The Gorakhpur debate, as to whether children died at the hospital because of a shortage of oxygen or for other reasons, matters very much in terms of individual criminal liability for those who failed in their duties. From a broader perspective, though, it should not be the main point of focus. Even if it is contended (in the face of specific parental accounts) that children did not die for lack of oxygen, the gross mismanagement of oxygen supplies was indefensible in itself, and criminally negligent because children could have died. But focusing primarily on this specific question of ...