There is a dangerous monotony in the way history repeats itself, at least when it comes to devastating boat tragedies in Kerala.
The boat tragedy at Thooval Theeram near Tanur in Malappuram that has taken 22 lives is a near reflection of what happened 14 years ago in 2009 when 46 people drowned when a brand new KTDC double-decker boat overturned in the middle of Thekkady lake near Mullaperiyar dam, except that in Tanur the victims were ordinary passengers, mostly coastal folk, and in Thekkady it were tourists.
The Thekkady mishap seemed eerily similar, but greater in scale, to what happened in 2007 at Thattekad near Kochi. In Thattekkad, however, 15 of the 18 who drowned were schoolchildren from Angamaly who were returning from a trip to Thattekad Bird Sanctuary.
And Thattekkad seemed a repeat of what happened five years earlier at Kumarakom, except that in the 2002 Kumarakom tragedy, like now in Tanur, the 29 victims were ordinary folks, mostly job seekers rushing to a PSC test venue.
Land of persistent drowning
The types of boats and passengers involved were different but the similarity lies in the multiple man-made factors that startlingly came together in all these cases to precipitate these tragedies: Overcrowding, faulty boat design, absence of life jackets and life buoys, disrepair and official indifference.
In a land where these factors are allowed to persist, as if it is peopled by a tribe cursed with amnesia, great catastrophes become as routine and as natural an occurrence as heat waves during summer. There is suffering, but no shock.
Here is what Justice K Narayana Kurup, who probed into the circumstances that led to the Kumarakom boat tragedy in 2002, observed in his Commission of Inquiry report: “Normally accidents are unbelievable. But in the instant case, on the facts and circumstances brought on record, namely the condition of the vessel, its shoddy maintenance, absence of navigational aids, lack of demarcation and upkeep of the channel, overloading and negligent conduct of the crew, it is just the opposite. The inevitable has happened,” he said.
Deadly excesses
Just before sunrise on July 27, 2002, over 250 passengers had boarded a Kerala State Water Transport Department (KSWTD) boat from the Muhamma boat jetty in Alappuzha. Most were travelling to appear for the last grade PSC test at a centre in Kottayam at 10am. In about 25 minutes, the boat sank drowning 29. The boat had the capacity to hold only 101 passengers.
If we have conspired to make tragedies inevitable, like Justice Narayana Kurup observed, no one can stop them from happening. Five years later, at Thattekkad, children and teachers, 35 of them, were packed in a private picnic vessel made to hold just six. It sank within 10 minutes of the start.
In 2009, at Thekkady, the double-decker KTDC boat carried 92 passengers when its maximum passenger capacity was 75. Now at Tanur, nearly 50 passengers were stuffed into a double-decker fibre-glass private vessel that had the capacity to take just 25 passengers.
Unfit to float
In the case of the KSWTD boat that began its early morning trip from Muhamma jetty, the boat crew cannot be entirely blamed as the passengers, mostly young job aspirants desperate to reach the PSC test venue on time, argued and shouted and fought back the crew who tried to keep them out. On usual days, this service hardly had 75 passengers.
Nonetheless, the KSWTD cannot absolve itself of blame as the vessel had been voyaging with an untended large leak. In the wee hours of July 27, 2002, when the passengers jostled with each other to enter, the boat was already filled with water. It was clear that the public transport boat had failed to secure its regular fitness certificate.
Forget fitness certificates, the vessel that sank five years later at Thattekad did not even have a licence. Still, it was allowed to take children. It is as if disaster shakes people into complacency than introspection.
Power-fattened babus
The history of the KTDC's double-decker boat that capsized in Thekkady lake two years later in 2009 is far worse. It was constructed in blatant violation of tender norms and the law of the land.
The Chief Inspector of Boat (CIB) did not conduct a proper stability test, and still said the boat was stable. He did not insist on a classification certificate issued by the India Registrar of Shipping, and instead issued an inspection certificate without obtaining the strength and sea-worthiness certificate from an appropriate authority under the Travancore Public Canals and Public Ferries Rules.
As for the top honchos of KTDC and the Tourism Directorate - most notably the then tourism director M Sivasankar (now entangled in the gold smuggling scandal) and the then tourism planning officer (who was conferred IAS and acquired late-career fame as Kozhikode collector during the Nipah outbreak) - they accepted the boat offered to them in the most unthinking and careless fashion: without the classification and stability certificates.
Men who drowned a ship
These top officers also were supposed to appoint a 'naval architect' and get 'stage inspection reports' from the builders during various phases of the boat's manufacture before they gave the go ahead. But these highly decorated officers were content to launch the boat not just without stability and classification certificates but also without the mandatory stage inspection reports.
Since the officials were least bothered, the builder freely made changes to the original plan of the boat without the approval of the designer.
Result: The vessel was unstable and had various design faults, especially a slight but crooked slant to the right, that eventually sank the boat within four months of its launch.
The boat that capsized at Tanur was a fishing vessel retrofitted haphazardly to look like a double-decked picnic vessel.
It was official apathy, and the need to teach negligent officials a lesson, that the Narayana Kurup Commission talked about in 2003. “The tragic incident is a sequel to the departmental officials flouting all rules of safety with impunity - plying boats which are leaky and without fitness certificates for years together - with scant regard for human life and the phenomenon becoming too frequent, time has come to send a firm message that compromising public safety will no longer be tolerated and all those responsible for violating safety shall be held accountable.”
No one was held accountable and in 2009, Justice E Mytheenkunju Commission of Inquiry into the Thekkady disaster set down his displeasure of top bureaucrats with greater scorn. “Their conduct in the matter is not only contemptuous but also even far below the standard of low class government servants,” Justice Mytheenkunju said in his report submitted in 2011.
Their smugness bewildered the judge. But here is what is more bewildering: None of these smug officials were officially pulled up.
Profits at the cost of life
In all these cases, there was one more thing in common: None of these boats had life jackets or the circular lifebuoys. All the commissions of inquiry - Narayana Kurup (Kumarakom), Pareed Kutty (Thattekad) and Mytheenkunju (Thekkady) - have insisted on the need to make life jackets and life buoys mandatory. Pareed Kutty went so far as to say that swimming should be part of school curriculum.
When even the newly-minted government-owned KTDC boat that toppled over in the middle of Thekkady lake refused to have life jackets, how can it be expected in a boat run by a Tanur businessman who values profit over safety.
