Dear NL team,

The usual disclaimer out of the way: long-term listener, subscriber for a while now (read: been a non-mufatkhor from before your paywall went up), enjoy listening to you and building my perspective with Hafta every week, I have plenty of good things to say but since you get a lot of those kind of emails, it’s not necessarily unique – so I won’t repeat the usual niceties (sorry!)

So with that in mind and the sword of Abhinandan’s word limit hanging over this browser window – I’ll keep this to the point.

I want to specifically talk about Hafta 140 and the discussion you guys had about the Mumbai railway bridge collapse. It was – how do I put this euphemistically – not very good.

Firstly, I was a bit annoyed that you did not even deem the matter important enough to get it on the list you talk about in the beginning of the podcast (yes, it was six days ago but still – homework! Read on…)

It took a stray mention of a stampede by Madhu in some other context for it to jog your collective memories.

I like how you guys try to separate the issue and the discourse around the issue a lot of times. But it is of primary importance in any such conversation to first get the understanding of the issue right.

A lot of times your listeners may not be aware of the issue in-depth – all the more need to outline the facts properly. On this occasion, Madhu for one was incorrectly informed and kept repeating the same points ad nauseam – not allowing anyone else to speak (which, at the risk of picking on a Holy Cow, I believe she does a number of times on Hafta).

The basis of her argument was that the bridge did not collapse, hence the infrastructural blame is limited. It was people who kept pushing and shoving which led to the horrific tragedy and with better civic sense, it could have been averted.

In brief, the facts of the case, ma’am, are as follows:

• At the Elphinstone station, there is only one exit bridge to take you from the platform to the outside of the station (which, as all of you pointed out, has a limited capacity).
• During the morning rush, it started raining – unexpectedly. Even if it was expected, as anyone who has been on any of these bridges will tell you, it is impossible to pull an umbrella out of your bag let alone open one in the crowd.
• This being a commercial office hub, a lot of people waited on the bridge’s staircase under the roof to let the shower pass before stepping outside as no one wanted to get into office soaking wet (seems trivial in comparison now but that’s how any human mind would think at that point of time).
• The people waiting on the bridge do not, however, prevent new commuters from alighting from the trains that continue to arrive at the platform. Typically, a train arrives every three minutes, rough estimates (unverified) say that around a 100 people get off at this station from every train – that’s 500 at least in 15 minutes. They have nowhere to go (you can’t stand on the narrow platform – the next train will come up soon) and are too far from the other side of the overbridge to understand what’s happening. What’s already bursting at the seams keeps getting pushed further.
• These stations were built during the first half of the 20th century. Offices in the Parel-Elphinstone region have come up in the last decade or so – the number of people that pass through a single station may easily rival the population of a Scandinavian country or something. Hyperbole aside – the point is the bridges were not designed for this kind of capacity. And the unwillingness to build additional bridges or any kind of infrastructural reinforcements (despite repeated reminders and pleas) over years now (remember this is not a sudden, one-off incident) makes it quite evident – to me at least – where the blame for this must lie. That the structure did not collapse (small mercy for that) should not divert from that.
• Yes, you can always wish that people shouldn’t have pushed, that the ones at the front should have braved the rain, but that’s not how crowds work. You can barely hear yourself at times in the noise of the passing locals and rains. I do not know which psychoanalyst’s work Madhu was referring to (is psychoanalyst the right term by the way?), but here is an interesting read from experts in crowd management to share with your readers. Human beings don’t act rationally in situations of panic – whether it is collecting sarees or crossing a railway bridge is irrelevant.

I find it a little distasteful and disrespectful to blame something like this on a crowd, of which 23 unfortunate individuals died. Again, as Abhinandan pointed out – people in Indian metropolises have been exposed to the very worst human tendency for fending for yourself first to survive. I do not know if a similar situation in Japan or anywhere in the “developed world” would’ve led to a different end (there are stampedes in first-world countries too – see the link above) – but my guess is there would have been more effort and less apathy in ensuring something like this doesn’t happen. Your room analogy is not an entirely accurate comparison because this is not a static crowd but an ever growing one.

Which leads me to a larger point – backed up by the anonymous letter writer – NL Hafta can go from good to great if the panel took a little time to do some homework before the show.

I understand you all have full-time jobs beyond this podcast and also intentionally try to keep it a free-wheeling chat. But how difficult could it be for Abhinandan or your producer Shubham to share a list of topics you plan to discuss over a WhatsApp message or email earlier in the day for the panelists to quickly read up and form a basic opinion on, if they have the time before debating it with potentially incorrect or incomplete knowledge.

Sometimes you definitely may not know stuff – or there is a nuance which is not evident. But in this case at least, I’m sorry to say it was shoddy homework – none of the points that I have mentioned are the ones you would not find in any mainstream newspaper, website or news alert. I think you owe this much to your subscribers who invest not only their time and money, but also depend on you as a reliable, unbiased source of information…

Especially for non-Delhi-centric stories this is often evident – the tyranny of distance is very real. I appreciate the fact that you try to get an expert in like a Dhanya or Saurabh for local issues at times but since that may not be always possible – one of you should get the facts straight with some homework before moving on to analyse and discuss it. Or just say that I don’t know or I have nothing to add! (In all my time listening to Hafta – Manisha is the only one who says this regularly).

I realise I’ve repeated the word “homework” multiple times now, so before I start sounding like a curmudgeonly professor (one is enough on the panel, na? :P) I will sign off.

Remember, we only take half an hour to write critical emails to those for whom we really care. Would love to be with you as you grow from strength to strength!

Good luck.