A Fallen Tree in Mumbai to Deadly Lucknow Fire: When Children Die & No One Pays

The death of a child in India neither given acknowledgment that it is tragic, nor a banal entry in any ledger.

Be it the Mumbai tree falling incident or the Lucknow fire, there is no shortage of evidence of administrative negligence. Or is it indifference? Or something else?

(Image: Aroop Mishra/The Quint)

A mother having to confront the death of her child, her baby, to hold the child's lifeless body to her bosom and wail—there is no greater pain, no greater tragedy.  

Cinema, literature, mythology are full of mothers whose grief and rage over the death of her children destroys not just empires, but Gods. A quote often misattributed to Stalin—that the death of a single man is a tragedy and that of millions a statistic—is something which many cynical people are likely to believe.  

In India, we witness mothers being robbed of the power of their grief and rage. We witness their pain being made impotent, day by day, child by child.  

In India, we witness how the event of a death of a child is accorded neither the acknowledgment that it is tragic, nor a banal entry in any ledger. 

In Mumbai, 11-year-old Vihaan was killed when a tree fell on the bus in which he was travelling. A picture of his mother clinging to his cricket bat has been published by a few newspapers.

How Accountability Lost its Meaning

Maharashtra Cabinet Minister for Social Justice and Shinde-Sena MLA Sanjay Pandurang Shirsat said, "How was one to know that the tree was going to fall? Falling of a tree or lightning is not in our hands. Maybe there were heavy winds." 

BMC officials disagree. Some are quoted saying, "In the period of six months from October 2024 to March 2025, the BMC garden department had issued 328 notices to the roads department intimating that a total of 2,458 across 24 wards have been damaged due to road excavation. "This was when the road concretisation work was carried in full swing. The number possibly must have doubled now. We can say all these damaged trees with weak roots are dangerous, internally weak and prone to fall..." 

In Lucknow, a fire kills 15, most of them students. A mother stands outside screaming, "Mujhe jaane do apne bete ke paas." Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath is able to say to the face of a mother who has just lost her child, "Bhashan kam dein, bhashan sunne ke mood mein nahin hain." (Don't lecture me, I am not in the mood for listening to lectures.) 

There is no shortage of evidence of administrative negligence, or is it indifference? Or a third thing? To answer this, we must ask a different question. How are the likes of Shirsat and Adityanath able to be so cruel so brazenly? They are politicians. Politicians are skilled at feigning sympathy. Their livelihoods depend on it. Are their statements mistakes made in the moment or something more? 

Once upon a time, when a tragedy like this would happen, political accountability was highly likely. Not because politicians had more integrity or were more moral, but because incentives were different. In the absence of resignation, the political party would suffer for being seen as lacking empathy and shame .

A resignation from the minister was seen as accountability. In 2015, when confronted about Sushma Swaraj and Vasundhra Raje helping Lalit Modi escape the Enforcement Directorate, Union Minister Rajnath Singh said"There will be no resignation. This is not the UPA government, this is the NDA government." 

What is a tragedy for the mothers of Vihaan and those who died in the fire in Lucknow, or the parents of those who killed themselves after the leaked NEET papers is a trophy for Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) politicians. The death of these children doesn't pose a risk to these politicians, it in fact fortifies their power. Children die, no politician has to resign, and in fact can get away with telling the grieving that it isn't their fault that trees fall or that they aren't interested in lectures. Look at them. Not a scratch on their power. What message does this send across? No matter what happens, no matter what blunder they make, nothing threatens them.  

The Cost of Speaking Against Power

You witness this, when you see the father of the young man killed by American missiles say he supports BJP, instead of asking for accountability. The father of the man who drowned in Noida while countless government and police officials stood and watched also expressed support for BJP. The cousin of one of the students who perished in the fire in Lucknow also expressed support. 

It would be a mistake to think that these people who are expressing support even after a tragedy has visited them, one occasioned by the government's omissions, are simply blind or radicalised or irrational. They are none of these things. They continue to express support because not doing so would leave them very lonely.  

They would be able to speak up against the government, to express rage and grief if the majority of the press still worked like it used to. It doesn’t.

If they express anger, they won't be speaking for their dead child. They will be speaking against India. BJP politicians are India. Their dead child is not and was not India. They are not India. Their pain is not India. The power of BJP politicians is India.  

Which is why countless 'journalists' and influencers will jump in to protect not the grieving citizen but the politician and say anything and everything to deflect accountability.  

Coming back to the question—is it negligence, indifference, or something else? Every State and society asks and answers two questions. The first: who can kill without consequence? The second, who can be killed without consequence? Tyrants expand both categories, and constitutionalists seek to shrink them.  

When someone who can kill without consequence or let people die without consequence does so, they are not being negligent. They are complicit at best and murderers at worst. Anyone who is on the side of the BJP can kill or let die without consequence. Countless mothers may grieve. Those mothers are not Bharat Mata. The BJP is Bharat Mata, and the BJP must be and will be made and kept powerful, even if by mocking the mourning mothers to their face. 

(Dushyant Arora is a lawyer and research consultant based in Mumbai.This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)