India
and China have one great similarity. The roads in both these
countries are highly dangerous. The vehicle drivers do now follow
traffic laws and flout safety norms at their will. In 2011 more than
62000 died in traffic accidents in China. This role of horror
compares well with India's figure, which according to one estimate
could be about 100000 deaths in road accidents. Just last week, a
deadly collision between a long-distance double decker sleeper coach
carrying about 39 people and a methane carrying tanker killed 36
people in the middle of the night in the city of Yanan; Shanxii
province in northern China. The collision took place at about 02:00
local time on the Baotou-Maoming motorway. The front part of the bus
heading to Shaanxi's provincial capital of Xian from Inner Mongolia
was immediately engulfed by flames and the front part of the bus was
seriously damaged. Since most of the passengers were sleeping ,
number of fatal casualties has been so high.
The
accident has been quite horrible, yet the real story is not the
accident but something else that happened later. As happens anywhere
else in the world, Police officers and rescuers reached the spot of
the wreckage of the bus and the tanker after some time. Amongst
these officials, who had reached the accident spot, there was a road
safety official Mr. Yang Dacai.
Next
morning, Chinese media and news papers had splashed news of this
horrible accident along with photographs all over the country. A
sharp eyed netizen, @JadeCong noticed that in one of the photographs
of the accident, the road safety official Mr. Yang had a highly
inappropriate grin on his face or in other words, he was seen
laughing. He promptly cropped the picture to accentuate the faux pas
and copy-pasted it onto the Chinese hybrid of Facebook and Twitter,
Sina Weibo, which has more than 300 million subscribers. He wittily
commented on his post, "The official's emotions have
stabilized." The post received about 6,700 shares and 1,600
comments.
Most
of the Chinese netizens felt resentment after seeing the photographs
of this fat bellied official with his “ hands behind the back”
posture which appeared to them as the couldn't-care-less attitude.
Soon someone found out that this official was Yang Dacai, (杨达才)
the boss of Shaanxi's Safety Supervision Bureau! One net user says on
KD Net, a popular discussion forum "When ordinary people die in
an accident, the masses do not really ask you to cover your face with
tears. But in the face of our compatriots losing their precious
lives, you should have the courtesy to at least to show some respect,
right? This is the bottom line of being a human." Another Weibo
user @死心补钙
wrote, "
'Well-fed officials, emaciated people. If officials are skinny, the
people will be well-fed.' This was what we were taught by the teacher
when we were still young…It still applies even though life gets
better now. You can just tell at first glance that people with greasy
hair and fat ears are just up to no good~"
One
sharp nosed netizen then discovered from one of the photographs that
Mr.Yang was wearing a Vacheron Constantin gold dress watch worth of
200,000 to 400,000 yuan. Soon more and more netizens joined in this
hunt and searched old photographs of Mr. Yang on the net and
discovered that he has been wearing other expensive watches as well,
which included a Rolex (Oyster Perpetual) worth 65,000 yuan, an
Omega worth of 40,000 yuan, another Omega worth of up to 40,000
yuan, and a Rado worth of 30,000 yuan.
In
China, wearing of expensive luxury watches by officials is always
the last straw, which brands them as corrupt. Mr. Yang, besides his
careless attitude was now also thought to be corrupt and outrage grew
against him by leaps and bounds. Finally, the local work safety
administration responded to the matter, by saying that Yang did rush
to the accident site all the way after receiving the news. However
snapshots published on the net tell a different story and netizens
were not satisfied at all. The Communist Party's discipline
commission in Shaanxi, made an investigation into Mr Yang's
"inappropriate behaviour of 'grinning' as well as wearing
luxurious watches" and has found him guilty of "serious
wrongdoing." The discipline commission says that they are
further investigating "trails of [Mr Yang's] other wrongdoing."
Mr.
Yang also has now defended himself on his twitter like microblog. He
says; "My heart was heavy when I reached the scene... Junior
officials appeared nervous when they were updating me on the
situation. I was trying to get them to relax a little, so maybe, in
an unguarded moment, I got a little too relaxed myself." He also
explains that he has used his legal income to buy many watches he
has and the most expensive watch he has is worth only 35000 Yuan
(US$ 5500.00).A university student had filed an information
disclosure request with the provincial finance bureau, earlier for
Mr Yang's annual income, however the request was declined.
I am
just amazed at the alertness and investigative nature of Chinese
netizens, after they smelled a rat. This is what is required in
India. Our media have lately been doing a great job regarding digging
out scams by Government officials. Netizens must lend an helping hand
to media in India too.
(
Sina Weibo messages sourced from http://www.chariweb.com)
24th
September 2012
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