Clouded for a Quarter Century - A note on the Bhopal Gas Tragedy

Termed as the world’s worst industrial disaster, the story of Bhopal gas calamity continues to remain tragic. During the early hours of December 3, 1984, people of the capital city of Madhya Pradesh, had woken up with severe eye irritation, coughing, vomiting and a feeling of suffocation. This was a result of their exposure to a mixture of poisonous gases including the villainous Methyl Isocyanate (MIC) that was ‘accidentally’ emitted from a nearby pesticide manufacturing plant – Union Carbide Corporation (UCC). The industry was based in the US and later sold to Dow Chemical Company in 2001. The Indian arrest warrant against Warren Anderson, the CEO of UCC at the time of disaster, is still pending.

A child killed in the gas leak

The contributing factors include the breach of safety norms by Indian standards – damaged MIC tank alarms for 4 years, the switched off MIC tank refrigeration systems-which alone would’ve averted the disaster, use of hazardous MIC instead of more expensive- less harmful chemicals, poor maintenance of the plant- after it ceased production in the early 1980s (inception of the MIC plant was in 1979), lack of skilled operators. The report on this huge gas leak was formally released 15   years after its occurrence.      

The effects are known to be far from just catastrophic. According to estimates, nearly 20,000 people who breathed the toxic cocktail that night suffered a horrible death from multiple organ failure and 5.7 lakh have suffered injuries. Medical staffs were unprepared for the thousands of casualties. The gases immediately caused visible damage to the trees and 2,000 bloated animal carcasses had to be disposed.

UCC paid a compensation of $47 crore out of the requisite $3000 crore sum. Another dimension of the ongoing tragedy of Bhopal is the poisonous chemical waste lying around in the abandoned premises of the pesticide plant, lying in the open since 1984. Various studies have established that the soil, ground water, vegetables and even breast milk have traces of toxic chemicals. Owing to the lack of piped water supply, people are still said to be using contaminated ground water. In terms of economic development, this disaster has derailed Bhopal from its track towards progress, causing widespread and long-lasting poverty. The pesticides produced at the factory were designed to help Indian farmers produce more food as part of a "green revolution" sweeping the country. Knowing about the stories on the plight of the gas leak victims, the environmental degradation around the old factory, and a bitter public dispute about who should be blamed the city has been stigmatized. It has been deprived off the benefits of economic boom that the rest of India has been experiencing.

Many organizations, for the rehabilitation of the victims, have cropped up. Nothing concrete (with respect to the people responsible for the disaster and compensation for the affected) has been achieved so far. Post-September 11, the Indian government unilaterally volunteered assistance to the United States in seeking justice against terrorists. In the context of growing Indo-US proximity, the government has been hesitating to take this case forward, not wanting to embarrass the world’s superpower. This crisis has reinforced not one, but many well-established facts. Our judiciary is definitely not FOR the innocent, common man. For the past 25 years, the Indian Government has remained deaf to the hues and cries of the victims and those supporting them. The course of the trial in the criminal case against the UCC and Anderson at the Bhopal District Court, expose the nonchalance of the government and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in seeking their prosecution.  The reinstated supremacy of the politically unbinding, unethical, immoral and unjust multinational companies over developing nations is ‘not something to be ignored’. While the sufferers struggle to seek justice, the imperialist world, smoothly rolls on.

Dated 18/1/2010

 

A taste of the skewed Indian Judiciary was felt last June.