Creeping Risk: Industrial Accidents and the Neglect of Safety Protocols

This editorial analyzes the systemic causes behind recent industrial accidents in India, particularly boiler explosions like the one in Sakti, Chhattisgarh. It argues that such disasters are not sudden events but result from risks accumulating over time due to neglected maintenance, unstable operating regimes, and inadequate regulatory oversight. The article highlights similarities with past incidents in Visakhapatnam and Neyveli, noting that current inspection frameworks fail to address daily variations in boiler conditions or penalize unsafe operations effectively. Instead, policies favoring 'ease of doing business' have promoted self-certification over rigorous government inspections. Furthermore, the piece critiques the exploitation of contract labor, where migrant workers often lack safety information in their native languages and face hazardous conditions without clear accountability from principal employers under the OSHW Code 2020. The author contends that until the culture of treating safety lapses as a cost of doing business is dismantled, industrial crises will persist, exposing flaws in infrastructure management and labor protections.