When we were in Bhopal earlier this semester, we visited the derelict Union Carbide factory and walked among the storage tanks and processing units that are now so famous around the world. The fame of this plant is not based upon research nor on productivity but rather for the infamous eruption of poisonous gases that broke from the Union Carbide pesticide plant on the night of 2-3 December 1984. As people slept these deadly gases rose into the night sky and were blown by the silent winds across the poorer sections of the town; ironically where many of the workers in the Union Carbide plant lived. Many never woke from their sleep; others who had been wakened ran in fear directly into the path of the invisible terror. Many people died instantly and others lingered on to die from the cocktail of poisons that had affected their bodies. The lives of many of the “survivors” changed dramatically as ill health, wasting diseases and the detrition of their living standards impacted negatively, while the world looked elsewhere after the television crews had left.
In the last twenty-nine years since the world’s worst industrial accident, the number of deaths directly related to the escape of the poisonous gases has risen from the originally estimated three thousand to nearer twenty thousand and those who have disabilities to a staggering five hundred thousand people! Yet what is even more frightening than these figures is the lack of an appropriate response from government as well as from the company itself.
I thought that the company would have quickly accepted its culpability and have sought to redress the situation with compensation payments equivalent to those that could have been claimed if such an accident had happened in mainland USA (such as the compensation that was demanded from BP by a posturing President Obama for the oil spillage in the Gulf of Mexico). Wrong. The original settlement that was agreed upon by Union Carbide in February 1989, five years after the tragedy, for a payment of US$470 million, but the survivors pressed the Indian government for a more substantial sum based upon the increased number of dead and those with disabilities.
To date there has been no final settlement even though activists have attempted to press the Indian legislature and Supreme Court for a just solution. Indeed, it appears that the actual system in India is conspiring to work against the very people that it ought to be protecting. As late as last Friday, 29th November 2013, it was announced that no hearing took place in the Supreme Court on a curative petition that had been filed to review the settlement of 1989 and that no date had been fixed for any possible hearing in the future. This chronic lack of support form the legal system is inexplicable to many and gives rise to the notion that perhaps there is pressure form the world of the multinational companies (Union Carbide is now owned by Dow Chemicals) on the Indian government to avoid any court case that would prove injurious to the profit margins of the very companies that may wish to invest in India. Certainly there is room to consider the point of view of the activist N.D. Jaiprakash when he is quoted as saying that “perhaps the government is purposely allowing the matter to drag on” and wonders why if such is indeed the case why the Supreme Court does not exert its power to bring this matter to conclusion.
I am not suitably versed in the Indian legal system, but I have listened to the people who work in the Bhopal Memorial Hospital and Research Centre and it appears to be clear that there has been an incredible degree of lethargy in responding to the needs of the survivors. An insufficient number of those affected have been issued with health books that will allow them access to free treatment, there is still much work to be completed with the promised digitalization of medical records and treatment is still needing to be delivered systematically to all. Thus there seems to be a degree of largesse towards the company that now owns Union Carbide, Dow Chemical, instead of a more determined approach to a legal restitution.
I would hope that before too many more anniversaries have passed that the survivors are able to receive their justifiable compensation and that Dow Chemical will have cleaned the Union Carbide site where there is still approximately some 1.1 million tons of toxic waste that needs to be adequately treated if it is not to pose a real threat for the future. However, there is nothing that can take away the sheer frustration of the survivors or the activists that work with them. Their anguish is real and their feelings of helplessness must be accounted for when somebody is brave enough to stand judgment on this accident that has become a tragedy as well as an indictment of those who ought to have been disposed to help those who were in the most need; the survivors.
aluncooper 