[Horrific school bus
accidents occur with alarming regularity. At least 14 students died and 21 were
injured in March when a school bus plunged into a canal in the southern state
of Andhra Pradesh. In July, one student died and dozens were injured when their
bus fell into a gorge in Kashmir. And often the accidents are like the one that
killed Japneet — he exited the bus and was crushed beneath its wheels.]
 |
Tauseef Mustafa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
One student was killed and 52 others were injured when their school bus
fell into a gorge in Kashmir in July.
|
NEW DELHI —
On the day Japneet Singh died, his father dressed him neatly in his crisp
school uniform for picture day at his nursery school. At school, Japneet, 4,
smiled shyly for the camera. But he never made it home.
That afternoon, when
Japneet’s grandfather arrived to pick him up at the bus stop, he found him
lying on the roadside in a pool of blood. Japneet’s schoolbooks were scattered
on the ground, and his brother, Parmeet, was kneeling beside Japneet’s crumpled
body, shaking him.
“Get up, Cherry!” Parmeet
implored, calling his brother by his nickname. “Get up!”
Such scenes have become
all too familiar in India, which leads the
world in total traffic fatalities. A startling number of the victims are
schoolchildren.
Horrific school bus
accidents occur with alarming regularity. At least 14 students died and 21 were
injured in March when a school bus plunged into a canal in the southern state
of Andhra Pradesh. In July, one student died and dozens were injured when their
bus fell into a gorge in Kashmir. And often the accidents are like the one that
killed Japneet — he exited the bus and was crushed beneath its wheels.
Experts attribute the
accidents to a deadly combination of bad roads, chaotic traffic, poorly
enforced safeguards, badly trained bus drivers and a lack of political will to
address the problem. Safety analysts also say that the Indian public has failed
to demand safer services.
“There is no public
anger,” said Harman S. Sidhu, president of ArriveSafe, a nonprofit group focused on
improving road safety in India. “It’s accepted as part of India’s road
crashes.”
In any Indian city or
village, schoolchildren can be seen hunched under heavy backpacks in matching
uniforms, dodging traffic as they walk to or from school or a bus stop. India’s
school enrollment has exploded as the country’s economy has taken off, with
elementary schools alone adding about 34 million children in the past eight
years. But the number of vehicles tearing through India’s roads has increased
even more sharply, doubling to 74 million vehicles in the same period. More than
14 million were added last year alone.
This combination of more
students and more cars has resulted in far more accidents. No statistics are
available on school bus accidents or deaths, but overall traffic fatalities
have markedly risen during the past decade. Nearly 134,000 Indians were killed
in traffic accidents in 2010, the most recent year for which government figures
are available.
For many children, the
journey to school is often filled with hazards. Roads are poorly planned and
rarely maintained. Only half are paved. Drivers often lack much formal training
and recklessly navigate through choked city streets. Crosswalks, road signs and
even sidewalks may be missing.
Fifteen years ago, India
enacted its first laws regulating school bus safety, after a Supreme Court
judgment demanded, among other guidelines, that buses have doors that can open
and close, a mechanical device to limit the vehicle’s speed, a qualified
conductor and an experienced, law-abiding driver.
“Now it’s a question of
enforcement,” said Mahesh Chander Mehta, the lawyer who filed the case, noting
that existing regulations are often ignored. “The laws are there. But all over
the country awareness is lacking.”
Ameeta Mulla Wattal,
vice chairwoman of the National
Progressive School Conference, a coalition of 130 schools, said the
lack of enforcement was compounded by a lack of punishment after an accident
occurs. “I’m sure there are hundreds and thousands of schools that don’t follow
it,” Ms. Wattal said of the guidelines. She said that more stringent rules were
needed to address matters like the overcrowding of school buses, which are
currently allowed to be stuffed to one and a half times their capacity.
Bus operators do this to
save money, Ms. Wattal said. “This should be contested,” she said. “It is
ridiculous.”
Safety analysts
emphasize the need for government action but argue that the onus is also on
schools, which need to take safety more seriously. Many schools collect
transportation fees from students and then contract with a private bus operator
to provide the services.
“If there’s a crash, the
school management passes on the responsibility to the bus driver and operator,”
said Mr. Sidhu, president of ArriveSafe. “They pass the buck.”
This year, officials in
the western state of Maharashtra introduced measures to address a spate of bus
accidents. The new proposals called for tougher rules for the licensing of
operators, the replacement of older buses and stricter enforcement to ensure
the installation of devices that limit speed. In response, an association of
school bus owners, complaining of higher costs and calling the measures
impractical, staged a strike.
Moreover, school buses
are only part of the scrambled student transportation network. In the New Delhi
metropolitan area alone, several thousand students cram into vans,
euphemistically referred to as school “cabs.” Others across India are ferried
in auto-rickshaws, a popular three-wheel
vehicle in the country that has no doors, with children often spilling from the
sides.
Arvinder Singh, the
father of the boy killed by his school bus, said he had thought the school bus
was a safer option than the vans and auto-rickshaws. Yet, school and government
officials were callous and apathetic, he said, when he looked to hold someone
accountable after Japneet’s death.
“I handed over my child
to them,” Mr. Singh said on the first anniversary of his son’s death last
month. “It’s basically a trust we give to the school that they’ll keep our
children safe.”
The school bus driver
was arrested, and the case is now in court. Mr. Singh said that the school had
offered him about $5,400 but that he had refused the money, saying he wanted
justice. “I have lost my child,” said Mr. Singh, who plans to start a nonprofit
group committed to child safety. “I know he won’t come back to us. But I don’t
want other parents to suffer like I have.”