The doors of the House of Lac — Calcutta’s vulnerability to devastating blazes has earned it this opprobrium — are being bolted too late, once again. Days after a fire snuffed out the lives of 14 people at Rituraj Hotel, the authorities have suddenly woken up to the need to undertake mitigatory measures. The hotel’s owner and manager have been held for culpable homicide. The chief minister has formed a team that will conduct a survey on fire-safety standards and identify dangerously run-down buildings. Rooftop establishments in the city, the mayor has declared, would be shut down. A contractor has also been arrested for stacking inflammables on the first floor of that doomed hotel. Needless to say, these interventions should have preceded the many fire tragedies — in hotels, offices, food and beverage outlets and even houses — that are reported frequently from the city. Timely surveillance and quick interventions would have prevented the transgressions that led to the blaze at the Rituraj Hotel. The fire department has alleged that the establishment was operating without a valid fire licence; its water sprinklers were non-functional; combustible material had been stored inside the hotel, heightening its vulnerability to a fire.

Whether Calcutta is made safe from killer flames in the near future would depend on the sincerity of the administration to weed out the lapses that lead to such horrors. A principal challenge would be to identify and dismantle the nexus among politicians, businessmen and municipal authorities that allows for the flouting of norms and for corruption to flourish. This will require political will on the part of the ruling dispensation so that those in the administration with grubby hands can be punished. Pious rhetoric is not enough; what is needed is concrete, demonstrable, punitive intervention. The results of the survey on fire-safety practices and decrepit buildings that the chief minister has ordered must be pored over by the authorities concerned and preventive steps undertaken. This kind of oversight must be maintained throughout the year. What is of equal importance is the negation of public lethargy towards maintaining fire-safety norms. Unfortunately, many occupants of Calcutta’s establishments and buildings — old and new — remain apathetic to or are complicit in the violation of rules. Their indifference speaks of a weak civil culture that helps errant civic powers evade accountability.