The mid-July fire tragedy in the obscure town of Kumbakonam (Tamil Nadu) which charred 93 boys and girls aged between six and ten years to death has seared the conscience of the nation. Out of the ashes of this unprecedented man-made tragedy has sprung the hope that the issue of appalling conditions in India’s schools will be addressed and rectified. Dilip Thakore reports The dramatis personae — tender young children doing as they were told — could well transform a raw tragedy into a defining moment in the nation’s history. The July 16 fire at the Sri Krishna/ Saraswathi English Medium School in the obscure town of Kumbakonam (Tamil Nadu) which charred 93 boys and girls aged between six and ten years to death, has seared the conscience of the nation. Yet out of the ashes of this unprecedented man-made tragedy which snuffed out the lives of the hapless children of Kumbakonam (pop. 140,000) has sprung the hope that the issue of the appalling conditions in which the great majority of the nation’s children wage a daily struggle to acquire modest education, will at long last be addressed and rectified. More than a month after the disaster, there is confusion about the actual sequence of events which culminated in the holocaust on that fateful day. A reconstruction of conflicting media reports suggests that the fire originated in the thatched-roof open-air kitchen of the Saraswathi English Medium School on the ground floor of the three storied school building which also housed the Tamil medium Sri Krishna primary and secondary schools with a total enrollment of 870 students instructed by 24 teachers, on the upper floors. The better investigated media reports indicate that while the mid-day meal of the school children was being cooked in the make-shift, open-air kitchen on the ground floor, its thatched roof caught fire which spread upwards into the upper floors of the building, access to which was by narrow staircases in the front and rear of the functional building crammed with 40 students per classroom. Inevitably, the rear staircase down which the children could have escaped was barred by a grill locked the night before and unopened in the morning as per custom. Unforgivably, while the fire raged upward, the schools’ teachers asked the children on the upper floors to remain seated while they presumably attempted to find the keys to unlock the gate of the rear staircase. When they failed to find the keys in time, the teachers reportedly fled the scene, leaving the children to their fate. While the great majority of the children (whose number on the upper floors housing the Sri Krishna School had swelled on the day as July 16 was inspection day and higher numbers in the Tamil medium school would result in larger government grants) escaped down the front staircase, the youngest children who made for the rear entrance were found charred to death against the locked grill, plunging a large number of poor households (whose children enroll in non-English medium schools) in Kumbakonam into…
