India, Oct. 26 -- The bus fire on Friday in Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh, occurred within days of the one in Jaisalmer earlier this month - 47 people died in the two accidents. On Sunday, passengers narrowly escaped a similar fate when their bus caught fire on the Agra-Lucknow expressway. Three major accidents in such a short span raises questions about the safety practices of privately owned, inter-state public transport buses and the regulatory ecosystem that oversees them. These buses have sprung up as a transport option over the last few decades, mainly because of two factors: one, the rise of many Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities as regional growth hubs offering employment across classes, and two, the combination of a shrinking of government-oper...