Context

• India’s industrial landscape, spanning oil refineries, chemical plants, factories, and construction sites, powers the nation’s economic growth.
• Yet behind this progress lies an underreported and persistent human tragedy, the needless deaths of thousands of workers due to preventable accidents.
• These incidents are not inevitable acts of fate but the outcome of systemic negligence, regulatory inertia, and a societal undervaluing of workers’ lives.

The Scale of the Problem

• Government data, Right to Information findings, and independent studies reveal the alarming scope of India’s industrial safety crisis.
• In the last five years, at least 6,500 workers have died in factories, construction sites, and mines, averaging nearly three deaths every single day.
• States like Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu alone account for over 200 fatalities from major industrial mishaps in the past decade, with the unregistered and informal sector likely pushing the real toll far higher.
• A 2022 Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) study recorded over 130 major chemical accidents in just 30 months after 2020, causing 218 deaths and more than 300 injuries.
• These are not abstract statistics. Each figure represents a family shattered, a breadwinner lost, and a community pushed into grief and economic hardship.

Common and Preventable Causes

• What makes these fatalities especially unacceptable is the simplicity of their prevention. Most tragedies stem from basic, easily addressable lapses:
  • Lack of Fire No-Objection Certificates (NOC): Many factories operate without clearance from the Fire Department.
  • Non-existent or faulty firefighting systems: Missing alarms, extinguishers, or sensors.
  • Absence of permit-to-work systems: Hazardous jobs undertaken without formal risk assessment.
  • No training for workers: Especially among migrant or contract labourers, language barriers leave safety protocols unread and unheeded.
  • Inaccessible fire exits: Often locked, blocked, or hidden by stored materials.
  • No real accountability: Safety audits become box-ticking rituals, prosecutions are rare, and penalties are negligible.
• Such failures, while common in small and medium enterprises, are not confined to them.
• Even large corporations often prioritise operational efficiency over a deep-rooted safety culture.

Comparative Perspective and Geographic Spread and Repetition

• Comparative Perspective
  • In nations such as Germany and Japan, safety is not merely a compliance issue but a core industrial value embedded into workplace design, training, and management.
  • By contrast, India’s approach remains largely reactive, strengthening measures only after disasters occur.
  • This reactive culture ensures that accidents are not isolated aberrations but recurring features of the industrial environment.
• Geographic Spread and Repetition
  • Gujarat reported over 60 major industrial fires and gas leaks in 2021 alone. Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, and Uttar Pradesh show equally grim records.
  • According to the Directorate General Factory Advice Service and Labour Institutes (DGFASLI), India experiences one serious industrial accident every two days in registered factories, and the scale in unregistered units remains unknown.
  • The sequence is depressingly predictable: tragedy, public outrage, token compensation, a committee inquiry, and then silence, until the next avoidable catastrophe.

Underlying Causes: Indifference and Class Bias

• At the heart of this cycle is national indifference.
  • Regulators are often under-resourced or complicit.
  • Companies cut safety costs, viewing them as overheads rather than obligations.
  • Society at large remains apathetic, especially when victims are economically marginalised migrant or contract workers.
• A troubling class bias permeates the system: safety failures in a corporate office or technology park would provoke outrage, yet similar lapses in a factory employing low-income workers barely register in public consciousness.

Rejecting the Act of God Defence and Pathways to Change

• Rejecting the Act of God
  • Industrial accidents are often mischaracterised as acts of God, language that shifts responsibility away from human decision-makers.
  • In reality, these tragedies are man-made, the product of inadequate safety systems and regulatory failure.
  • Countries such as South Korea and Singapore have moved towards corporate manslaughter laws, holding senior executives criminally liable for gross safety negligence. India has yet to take such a decisive step.
• Pathways to Change
  • Strengthening labour safety boards with resources, training, and independence.
  • Digitising risk reporting and ensuring transparent accident databases.
  • Protecting whistle-blowers who expose unsafe practices.
  • Embedding safety culture in both SMEs and large corporations through rigorous training and design standards.
  • Legislating executive accountability for preventable workplace deaths.

Conclusion

• The means to prevent these tragedies already exist. What is lacking is the will, from policymakers, industry leaders, and society, to act decisively.
• Industrial safety is not a privilege granted by employers; it is a fundamental right of every worker.
• Until India replaces its culture of post-tragedy response with one of prevention and accountability, it will continue to silently affirm the most damning question of all: Who cares?