopholes emerging have even dodged the media lenses. There is no high voltage coverage seen in many major platforms.
A cartoon showed in Social media reveals, as if the journalists’ fraternity lies along the Morbi victims as helpless as never before so, wrapped like a corpse.
All said and done, what has played out itself with a shade of self-mocking dismissal, is the post tragedy window dressings and the damage control measures.
The tragedy has killed many, including some 50 children, thousands bereaved and what is yet another painful bottom reality is, the unnerved media as a whole, which still refuses to read the collage of reality pasted on the walls of Morbi.
Cartoon courtesy thefederal.com
