25 years After the Bhopal Gas tragedy

Twenty-five years after the world’s worst industrial disaster occurred at midnight on December 3, 1984, the only fact that seems worthy of being reported is that there is nothing about the disaster that is hidden anymore. Nothing that has not been written about; nothing more required to point fingers.

And yet, as the nation mourns the first anniversary of 26/11 through war-like visuals on TV, questions about Bhopal linger. While the perpetrators of 26/11 are being tried in court, justice has not been delivered to the victims of chemical poisoning here.

Even after a quarter century of protests, of misery, of lives lived in the shadow of death.
The media finds catharsis for the trauma of 26/11 in its footage of the restored Taj Mahal hotel. But there is nothing redemptive for TV about slums full of poor survivors living on contaminated water demanding their right to justice, which are the only images 3/12 has to offer.

Victims of the Bhopal disaster note that while the Indian government submitted several dossiers of evidence to Pakistan over 26/11, it has failed to get one man, a declared fugitive, extradited from the U.S. even after every piece of evidence against him and the corporation he headed, Union Carbide, is public knowledge.

The Chief Judicial Magistrate of Bhopal, while issuing a second non-bailable warrant for the arrest of the then Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson earlier this year, held that the “wilful non-execution” of this warrant was a “punishable offence under sections 217 and 221 of IPC” on the part of the Union government and “public servants” concerned.

It also held that the “public servants” responsible for the execution were “Cabinet secretary K.M. Chandrashekhar and Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon.”

The industry-sponsored trivialisation of the Bhopal issue, including the Dursban bribery scandal, is not news anymore. There is enough on-the-record information about the captains of India Inc pitching in for Dow Chemical, which now owns Carbide, asking the government to free the U.S. conglomerate of the responsibility of cleaning up the Union Carbide factory premises.

Documents obtained by Bhopal activists through RTI reveal Ratan Tata’s personal letters to Manmohan Singh, Home Minister (then Finance Minister) P. Chidambaram and Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia in 2006, urging them to let Indian industry clean up the Bhopal site as it was “critical for Dow to have the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers withdraw their application for a financial deposit by Dow against the remediation cost.”

Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris was more forthright. In a letter to Ronen Sen, Indian ambassador to the U.S. at the time, he wrote:

“Certainly, a withdrawal of application would be a positive demonstration that the GOI means what it says about Dow’s lack of responsibility in the matter.”
In return he offers, “economic growth in India, including key foreign investments that will promote job creation…”

“When we met the Prime Minister in 2008 and brought up the issue, he raised his hands and said he didn’t want to hear a word about Dow, saying tragedies happen and this country needs to move on,” says Rachna Dhingra of the Bhopal Group for Information and Action.
But for those who still live with the contamination all around them, moving on is something they find impossible to do.

ADDITIONAL REPORT:

ENVIRONMENT-INDIA: Cleaning Up After Bhopal Gas Tragedy - Not Begun

PrafulBidwai

NEW DELHI (IPS) - A generation after the world’s worst ever industrial disaster occurred at a U.S. multinational-owned pesticide plant in Bhopal, central India, responsibility continues to be evaded on cleaning up thousands of tonnes of toxic chemicals that have contaminated the soil and water in the vicinity.

The U.S. multinational, Dow Chemical, has now offered to partially bear the cost of cleaning the site of the plant that infamously leaked poisonous cyanide gases into the city in December 1984 causing some 4,000 immediate deaths. In return, Dow wants to be freed of legal liability inherited from Union Carbide Corp., which it bought in 2001.

By natural law Dow takes over all its liabilities as well as assets. But Dow has been lobbying hard, both directly and through the U.S. government, to influence senior officials of the Indian government to obtain a ruling in its favour.

If it succeeds, Dow can walk away from its responsibility of clearing the mess left behind by Carbide, which includes over 9,000 tonnes of poisonous chemicals which have contaminated soil and water and affected over 25,000 people living in the plant’s vicinity. Dow is holding out the lure of large-scale investments in India if it is let off the liability hook.

Dow’s latest offer follows numerous pleadings on its behalf by powerful Indian officials in the Planning Commission, (then) Finance Minister P. Chidambaram and Commerce Minister Kamal Nath, as well as the U.S.-India Business Council composed of top-notch business leaders from both countries.

Apart from the deadly leakage of methyl isocyanate and other toxic gases that, activists believe killed at least 8,000 people in the first week there was enormous chemical damage that affected more than 200,000. This may have caused a further 15,000 deaths and continued disabilities and suffering among the survivors, including grievous damage to their lungs and other organs.

Carbide managed to escape civil liability for the faulty plant design and gross negligence which led to the accident by paying the paltry sum of 470 million US dollars in what was regarded as a collusive and unfair settlement in 1989. But its criminal liability still survives.

However, both Union Carbide and its directors refused to stand trial in a Bhopal criminal court and have proved absconders from the law. Dow has, in fact, been sheltering a fugitive from Indian law and selling Carbide’s products, technologies and services in India.

"Dow’s offer confronts the Indian government with a critical choice," says Satinath Sarangi, of the Bhopal Group for Information and Action, which first discovered and established the toxic contamination of the soil and groundwater in 1990. "Either it collaborates and cuts a deal with a multinational corporation in a mercenary fashion; or it sides with the victims, who have been affected by chemicals leaching from the industrial waste include some that cause birth defects and cancers and damage to the lungs, kidneys and the liver."

The Indian government is sharply divided over the issue. Its Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilisers has held Dow legally liable for cleaning the site of the wastes, and demanded in court that the company deposit Rupees one billion (25 million dollars) as initial payment for the cost of the remediation (decontamination) pending adjudication of the matter.

But the Ministry of Law opposes this and says the determination of liability would depend on the terms of the 2001 merger between Dow and Carbide, whose fine print would have to be studied.

According to the organisations of the Bhopal victims, Carbide made a misrepresentation by claiming that it has no liabilities on account of the gas leak disaster. In fact, Union Carbide, some of its directors, including former chairman Warren Anderson, and its Indian subsidiary, stand charged before an Indian court with causing death by a negligent act.

Dow maintains that being a U.S. company, it is not subject to the jurisdiction of the Indian courts. The courts have not yet made a ruling on Dow's liability, but only asked that a part of the over ground wastes, some 386 tonnes secured in a warehouse, be removed to a town in Gujarat to be incinerated.

The Madhya Pradesh High Court is however silent on what should be done with the 8,000 tonnes of chemical waste that lies underground at the plant site and also with the hundreds of tonnes that is strewn all over the compound. Victims’ organisations argue that incineration is an unsafe and improper method of disposing of the waste, and that India does not have the right technology to detoxify it.

As an alternative method, they cite the example of Unilever Corp., which was ordered in 2003 by the Madras High Court to take 230 tonnes of mercury waste it had dumped in Kodaikanal in Tamil Nadu all the way to the U.S. for detoxification.

Two years ago, the victims’ groups, including the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationery Karamchari Sangh, Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Purush Sangarsh Morcha, along with the BGIA, succeeded in getting a contract between Dow Chemical and the public sector Indianoil Corporation annulled. This involved the licensing of a proprietary technology of Union Carbide, which is a 100 percent-owned subsidiary of Dow.

Dow is negotiating the sale of petrochemicals technologies with Reliance Industries Ltd, one of India's largest private sector companies, which belongs to the Mukesh Ambani group.

"Evidently, all manner of entrenched interests are at work to help Dow duck its legal liability and obligation to clean up the site," says Nityanandan Jayaraman, of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal. "It’s truly appalling that the Indian government is bowing to their pressure, and that too at a time when large volumes of foreign direct investment, exceeding ten billion dollars this year, are flowing into the country."

Jayaraman added that this showed up the ‘’utter servility on the part of the government towards the U.S. and giant transnational corporations, a phenomenon that has been in evidence ever since 1984. Clearly, high rates of GDP growth and India’s claim to be an emerging economic superpower have not prevented it from acting like a Fourth World country, which puts corporate investment above the life and well-being of its citizens."

If the Indian government succumbs to pressure from Dow, from powerful Indian industrialists like Ratan Tata (who lobbied on the company's behalf), and from some of its own pro-neoliberal ministers, that will only add further insult to the colossal injury the victims have suffered, say activists.

Most of the Bhopal victims received less than 150 dollars for extensive injuries and prolonged suffering. Even families of the dead got as little as 5,000 dollars. A good deal of the compensation was alleged to have been siphoned off by corrupt officials, politicians and middlemen.