Plane-owning netas too busy to help drowning workers

Many bodies remain trapped under the Hampi bridge days after it collapsed, but not many politicians are losing sleep

Plane-owning netas too busy to help drowning workers

Many bodies remain trapped under the Hampi bridge days after it collapsed, but not many politicians are losing sleep

One of India's most shameful engineering failures went almost unnoticed because the site is located far from the media hubs, and perhaps also because it killed only poor people.

You would have expected the Anegundi bridge collapse and the subsequent rescue attempts to have made it to prime time national news at least because it occurred near Hampi, a world heritage site overseen by the Unesco, but not many from the media were at the site when the first body was fished out on Saturday.

As a MiD DAY team watched, the rescue team reported its breakthrough, some 40 hours after the suspension bridge had crashed.

Seven bodies

The rescuers have found seven bodies so far. People suspect many more were crushed when the bridge fell at 3 pm last Thursday. A reporter said he had photographed the bridge just two hours before the accident, and had found about 15 workers on the job. That could mean at least half a dozen workers are still trapped underneath.

Policemen in coracles pulled the first body by its hair, and rowed to the bank opposite where we stood. The site is in Koppal district, carved out recently from Bellary. Anegundi is just 5 km from Hampi.

Hampi is an overnight journey from Bangalore. Like in Mumbai, the slumdog-millionaire contrast is stark in the Bellary region. While mining boomed, this dusty city was selling the largest number of luxury cars in India, and the Reddys, who own mines here, are worth more than the GDP of some small Indian states.

When MiD DAY tried to call tourism minister G Janardhana Reddy, considered the richest politician in Karnataka, we only reached his staff, who gave us some numbers that turned out duds. He just did not come on the phone, though we tried allu00a0 afternoon and evening.

Almost all prominent miners here are active in politics. They own fleets of aircraft, and could put Mumbai's celebs in the shade when it comes to opulent living.

By contrast, Rasool Sab, a casual worker who served the public works deparment for 22 years, earned Rs 1,500 a month. He is suspected dead, and the eldest two of his five children paced the banks waiting for the rescue team to find his body.

Not a single politician went to the spot after the bridge came crashing down, and relief took a long time coming.
In fact, we heard horror stories about what had happened when a rescue team was requisitioned from Bellary.

They arrived by bus, and reportedly demanded that they be insured. The babus went into a tizzy. Who would insure them? The irrigation department? The PWD? The district administration? And in any case, shouldn't rescue workers be insured all the time? And as the poor died, no miner thought it fit to send a plane to airlift rescue workers to the accident site.

No action yet

K Virupakshappa, MP from Koppal, blamed the contractors for the tragedy. "A day before the accident a cable holding up the hanging bridge snapped. They continued work after welding it. If they had taken proper measures, this accident could have been averted," he told MiD DAY.

But the government has not initiated any action against the contractors. District in-charge minister Govind M Karjol said, "No one could have survived because the water was 180-foot deep. "Workers went down with the huge slab," he told MiD DAY. "Once they are in water, it takes less than 10 minutes to die."

The government declared Rs 1 lakh as compensation for the next of kin of those dead.

(Additional reporting by Madhusudan Maney)