Reckless negligence andflouting of safety norms by schools and colleges continue to take a grim toll of childrens lives in Tamil Nadu. Although a plethora of safety guidelines have been issued by the Central and state governments following a horrifying fire at the private aided Sri Krishna Saraswathi English Medium School, Kumbakonam in 2004 in which 93 children were charred to death, they are practised more in the breach.
Gruesome reports of young government school children dying after falling into open sumps and pits and college students being stabbed to death, have spread panic and fear within the parents community across the state.
On July 12, 19-year-old N. Logeswari, a second year undergraduate student of the private Kovai Kalaimagal College of Arts and Science (KKCAS) in Coimbatore, lost her life after she was prodded to jump from the second floor of the college building during a disaster preparation drill. A video clip shows trainer G. Arumugam pushing her from a second floor ledge even though she was reluctant to jump. Arumugam has been arrested under s.304 (ii) of the Indian Penal Code (culpable homicide not amounting to murder).

Subsequent investigations by the police have revealed that Arumugam had duped the college management into believing that he was an official of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) under the jurisdiction of the Union ministry of home affairs. Incredibly, Arumugam has been conning managements of private colleges across Tamil Nadu since 2011 using forged NDMA letterheads, fake ID cards and degree certificates. He claims to have conducted over 1,200 disaster management training programmes. Although he didnt raise invoices against colleges, he levied a Rs.50 certification fee per student.

Educationists, the intelligentsia and disaster management experts in Tamil Nadu (pop.72 million) are outraged by the negligence of the KKCAS management in organising a disaster preparedness drill in total violation of NDMA safety guidelines, and without proper approvals. A disaster preparedness mock drill requires permission of the district collector and the drill should be conducted only by trained professionals of the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) or National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) or local fire and rescue services personnel. The least the college principal could have done is to check with the prescribed authorities before assembling 450 students for the training, out of which 20 were selected to jump from the second floor. Moreover, the standard operating procedure for such drills includes a pre-drill briefing and table top discussions on demonstration strategies with the college principal, says Dr. G.P. Ganapathy, professor and director, Centre for Disaster Mitigation and Management, VIT Deemed University, Vellore.

Unsurprisingly, the state government, directorate of collegiate education, Bharathiar University with which KKCAS is affiliated, NDMA and SDRF have distanced themselves from the tragedy as the college hadnt sought their clearance.

Waking up belatedly after tragedy has struck, the state government has said it is preparing detailed safety guidelines for all colleges which make several pre-drill permissions mandatory. Yet even if the proposed guidelines are drawn up, the root problem is the casual attitude of local government authorities and institutional managements towards implementing them.

Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)