Shreena is mean
I heard a British victim of the Mumbai attacks on the radio this morning talking about how how he was not given any financial compensation. He comes across a lot better in this article than he did on the radio (in my opinion) but, while I agree that there seems to have been a slightly horrifying lack of co-ordination, particularly when it came to his medical care in the UK, I think it's a bit strange to think that he should be given millions in compensation by the British government. I don't think this comes across in the article as much as it did in the radio interview but it appeared that he thinks two things: firstly that you need 2-5 million pounds to adjust to life in wheelchair; and, secondly, that the British government should be where that money comes from.
I am very dubious about the first point. As I understand it, if you are disabled from birth and are facing your whole life in a wheelchair, you don't get 2-5 million pounds from the government and, surely, your needs depend on your physical condition, not how your physical condition was caused?
In particular, I felt that his interview did a huge disservice to disabled people through the way that he stated two or three times, as if it were totally and utterly obvious, that he would not be able to work again.
I'm not totally on board with the second point either. I can see why the British government might feel obligated to pay compensation to anyone injured in a terrorist attack on British soil - because, arguably, the government should have prevented the attack from occurring. The current position whereby, if you were injured in another country, you have to apply to that country for compensation, seems to me to be perfectly logical. India does not seem to have such a system, going on the list linked to here and, if it did, the amount would be quite small because of the much smaller cost of living in India. But that doesn't seem to me to amount to an adequate reason why the British government should be liable instead.