Battery-operated flasher lamps for use during emergencies? Yes, sir. Emergency sirens? Very good, sir. Tubular integrated coaches? Of course, sir. This nation certainly doesn't take risks at least in theory.

But on the ground, amnesia and lack of accountability continue to be a way of life. As theydo in the air. Charkhi Dadri has reverted to the anonymity of being just another Haryana village, rather than the unlikely scene of a devastating mid-air collision that claimed 351 lives two years ago.

Last Friday, it was providence and some initiative shown by the pilot of an eight-seater King aircraft that prevented it from colliding with an Indian Airlines Airbus carrying 150 people and re-enacting a collision tragedy all over again. The Chandigarh Air Traffic Control had evidently informed the pilot to maintain flight level at a radial and height that the approaching Airbus was cruising at.

The inadequacy of India's existing radar system was seen as a major contributory cause for the Charkhi Dadri collision, yet the intransigent tribe of air traffic controllers have thrice pressured the Airports Authority of India to postpone the commissioning of a modern Raytheon radar at Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport, on grounds that they are paid inadequately and lack the expertise to operate such asystem.

Evidence, once again, of a complete lack of accountability. The system continues to remain critically impervious to correction, no matter the length of the inquiry report. Already, the International Federation of Airline Pilots Association has concluded that the international airports at Delhi and Mumbai do not conform to international safety standards.

Underlying the country's cavalier treatment of safety concerns is a callous disregard for human life. In nations like Germany and Japan, even a single death in such circumstances is sufficient to trigger an angry public response. In this country, when hundreds die because the manresponsible for flashing a crucial signal fell asleep, or because it did not strike anyone to inform the driver of an incoming train that there are some derailed coaches that are lying on the track that he is hurtling down, or even because the pilot of a descending aircraft received poor audio feed from the radar tower, there's not a whimper of protest. People get thesafety systems they deserve.