Corporate Citizen claps for Lieutenant Colonel Ranveer Singh Jamwal, as he became the first Indian and the first Indian army officer to have scaled seven highest mountains across 7 continents
January 4, 2019, saw this youth icon summit Mount Vinson Massif in Antarctica at 16,050 ft. which completed his record seventh climb. He then celebrated yet another victory by scaling six more peaks; all above 6,000m in Chile within a record breaking 10 days. The first of his seven adventures started in 2010 with Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa and peaked with his final success at Mount Vinson. During this period, he also scaled Mount Everest, not once but thrice! A veteran of 39 expeditions in 15 years, despite being hit by blizzards, or getting ambushed by tribals, or losing a finger due to frostbite, he held on to his adventurous spirit. He also led an expedition of seven women army officers in climbing the Everest. “I was not even aware big names like Tensing Norgay, Edmund Hillary, Captain Kohli. My first mountaineering expedition was climbing Mt. Machoi, a 5,000m-high mountain near Zoji la in 2007,” he said. Recipient of the Tenzing Norgay National Adventure Award, Jamwal, a rescue specialist, served the country in rescue operations during the Nepal earthquake in 2015. His mountaineering journey began in 2003 when he enrolled for a course at the army’s High-Altitude Warfare School in Sonamarg, Jammu and Kashmir. “This was my karmabhumi. It was here that I first climbed a mountain as high as 5,000 meters.” He then joined the Army Adventure Wing that enabled him to climb higher ranges. However, tragedy struck in 2009 when he lost a finger due to frostbite as the team got stuck at Mount Mana in Uttarakhand. “For seven hours, we were in the open at 23,000 feet, due to a blizzard. The rope we had fixed for our climb was buried under snow. The only option for us was to wait it out. I was lucky to only lose a finger, otherwise we would have died.” The episode didn’t deter him, as he accomplished his now famous climb of Mount Kilimanjaro the following year!
Corporate Citizen slaps yet another episode of irregularities, non-compliance and illegalities in urban buildings
In the most recent fire incident at Delhi’s Karol Bagh’s Arpit Palace Hotel, the lives of the ill-fated 17 boarders could have been saved; had workable amenities been inspected regularly and not remained mere formality ‘on paper’. “This painful incident could have been “avoided” if the hotel management and the authorities concerned would have acted sincerely. This is indeed a “very serious case of violation of human rights”, said the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). The rights panel has issued notices to the Delhi chief secretary, city police commissioner and the North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) seeking a detailed report in the matter. Ironically, Arpit Palace had taken a fire clearance, but cops suspect that they adhered to illegal construction that used wood and fiberglass panels. Not surprisingly, the fire-fighting equipment was non-operational, and staff too were not trained to handle such life-saving kits. Most alarmingly, the hotel windows were sealed, and this made rescue operations an ordeal. To top it up, the hotel’s kitchen was housed on the terrace; strewn with cooking gas cylinders and other cooking material that closed doors to any possibility of a safe rescue mission, if at all! Notwithstanding, electrical systems too remained unchecked for its fire resistance properties. “We just took a look at the emergency exits. It’s all illegal. These are very narrow, not according to specifications. And they were closed at night. According to information we have, those gates are closed at night and a guard sits outside. But we don’t know if the guard was there or not,” said KJ Alphons, Union Tourism Minister. These discrepancies and incidents eventually get buried once post-mortem reports are handed over to officials for closures. Unfortunately, unless there is a tragedy, rules don’t matter! Will the NHRC’s post-event actions against errant officers, actually prove a lesson and go beyond reprimanding this one solitary ‘Arpit Palace’ incident?
by Sangeeta Ghosh Dastidar
