The unspeakably tragic death of sprightly 11-year-old Vihaan Srivastava after a tall peepal tree fell on his school bus in Mumbai’s Chembur locality should prompt the average citizen to ask why public officials are never really answerable.

If visuals of the fallen tree, with its atrophied roots, are any indication, the disaster was waiting to happen. Residents have complained that municipal officials ignored complaints of the precarious state of the tree, although official claims have been made about routine pruning having been done.

In Bengaluru, a 53-year-old finance company employee slipped into a coma after being struck by a dry tree branch that fell on him as he passed underneath on a scooter. There, too, residents said they had asked civic officials to........

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