Time for comprehensive review

THE MASSIVE FIRE and explosions at the Bharatpur arms depot last week mark another eye-opener for the Indian Army. It is not the first fire of its kind in an arms dump, nor will it be the last. The Jabalpur and Pulgaon incidents have not been forgotten, but it is not certain if the Army and the other services have learnt their lessons from such mishaps. The irony of the Bharatpur fire is the preliminary and official theory that a summer fire from the tall elephant grass outside the ammunition dump caused the blowup. To let nearly 10,000 tonnes of arms, ammunition and weapons, valued at about Rs. 2,000 crores, be consumed by such a fire speaks of unpardonable negligence. For a country which wants to maintain a minimum nuclear deterrent, these levels of safety are anything but satisfactory. An in-house court of inquiry has been set up and Maj. Gen. C. B. Suku heads the panel to go into the entire episode. The tragedy is that apart from losing so much of the firepower of the Southern Command, this accident has caused havoc to the lives and dwellings of villagers in the vicinity of the 2,000-acre complex. At least now, the Suku committee, the Army and the Defence Ministry must go into the whole question of the location and safety of ammunition dumps.

Like so many of the outdated laws in the country, the rules and practices in the security forces are also out of tune with the realities today. Unless there is a continuing internal review and audit of procedures, it is unlikely things will change. Only when such a catastrophe strikes, do the authorities wake up and respond to the crisis. Again, because of the `holy cow' treatment reserved for the armed forces and the veil of secrecy on grounds of national security, the follow-up on the findings cannot be monitored. Even assuming that the Suku committee does a thorough job and prescribes new and safer norms for the location and protection of these dumps, where is the guarantee that they will be implemented? That is the problem with the Defence services. Under the mask of national security and the curtain of `classified information', not much is known about such committee reports. For a change, the Government agreed to table the Subrahmanyam committee report on what went wrong in Kargil. The Defence Minister, Mr. George Fernandes, has gone a step further and asked the Chief Vigilance Commission to scrutinise all the defence deals in the past 15 years. So, the Defence Ministry will have a new load of reports very soon. How it acts on them is the issue.

Apart from the huge losses in the arms depot complex, the Government must also go into the human tragedy. Scores of villagers have lost their dwellings and livelihood in this blaze and hundreds have fled the area in search of food and jobs. The Suku committee must go into this aspect and lay down the safety norms in areas where these dumps are located. Besides providing adequate compensation to affected families, a rehabilitation programme for the area may be imperative. While reviewing the procedures, the panel must find out if it will be wiser and safer to decentralise the depots further and provide smaller dumps with better safety measures. There is a potential Bharatpur in any other drought-hit place where a similar arms depot is located. Fire fighters cannot be expected to handle such a serious situation to contain the damage. Now is the time to plan for a phased redesigning and modernisation of all defence depots and storage facilities. The question of providing a suitable camouflage to these locations must also be addressed. The Suku committee and the Defence Ministry have their task clearly cut out. The country certainly cannot afford to lose such costly and precious ammunition in a grass fire caused by the scorching heat.

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Section  : Opinion
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