The death of at least 21 people in a fire in South Delhi’s Malviya Nagar is part of an ongoing national tragedy. The fire in Palam, Delhi that killed nine people in March; the conflagration in a Cuttack medical college and hospital that claimed 12 lives in the same month; the fire that broke out in a Kolkata hotel in April, killing 14: These incidents, all from the last six months alone, frame a pattern of norms breached and rules circumvented, of overcrowded structures with narrow exits and exposed wires or ageing electrical systems, of lack of basic equipment and wilful ignorance of protocols. The pattern reveals the shockingly........

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