Dignity in Death for unidentified is a distance cry in India

New Delhi: Just yesterday, a group of villagers in Madhya Pradesh tied a man's body to a floating rubber tube to cross the flooded Narmada river and reach their village, as the connecting road was closed following incessant rain.

Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020, execution of the last rites like cremation or burying dead bodies has been highlighted but the issue of delivering dignity to the dead with religious services was always existing in our Country. The pandemic deaths helped the issue to float again in society and were a discussion point amongst the concerned citizens that was loaded with fear and anxiety. Hundreds of stories appeared in the media that how families and medical staff abandoned the dead bodies of their loved ones in hospitals or homes or even on the streets.

In what way, dead bodies were seen floating in the river bodies like the Ganges? How some volunteers were busy performing cremations of the dead and queues of ambulances waiting at the specific cremation centres where some government organisations, NGOs, and their workers, wearing PPE were performing endless cremations.

These images are hardly going to fade from our minds. Also, how can one forget the image of a father carrying the dead body of his daughter and walking back 10 km home?

Manmade disasters or natural disasters like earthquakes, flash floods, and tsunamis can have disastrous consequences. We see the huge property, and infrastructure loss, and large numbers of deaths creating panic and emergency. In the majority of disasters, the emergency responses usually are knee-jerk reactions, in a hurry and amateurish, sometimes causing more damage. We have seen examples of the Tsunami in 2004, Uttarakhand flash floods, how mass cremation of some unidentified dead people was organised and their loved ones, till today have not been able to know the fate of their missing ones. Also, one finds a lack of familiarity with cultural and religious practices on the part of personnel involved in the emergency response and dead body management. It can have serious emotional consequences for families/society. It is also a fact that no one is doing it intentionally. The shocked bystanders want to help and are emotional. In difficult situation, their adrenaline is high. but what is required is that someone saner, professional needs to steer the energy in a positive and result-oriented response. For that, we need training people to lead the response.

Are we prepared for emergencies?

Do we know what we have to do in case of an emergency? Are the local communities and volunteers who usually are the first to respond to a disaster trained to support the sufferer which includes rescuing and caring for survivors and managing the dead? Is Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) thinking of making their areas safe and having quick reaction teams in case of emergencies like fire, earthquake, or a blast of any nature? Do we have cellars, and underground bunkers if peacetime nuclear plants get damaged by earthquakes or floods or even if there is an accidental leakage of gases? Do RWA’s or religious places have designated assembly points in case people need to assemble to wade disasters like stampedes, earthquakes, fires, blasts, etc? Are RWAs, NGOs, or even religious organisations organising training through available means and departments like police/fire services/ other training organisations to make residents aware of what to do in case of an emergency?

While I tried to do cursory quick research in West and Central Delhi, I found that we are still not prepared to handle the mass casualties as well as have enough hospital storages to keep the dead in dignity. Eight out of ten people don’t know how to react if they see a road accident and someone is bleeding. Seven out of ten don’t understand the meaning of “first responder.” Civilians are not ready to be responsible and want only the government body or police to respond. Eight out of ten have not heard of any training or awareness being given to the civilians to face any eventuality by professionals like police, fire services, home guards, etc. Hardly any home has a fire extinguisher or a survival kit with them in case they get trapped in a major earthquake or landslide. No one has an idea of a cellar or underground bunker in case of nuclear radiation or chemical leak from a factory not to talk of the consequences of a nuclear war or cyber-attack.

In a conversation with Mr. Jitender Singh Shunty, a resident of East Delhi and head of Shaheed Baghat Singh Sewa Dal, a local NGO, who performed more than 3,000 cremations and last rites of the dead said, “this pandemic period, he and his family which consists of his volunteers will never forget the scenes of how “families abundant their loved ones.”

In one of the incidents, he narrated how a young lady in her car went from hospital to hospital to admit her ailing mother but could not get a bed and no bystander was ready to help or support her. Finally, her ailing mother died in the car and she brought her directly to the cremation centre after a Sikh temple volunteer showed her the way and direction where Jitender Singh helped her in organising the last rites.

In another case, Shunty showed his anguish and anger that how the son of a rich person abandoned his dead father and left his volunteers to do the last rites but not before he removed the gold/diamond rings from his father’s finger but was not ready to lit his pyre for fear of Covid.

Dignity of the dead

For proper humanitarian response and maintaining the dignity of the dead, the government needs some expert players or organisations or their volunteers to give training to the community, who are usually the first responders, on how to handle such situations, dead bodies, legal ramifications, care of survivors, frontline workers and the supply of basic services. First responders need simple, practical and easy-to-follow guidelines, ensuring that they can carry out this task in a proper and dignified way without compromising their own security. We lack this awareness, and responsiveness, which needs to be educated to teenagers in schools and colleges, citizens in peaceful and good times. A lot needs to be learnt and done in India.

Secondly, all mortuaries in the hospitals need to be updated and expanded with modern refrigerators, good lighting system, easy to clean and data maintaining facilities. If you visit presently these mortuaries, they are existing, but are not being properly maintained. Third, the carrier vehicles for dead bodies also need to be restructured and modernized.

When you talk to the doctors in some famous government hospitals, one is told that the mortuaries are not in good shape nor the present structures can handle mass casualties. Most of these hospitals also have the majority of private ambulances, which charge huge amounts of money.

This all needs to be streamlined as the law as well as the supreme court ruling says that every dead person needs to be identified and last rites have to be dignified. There is a supreme court ruling that "a Dead person must be given some respect."

The Ministry of Home as well as the World Health Organisation has come out with manuals for managing the remains of those killed. It includes taking the necessary steps to aid future work by forensic specialists and investigators in identifying human remains and clarifying the fate of the missing. But the fact remains it remain only in the records and never dispersed or spread at the grassroots level.

Lessons learned and way forward

We, in childhood, have read and heard so many jungle stories that how wandering shepherds or communities would follow the sane grey-haired elder where to pitch their night halt camp tents, which will be safe area from wild animals and disaster of any kind. The young and others in the group follow the instructions, respecting the experience of the grey-haired head of the community.

Similarly, we have suffered in the past because of both manmade and natural disasters and we have learned from our past mistakes and past experiences and have developed several response organisations to face the same. What more needs to be added is that these trained sane and experienced persons of different departments need to further train the societies across the country so that a timely safe reaction saves lives and properties when needed.

Government response

There are government agencies like National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) or State Disaster Management Authorities, fire services, paramilitary troops, army, police, and several other local authorities doing a good job to counter it. But emergency response needs more than that. It needs to reach every citizen, a huge awareness and training of the masses that continue to remain alluded.

For example, cyclone sheds in Odisha’s coastal region are a great success that has hybrid functions. It accommodates nearly all the vulnerable communities living on the seashore of Odisha at times of floods or cyclones and the same sheds in good times are utilised for skill education purposes. Thousands of volunteers and youth in schools and colleges are trained to support the government bodies like SDMA or NDMA or any other organisation for a decade. We hardly see any casualties at the time of cyclones, unlike earlier times when hundreds of locals died and their live stocks perished.

Way forward

The answer to all these questions is awareness and training common citizens like residents, volunteers, and school children to face the consequences in case of emergency. The training needs to be friendly, small capsule but regular, which practically speaks and trains the onlookers to react in case of an emergency rather than be there as a spectator, emotional distress person and then repent.

Do we have enough trained persons to handle disasters or dead bodies? Do we have enough mortuaries to handle the manmade or natural crisis where dozens of persons die or perish? Do we prepare people to have emergency kits in their homes? Do we have safe shelters or cellars for civilians to live in case of emergencies? Do we have enough dead body carriers like ambulances to transport the dead?

Sadly, the answer is no but collectively we can improve and be self-sufficient. The need of the hour is that we collectively have to be aware and be trained for our safety, and the rest will automatically follow. The governments need to introduce these training programmes for the citizens who want to learn and act in the right direction. It may take some time but the beginning is to be made. We have so many bright and young minds to innovate start-ups and devices for safety purposes.