These days, 38-year-old Swapan Shaow is busy dealing with the aftermath of a tragedy—a massive fire at a godown in Anandpur, Kolkata, late in January killed his relatives and their friends. On some days, as he takes calls from the police with updates about the case, his mind wanders to the years he himself spent in that same warehouse.
Hailing from West Bengal’s Srirampur village in East Midnapore district, Shaow began working in the decor business after finishing school. Gradually, the wages improved, and he focused on floral decoration of wedding gates. Working long hours helped him earn ₹950 a day during the peak season. He even helped his relatives and their friends—five people in all—enter the business, getting them work in the Anandapur facility a decade ago. Shaow eventually moved to take up work with another employer in 2024, but they stayed on.
On 26 January, a massive fire on the premises gutted a unit owned by Pushpanjali Decorators and the adjacent one, owned by food chain Wow! Momo, killing at least 25 people, among them Shaow’s relatives and their friends.
A preliminary investigation found serious lapses at the godown, which had been functioning without a fire clearance certificate. West Bengal’s fire and emergency services minister Sujit Bose told the media in the aftermath of the incident that the godown did not even have fire extinguishers.
Shaow remembers the living arrangements during the years he spent at the facility. “We knew that if there was a fire, none of us would survive. There were workers of six to seven thekedars (contractors) who would stay there, at least 300 people,” he says.
Gobindo Ghosh lost his neighbour in the fire. He says it has been heartbreaking to watch the man’s wife and three-year-old daughter try to cope with the loss. “She keeps running around every day. Where is justice? There is still no clarity on the investigation,” says Ghosh.
Three people were arrested in connection with the Kolkata fire. While the Central government announced an ex gratia of ₹2 lakh to the families of those killed, the West Bengal government announced it would pay ₹10 lakh.
The blaze in Anandpur is just one of many that have engulfed industrial units around the country over the last year. They include a fire at a chemical factory in Rajasthan’s Bhiwadi district, which claimed the lives of seven workers; a blaze in a Faridabad chemical drum factory, which injured over three dozen people; a conflagration at an oil and chemical factory near Ahmedabad’s Piplaj area, which needed 25 fire tenders to be put out; a blaze in Bengaluru last month that began at a perfume warehouse and spread to other facilities, including pet food company Supertails’ unit; a major fire days later at a cable factory in Doddaballapur, on the outskirts of the city; and a major fire this week at a godown in Mira Road, Mumbai.
Over the past year, congested markets and hotels have also seen massive fires, leading to death, injury, and widespread destruction. The Rituraj Hotel fire in Kolkata’s congested Burrabazar area, which has a long history of such tragedies, killed at least 14 people last April; a fire in a warehouse in Howrah’s Manglaa market in May injured many people. The Sigachi Industries fire in Telangana last June claimed over 50 lives; an inferno at a firecracker godown in Gujarat killed at least 21 people last April, and a blaze at Goa nightclub killed at least 25 people last December. Residential dwellings, meanwhile, account for the most fires.
According to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) figures for 2023, there were over 7,000 fire accidents in 2023, and 6,891 deaths. The segregation of the place-wise analysis showed that over 54% of the total deaths were recorded in residential dwellings. The provinces with the most deaths were Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Tripura, Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Bihar and Arunachal Pradesh.
World Health Organization data shows that over one million people are moderately or severely burnt every year in India. Occupations, poverty, overcrowding and lack of proper safety measures increase the risk of exposure to fire, it added.
Indeed, the human toll in many of these conflagrations, particularly on informal workers employed at warehousing facilities, has been heavy. These workers are almost never covered by insurance. Their livelihoods are affected, and simultaneously, they have to cope with mounting medical bills.
Aside from the human impact, there is also a widespread impact on business activity, which is affected by the destruction of property. A 2018 India Risk Survey by Ficci-Pinkerton declared fire outbreaks as the third-largest threat to business. The major causes were attributed to non-compliance with safety norms in factories and high-rises, and under-equipped fire services. “While the government and other regulatory bodies have prescribed norms and fire safety measures, implementation and vigilance continue to be a concern,” the report said.
Gross underestimation
While the number of fire incidents paint a grim picture, the reality is actually far worse.
“When it comes to data on fire incidents, there is a gross underestimation as only cases where first information reports (FIRs) have been lodged are taken into account. FIRs are also filed in a way that the charges are weakened—contractors may be held responsible instead of the principal employers,” says Santosh Poonia, director of India Labour Line (Knowledge and Learning) at Aajeevika Bureau, a non-profit working for the rights of migrant workers.
Poonia explains that the fire safety authorities are responsible for compliance verification and reissuance of fire clearance licences when they expire. “However, they are not using the database and hence there is large-scale compromise on workplace safety,” he says.
K.T. Ravindran, architect, urban planner and academician, observes that while most of the fires in India are of electrical origin, what aggravates the damage is inadequate building codes—the norms for design and construction of a building—especially in informal settlements.
Inadequacies on the firefighting front compound the problem. The response time may not be ideal since fire tenders have to make their way through heavy traffic in most urban locations, and navigate through narrow lanes when a fire breaks out in a congested area. The longer it takes firefighters and medical teams to reach a blaze, the greater the destruction and risk to human life.
Uday Vijayan, managing trustee and president of the Bengaluru-based Beyond Carlton, a citizens’ movement born out of a tragedy caused by a fire at a commercial building in 2010, says despite rapid urbanization, most cities have not factored in fire-safety readiness. “Why aren’t fire stations a part of urban planning, much like other utilities? Most cities in India are severely under-equipped with this basic infrastructure,” he asks.
Vijayan adds that society itself needs a mindset change when it comes to fighting fire. “Through the various awareness programmes that we run, we have realised that human apathy to one’s own safety is extremely common. Be it residential or commercial, when we run campaigns, we realise by the end of it that most of us do not recognize the risks of a fire on our premises and the corresponding human and property risks,” he says.
Ranvir Kumar, who recently retired as the director general, West Bengal Fire and Emergency Services, says there is a need for every stakeholder to take accountability in ensuring compliance with fire-safety norms. “No one agency can enforce things,” he says.
Workers face the heat
Despite the existence of strong legal provisions, workers continue to be at great risk from industrial conflagrations. The Factories Act, 1948, clearly states that every factory should have proper fire exits, the necessary equipment and facilities to extinguish fires, and measures to ensure that all workers know what to do in the event of a fire.
However, the grassroots reality is different. “Poor enforcement of labour laws in factories is often the root cause of accidents leading to fire,” says Poonia.
A 2021 report, Looking Beyond Fire Extinguishers — Surveying fire hazards in the textile hub of Narol, by Poonia’s Ajeevika Bureau, showed that among the workers interviewed, 97% said they had seen the presence of combustible and flammable materials at their workplaces, and at least 82% said that it would take 30-60 minutes to exit the premises in case of a fire.
Labour economist Ravi Srivastava points out that each fire incident shows how basic safety measures for workers are not taken into account. “As far as the risk is concerned, workers bear the maximum risk, including loss of life.”
The environment these workers operate in is another factor that does not get enough attention, adds Namrata Kapoor, lead at the Bengaluru-based Indian Institute of Human Settlements. “Since the 1980s, formal industrial jobs have steadily moved out of factory spaces and into informal setups within bastis (slums), both inside cities and along their peripheries. This shift has deepened labour precarity and led to a marked deterioration of the built environment they work in.”
Rima Mondal, assistant professor of public policy and management at the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, points out that while formal manufacturing units are insured, sub-contracted labour in informal settlements, which function as manufacturing hubs, do not enjoy such benefits. “While the affected population may get some support in case of a fire, they will not be fully covered by insurance. The sub-contracted people engaged in the work lose livelihood options overnight when the production process comes to a halt due to a fire,” Mondal explains.
The solution, says Kapoor, is not to criminalize the bastis that sustain these livelihoods, but to support and upgrade them. “That, of course, means enabling decentralized fire safety, and also improving building materials, expanding cooling solutions, and investing in shared basic amenities like toilets and creches that reduce everyday risk, stress and contagion,” she adds.
Economic impact
Citing the example of Dharavi (Mumbai), Asia’s largest informal settlement and a bustling hub of economic activity, which saw a fire break out last year, Mondal says that such incidents lead to a complete breakdown of the supply chain.
Srivastava concurs. “Recurrent fires affect the overall workplace and the whole industry in terms of productivity. Business activity abruptly comes to an end,” he says, adding that this larger issue is little understood and consequently does not get attention.
A 2023 report by the International Copper Association of India, executed by consultancy Green Globe, titled Impact assessment of fire incidents and implications for safety standards and regulations in India, shows that in addition to loss of life and massive health implications for survivors, there is damage to property and assets. This includes replacement or repair costs for damaged assets and equipment, and the shutdown of operations, leading to loss of output and revenue.
Meanwhile, the Kolkata fire continues to haunt Shaow. But, he laments, there is no other option for people of his economic background. “If we think about safety, how will we get work?”
Soon, he will head to Rajasthan for a few days to decorate wedding gates there. “All expenses are paid by the company, and we are taken by flight. The pay is also double for those days,” he says. “Back in the village, there are no means to earn such money.”
- Number of people who lost their lives in incidents involving fire in 2023, according to NCRB data.
- Number of people moderately or severely burnt every year in India, according to WHO data.
- Workers who said they had seen the presence of combustible and flammable materials at their workplaces, in a study on fire hazards in a textile hub.