The main feature of the Kumbakonam fire tragedy, in which 94 children died in the Tamil Nadu town in July 2004, was that it need not have happened. If only laws regulating schools had been enforced, and education officials had been more scrupulous in the discharge of their duties and stopped the private management from running three schools on the same premises and flouting every norm possible, the disaster could have been prevented. It is some consolation that after a much-delayed trial, a district court in Thanjavur has sentenced the school’s founder, >‘Pulavar’ Palanichamy to life imprisonment . He has been found guilty not only of culpable homicide on 94 counts, but also of forging documents that helped his school get undeserving approvals and upgrades in status from time to time. His wife and school correspondent, and the headmistress, along with staff involved in running the noon meal centre in the school, and some officials and staff in the district elementary education office have been given five-year prison terms. The verdict indicates that to some extent the State government had woken up to the real dimensions of the tragedy and did not see this as mere negligence on the part of a cook or her supervisor that led to a kitchen fire engulfing the whole building. Rather, an individual’s avarice, his treatment of education as a business for profiteering, his use of political clout to get things done, and pervasive corruption all made it an enormous crime.
The victims’ parents, who believed substantial justice lay in stringent prison terms for all those involved, were disappointed with the acquittal of 11 persons — three of them teachers and the rest officials — and say >justice has eluded them . They cannot be faulted for feeling that some others who were charged with being party to the flagrant violation of norms have got away. The verdict has come after 10 years, and the main culprit, ‘Pulavar’ Palanichamy, is an octogenarian now. His story contains a lesson for the State, the education sector and parents alike. His education entrepreneurship had been built successfully on deceit and forged documents. He had managed to run three schools in one campus with impunity, with no official holding him to account. A thatched shed, a dimly-lit, narrow stairway, and a collapsible gate that children may not be able to handle easily all indicated an obvious lack of elementary safety, but neither parents nor officials seemed to have taken the threat seriously. The verdict represents a closure of sorts, but >memories of the tragedy caused by greed, corruption and negligence will serve as a reminder that it is not laws alone, but their honest enforcement that can keep children safe in our schools.