Morbi Bridge Collapse : An Act Of God ?

 BY R.K.MISRA

One moment the revellers were on the bridge and the next, many found themselves in the river. Was the tragedy avoidable and did cronyism and a flawed ‘Gujarat Model’ led to the catastrophe?

Known as the ceramic city of India, with an estimated thousand ceramic units producing 70 per cent of India’s ceramic, Morbi in Saurashtra region elected a Congress candidate in 2017 to the Gujarat Assembly for the first time since 1995. With the Patidar agitation for reservation in full steam, and the resentment building up over the years, the result did not come as a surprise. But Brijeshbhai Merja’s stint as a Congress MLA did not last very long as he soon defected to the BJP. In a byelection held in 2020 Merja, who had resigned from the Assembly, retained the seat, this time as a BJP candidate, with a reduced vote share.

In June, 2017 BJP had regained control of the Morbi municipality after a year and a half, when 15 of the 32 Congress councillors switched over to the BJP. Morbi, the epicentre of the Patidar quota stir, had voted the Congress to power in the civic polls in 2016. But the Gujarat Government punished the industrial town for voting against the BJP, reducing grants and withdrawing facilities.

This time the Patidar agitation has waned and a Patidar is again in the saddle as chief minister (Anandiben Patel then and Bhupendra Patel now). But Morbi has been restive because the rising costs of energy and inputs have been hurting the competitive edge of the ceramic industry. In August this year several hundred ceramic units shut down for the entire month, unable to bear the rising production costs. Their plea for reducing prices of gas, coal and raw materials of fuel had not cut much ice with the government. The ceramic units were also hit by a decline in demand as the affordable housing sector slowed down with rising costs.

The demand for upgrading the Morbi municipality too had not been conceded, resulting in lower development funds for civic and health infrastructure and equipment. When the suspension bridge on the Machhu river snapped on  October 30, a Sunday, therefore, the fire brigade and rescue services had to be summoned from Rajkot, 65 kilometres away. Clean linen for the Morbi hospital, in preparation for the Prime Minister’s visit on Tuesday, or at least some of it, were rushed from Jamnagar, 105 kilometres away.

There is simmering resentment, therefore, at the crucial time lost in rescue operations. There are questions being asked. If the renovation of the suspension bridge cost just Rupees two crore, as the Ajanta-Oreva Group has claimed, why couldn’t the municipality handle it? The 15-year contract for repair, maintenance and management of the suspension bridge, a tourist attraction and Morbi’s pride, was handed over to the Group without a tender, till 2037. There was no supervision and the municipality now says that no safety audit was conducted before the Group opened up the repaired bridge for the public on October 26, beginning of the Gujarati New Year. No safety certificate had been issued either.

The politically biased  and selective spending of public funds, crony capitalism, the flawed PPP model and the government’s abdication of its own responsibility to ensure civic amenities and lives of citizens, exposed once again the chinks in the ‘Gujarat’ model.

The ’man-made disaster’ could not have come at a worse time for the BJP and Prime Minister Modi. With the assembly election due next month, and the PM in full campaign-mode even before the election, the disaster came as a bad optics. The chief minister and the state’s home minister staying back overnight to ‘supervise rescue operations’ raised more eyebrows, especially since BJP leaders are known to sneer at ‘disaster tourism’.

Hasty arrangements made for the Prime Minister’s short but extensively photographed and choreographed visit to Morbi added to the heartburn. The hurried overnight renovation of the government hospital at Morbi with walls given a fresh coat of paint and new water-coolers rushed in, along with mattresses and linen—even as dead bodies were piling up in the mortuary, had tongues wagging. A ‘compensation’ of Rupees six lakhs for each of the dead (four lakh from the state government and two more from the PM’s National Relief Fund—not PMCARES) was poor consolation to people who lost their relatives.

Priyanka Jogyani lost two of her children on Sunday, a six-year-old daughter and a four-year-old son. What will I do with money, she wailed. Vinod from Kutch was more stoical as he showed hospital staff the photograph of a young, recently engaged couple, missing since Sunday. He looked grim in front of the freshly painted wall of the civil hospital, hoping against hope.   

Kantaben lost all three of her sons in the tragedy. The oldest, Chirag, had turned 20 and was to begin work at a spectacle-manufacturing unit. Dharmik would turn 18 in a few weeks while the youngest, Chetan, was studying in class X. All three brothers had stepped out to have a good time at the suspension bridge on Sunday but never returned. Kantaben and her husband Rajesh found their lifeless bodies in the hospital past midnight.

Did the Morbi Collector initially refuse to allot the contract to the Oreva Group, as some reports suggest? These unconfirmed reports suggest that a phone call from Gandhinagar prompted the contract to be awarded once again to the Group in March, 2022.

The Group’s management contract had lapsed in 2018 and had not been renewed. But the Group continued to control access to the suspension bridge, say reports from Morbi. The Rs 800 crore group is politically influential –suggested by photographs of the promoters with BJP leaders who matter—and the insinuation that political connections were responsible for the contract to the Group with little or no experience in construction and maintenance of bridges—need to be probed further.

What is not disputed is that the Oreva Group, better known for making Ajanta brand of wall clocks, was set up by a former Science teacher Odhavji Raghavji Patel in 1971. Turning into an entrepreneur at 45 years of age, he built the Group before passing away this year.

Since then, the Group diversified into manufacturing home appliances, e-bikes, ceramic products, CFL and LED lights. Its website provides no indication of any construction-related business. So, the question being asked is how a ‘watchmaker’ was given the specialised contract of repairing and managing a 143-year-old suspension bridge?

Clocks and other products made by the Oreva Group, which claims to employ 6000 people, are exported to over 60 countries. The companies have 25,000 dealers in India and 180 service stations. At the turn of the century, however, the Group employed 15,000 workers.

However, automation and shifting a part of their production to China led to the reduction of the labour force. "We will produce our goods in China and export them to India. It's not possible for us to run the industry in India," the Group had claimed in 2001 to Rediff.com.

Oreva group operates one of the largest manufacturing plants in India at Samakhiyali, Kutch district, Gujarat, the facility sprawled over 200 acres of land. Described as the ‘pride of Saurashtra’, the group, besides the wall clocks sold under the brand names of Ajanta and Orpat,has a strong presence in the lighting segment, after scaling its CFLs, Oreva diversified into LED lighting products and is one of its largest manufacturers in India.

No tender was floated for the job, apparently on the ground that it was too small a project to call for one. The industrial group was handed over the maintenance contract first in 2008—a contract that lapsed in 2018—and thereafter a fresh contract was signed in March, 2022, handing over the bridge to the Group for 15 years. 

An unusual clause in the agreement between the Morbi municipality and Ajanta Manufacturing Private Limited (Oreva group) signed and sealed on March 7 this year there would be no interference from the government or any government agency. Why was such a clause formulated in the first place?  The bridge was the property of the State, which had the statutory responsibility to supervise repair and construction and ensure safety of the people.

While the company retained the right to use the bridge for marketing and branding (the board with the company’s name at the bridge was hurriedly covered up after the tragedy), it undertook to take care of repair, maintenance, cleaning, payment collection and staff recruitment.
There is considerable confusion about the fee the company was permitted to charge. Some reports claimed that the agreement allowed the company to charge Rs 15 per adult in the year 2022-23, which would then be raised by Rs 2 each year until 2027-28. Other reports claimed that the company was permitted to charge Rs 10 from adults, Rupees seven from children and Rupees two each from students. But screen shots of tickets stamped with Rs 17, and with no serial numbers, went viral after the tragedy. It is possible that the company charged an arbitrary fee. Indeed, some reports indicate that earlier no fee was charged from visitors and that this was the first time visitors had to pay a fee for the pleasure of walking across the bridge.

There is also confusion about the load the bridge could take. While some reports suggest there was once a rule that only 15 people were to be allowed on the bridge at the same time, other reports claim that the bridge could take the load of 125 people simultaneously. Since the tragedy took place around 6.30 pm, it does not seem probable, as some reports have indeed claimed, that only around 600 and odd tickets were sold on October 30 and that there were between 400 and 600 people on the bridge at the time.  With the death toll pegged at 135 and claims that over 100 were rescued and with some still missing, the number certainly was between 200 and 300.

If 200 people were there on the bridge at 6.30 pm, how many more would have bought tickets during the day?

Curiously, while the agreement mentioned all the operational and commercial details, it failed to include any safety clause or fix responsibility in case of any mishap. Normally it would be the operator’s responsibility to ensure safety with the local body retaining the supervisory rights. Also missing from the agreement were details like the load bearing capacity, technical specifications of maintenance and periodicity of repair.

In 2017, Congress bagged 30 of the 54 assembly seats in Saurashtra and Kutch region to BJP’s 23 with one seat won by ‘others’. In 2012 Congress had bagged only 16 seats in the region with BJP securing 35. Others picked up the three remaining seats.

Will the bridge collapse at Morbi become a poll issue? There is growing cynicism among voters about BJP governments bending over backwards to oblige corporates at the cost of the common man. The Morbi tragedy feeds that perception with the involvement of the Ajanta-Orevo Group of companies, which was favoured with the sweetheart deal.

The Prime Minister, campaigning in the state when the disaster struck, found himself in a Catch-22 situation. There has been widespread criticism of the PM continuing with his campaign the day after the disaster. Cancelling his programmes and rushing to the site, if at all this was necessary, would have been appreciated more. But choreographing his visit was apparently deemed more important and hence the PM finally landed at Morbi almost 48 hours after the disaster. 

Reports of sprucing up the civil hospital for the VIP visit also did not go down well with the people. It also showed up the BJP government in the state in poor light and the jury is still out on whether the PM’s visit to Morbi helped or harmed the beleaguered chief minister Bhupendra Patel, if not the BJP, in Saurashtra.

People were quick to recall PM Modi’s shrill rhetoric from 2016 when a flyover in Kolkata had caved in, killing 20 people. The collapse of the flyover, the PM had said, was not an act of God but was a message from God to rid the state of the ruling dispensation. Not surprisingly, he was reminded of what he had said.

Was the collapse of the bridge at Morbi an act of God or an act of Fraud, taunted critics. Congress leader Jairam Ramesh was even more acerbic and said that while Gujarat planned to make passenger aircrafts, it could not even maintain a bridge.EOM

https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/india/morbi-tragedy-an-act-of-god