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November 27, 2007
Bhopal gas disaster survivors bitter about 'Black Day'
Bhopal -- Survivors of the Bhopal gas tragedy have decided to observe the 23rd anniversary of the disaster as 'Black Day'.
Leaders of the three organisations -- Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationery Karmachari Sangh (BGPMSKS), Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Purush Sangharsh Morcha (BGPMPSM) and Bhopal Group for Information and Action (BGIA) - told a press conference Tuesday that they have lost all hopes with the state government.
They said they will repeat the march to Delhi to pressurize the central government to set up a national commission for long-term relief and rehabilitation of the survivors and make Dow Chemicals accept its liabilities in Bhopal.
'As many as 55 survivors and their supporters walked to New Delhi in February 2006 and met the prime minister after a weeklong hunger strike. At that time, the prime minister promised to act promptly on providing clean water, health care, employment, social support and also to set up a coordination committee to oversee the implementation of these assurances', one of the survivors recalled.
'However, the state government has failed to implement any of the recommendations of the committee even as the centre too has shown no keenness to keep their word,' said Rachna Dhingra of BGIA.
'Rather, documents obtained from the Prime Minister's Office reveal that the prime minister is actively pushing a proposal to grant Dow Chemical immunity so that Dow and Union Carbide can invest freely in India', she added.
The state and central governments, in their enthusiasm to help Dow, will cause another Bhopal disaster through the unsafe handling of Carbide's toxic wastes, said Satinath Sarangi, another activist working for gas victims.
'The state and central government's plans to help Dow Chemical on the issue of disposal of chemical wastes has already run into trouble after the Gujarat government withdrew its permission to burn the wastes in Ankleshwar', he claimed.
Posted by tim at 01:51 PM | Comments (0)
November 25, 2007
Bhopal's ongoing tragedy
Sreelatha Menon, Business Standard, November 25, 2007
23 years on, the decision on who’s going to clean it up is the subject of a court case
Survivors of the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy, the country’s worst industrial mishap when 40 tonnes of methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas leaked from Union Carbide’s pesticide plant, continue to cope with serious health problems and contaminated water, but the government doesn’t seem too concerned. It believes its responsibilities are over now that each of the 5.7 lakh victims has been given around Rs 40,000-45,000 in two tranches (the last in 2004, based on the interest that had accrued on the undisbursed Union Carbide funds). There is another petition in court asking for a five-fold increase in the original $470 million compensation that came in 1989, since it didn’t change while the number of claimants rose four to five times the original estimate, but that’s another story.
Indeed, while a recent survey of children below the age of 12 in the area around the erstwhile Union Carbide factory by the Chingari and Sambhavna Trust found that 112 had cerebral palsy, cuts in their lips and cheeks and some even a hole in the heart, the government has not come up with any ongoing free medical follow-up treatment plan to deal with the condition of the second and third generations of Bhopal survivors. In most other countries that have had similar accidents, tracking and treating the medical and psychological problems of the second and third generations of survivors is almost par for the course.
Indeed, the 396 metric tonnes of toxic waste inside the factory remain untouched to this day, and activists say an even larger amount is lying outside, slowly leaching down and contaminating the ground water — around 25,000 persons live in the vicinity of the factory. The government, both at the state and the Centre (both are respondents in the Madhya Pradesh high court, along with Union Carbide and its new owners, Dow Chemical), is sticking to its old stance that the polluter must pay.
While the court has asked the Gujarat government to take the toxins to the Ankleshwar-based incinerator, the state is not too keen since it is not certain it will be able to deal with it. Many argue that this is the correct strategy as shipping the toxins to Gujarat could well lead to a mini-Bhopal there — the view is that Dow should take the toxins back to the US and destroy them there using advanced technology.
State government officials also say, informally, that NGOs are exaggerating the exposure to contaminated water, and that the 25,000 persons living around the old Carbide factory are actually encroachers — and therefore, by implication, the government doesn’t owe them anything.
Of course, the cynical attitude of the government is best seen from the fact that Dow Chemical’ counsel on the case is Abhishek Singhvi who is also the official spokesperson of the Congress party. Singhvi, on his part, is of the view that his clients bear no responsibility as there were other companies between Dow and Union Carbide, and since the companies had not merged, there was no transfer of liabilities.
Lawyers such as Prashant Bhushan, however, say the argument is fallacious and, if the corporate veil is pierced, the argument will be seen to be hollow. Activist Nityanand Jayaraman of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal argues that the US law believes in ‘successor liability’ — so Dow is responsible for cleaning up the mess in the city. Dow’s corporate relations official in India, Nandkumar Sanglekar, repeats the official company line that Dow has not inherited any liability, that the compensation and settlement had already been reached before Dow even entered the picture.
At another level, Ratan Tata who heads the Investment Commission has suggested that a way be found out without putting all the responsibility on Dow — the commerce ministry is also pushing the same line at the Group of Ministers which is looking into the matter. The argument given here is that while Bhopal happened 23 years ago, Dow’s very large investment plans in India could get compromised — if only someone could make Bhopal go away!
A letter by Dow’s Andrew Liveris to India’s US envoy Ronen Sen in November last year was dug out by activists in Bhopal using the Right to Information law. The letter says representatives of the government had agreed at the US-India CEO Forum that Dow was not responsible and would not be pursued. Liversis, in his letter, urged Sen to take the matter forward and get local CEOs and others involved to tilt public opinion in Dow’s favour. Liveris also asked Sen to look into getting the central government to withdraw its application in the Madhya Pradesh high court asking Dow to pay for the cleaning up.
For the survivors of the six lakh victims, and the 25,000 persons living in the immediate vicinity of the old Carbide plant, however, whether Dow pays for the cleaning up is perhaps of secondary importance. The case can go on, they argue, but surely the government can spend the few hundred crore required and buy the necessary technical expertise required to dispose off the toxic waste that is leaching into the ground water as well?
But, if successive governments, at both the Centre and in the state, have not even bothered to get ongoing free medical help for the survivors of the awful tragedy, perhaps that’s asking for too much. As Rachna Dhingra of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal says, “Whatever the government and Dow do in the court, the reality is that kids are born with deformities.”
Posted by tim at 01:58 PM | Comments (0)
November 22, 2007
India's betrayal of Bhopal
PAMELA TIMMS AND PRABAL KR DAS, The Scotsman, November 22 2007
CAMPAIGNERS last night accused the Indian government of betrayal as it prepared to welcome the company behind the Bhopal chemical disaster back to the country.
In the early hours of 3 December, 1984, 5,000 people died when a leak at Union Carbide's pesticide plant caused a 40-tonne cloud of toxic gas to descend on the city. It is claimed 20,000 others have since died as a result of continuing pollution from the plant.
Activists say there is a new death every day linked to the disaster and that, for 23 years, Union Carbide and its parent company, Dow Chemical, have failed to take responsibility for cleaning up.
In 2004, the Indian government brought a court case, demanding Dow pay £10.5 million to clean up the 8,000 tonnes of toxic waste still in the factory and surrounding area.
But victims' groups have obtained documents from the office of the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, which they claim show that senior ministers are advocating an out-of-court settlement with Dow that would allow the company to walk away from its responsibilities in Bhopal in return for a proposed £500 million investment in India.
The government has signed an agreement with Dow, allowing the firm to establish new research and development bases in Pune, Chennai and Mumbai.
Dow has been waging a ferocious lobbying war against the victims' groups, recruiting some of India's most influential tycoons, including Ratan Tata, head of the Tata conglomerate, to lobby ministers on its behalf. Earlier this year, Mr Tata wrote to the government, proposing that a "remediation fund" be established to clean up the site, in order to relieve Dow of its liabilities and allow the company to invest in India.
Rachna Dhingra, of the Bhopal Group for Information and Action, said: "In 23 years since the disaster in Bhopal, the government has learned nothing. For 23 years, they have betrayed the people of Bhopal. They are bowing to Dow in the interest of commercial investment in India."
Mr Dhingra believes that Dow should not be allowed to do business in India until it cleans up the toxic waste in and around the factory, which, he says, has left local residents suffering from liver and kidney diseases and nervous system disorders.
Studies show the rates of cancer and other diseases have risen dramatically in the area since the disaster.
Mr Dhingra went on: "25,000 people in the Bhopal area continue to this day to drink contaminated water. They suffer all sorts of serious medical conditions, including respiratory diseases, cancer, blindness and babies born with congenital birth defects.
"[Dow] have to pay compensation to the people who continue to live with the effects of the disaster. It's simple: no justice, no business."
The victims' campaign was given a boost this year when Indra Sinha's novel Animal's People, which tells of a young man horribly maimed by the disaster, was shortlisted for the Booker prize. The Edinburgh-based author Meaghan Delahunt is also due to publish a novel set in Bhopal.
FIRM BELIEVES FINANCIAL RESPONSIBILITY FULFILLED
DOW Chemical has consistently maintained that it accepts no responsibility for the 1984 disaster. Dow purchased Union Carbide in 2001 for $10.3 billion in stock and debt.
Dow has publicly stated several times that earlier compensation payments by Union Carbide to the families of those who died on the night have already fulfilled Dow's financial responsibility for the disaster. In reality very little of the money Union Carbide agreed to pay in the immediate aftermath of the disaster found its way to the victims' families.
Union Carbide paid on average $500 to the families, but campaigners complain this amount barely covered the immediate costs to the relatives, like funerals.
Campaigners see in Dow's return a government's willingness to forget the plight of its own people when tempted by the prospect of major investment. Speaking to The Scotsman, Greenpeace's executive director in India, Ananth Padmanabhan, said: "It is immoral, unethical and shameful that the government of India has favoured foreign direct investment over justice. It is shocking that the government is actually willing to scuttle existing legal cases to facilitate Dow's entry into India." He expressed his confidence that public opinion and the "indomitable will" of the Bhopal victims will succeed in making a difference.
People and the environment will face new threats
PRABUL KR DAS, Assam Tribune staff reporter on placement with The Scotsman, was a communications adviser for Greenpeace during its campaign for victims of Bhopal
IN THE race to rapid economic gains, India could well be entering its most dangerous phase of environmental degradation and decay. Significant instances like the Bhopal gas disaster of 1984 make world headlines, but there are similar events in smaller scale happening every day across India; the more remote the place, the more dangerous the situation. Bhopal was the wake-up call for the Indian government, but it did precious little to put pressure on Union Carbide and later Dow Chemical to compensate the victims and to clean up the place.
Years later, the government is now keen to invite Dow Chemical to operate in India. Among the journalists who have spent time with the victims of Bhopal, it appears to me as a travesty of justice. But such incidents of the government favouring industry and trade over human and environmental concerns are actually growing more common.
In different parts of the country, the industrial juggernaut is making its presence felt more than ever. In the state of West Bengal, a place called Singur witnessed ugly incidents after land was requisitioned from farmers for a car factory. A large number of people lost their traditional means of livelihood. In my state of Assam, inside the famous Kaziranga National Park, which is also a world heritage site, the state government allowed a stone quarry to operate. It raised a huge hue and cry, and along with fellow scribes I produced reports featuring maps and co-ordinates. For a few days the machines stopped ... only to start again.
After reporting from around India, I think the interests of human beings and the natural environment are deeply threatened. The smallest of elites have derived benefits while the vulnerable and the marginalised have remained voiceless.
One might be compelled to call it the rape of the conscience or of common sense, depending how one looks at it.
Posted by tim at 02:23 PM | Comments (0)
November 21, 2007
Campus protest
Vidya Venkat, Frontline, Volume 24 - Issue 23, Nov. 24-Dec. 07, 2007
Praful Bidwai and Arvind Kejriwal annoubce an IIT alumni petition against Dow recruitment in October 2007
SHOULD the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) align themselves with big corporations known to have a history of unethical practices? A group of students, faculty members and alumni of the IITs have sparked off a debate on corporate social responsibility by raising this question. At the heart of the debate is the Dow Chemical Company, which became the largest chemicals manufacturer in the world since its purchase of Union Carbide Corporation in 1999.
A petition addressed to M.S. Ananth, Director of IIT Madras, as part of an anti-Dow campaign, stresses the need for a student body on the lines of Students for Informed Career Decisions (SICD) at Stanford University. The SICD seeks to raise student awareness about the social responsibility of companies that recruit on campus. It documents in detail the past record of a company in terms of its impact on human rights, labour, the environment and politics. The petitioners point out that Dow has a “controversial history” and therefore ethics should govern the decision to invite it on campus. When a panel discussion on Dow’s responsibility in Bhopal was held in IIT Madras on October 26, one of the participants admitted that students got an opportunity to equip themselves with corporate facts “they never knew of earlier”. Rasheeda Bi, a survivor of the Bhopal disaster, and Satinath Sarangi of the Sambhavna Trust, a charity involved in treating victims of toxic exposure, interacted with IIT students to debate Dow’s Bhopal liability. The discussion followed the screening of Secrets and Lies, a documentary by Stavros Stagos that examines the 1984 disaster.
The favourable response to the discussion has encouraged other IITs to follow suit. Professor Bhaskaran Raman from the Computer Sciences and Engineering Department of IIT Bombay said, “A group of us in Mumbai have also organised the screening of movies related to this issue of Dow and Bhopal. The trouble is that many people do not know that Dow Chemical now owns Union Carbide. Many do not know that the issue is not just about what happened in 1984, but also about ongoing environmental damages which will continue as long as Dow does not clean up the site.”
Many have welcomed the move to equip students with facts that will help them pose “intelligent” questions, but not all are in favour of a boycott of Dow. A final year student of the Mechanical Engineering Department at IIT Madras said, “We can’t afford to take the moral high ground with placements round the corner and everyone queuing up for the best jobs.” Also, there are doubts over how far the IITs can influence opinion on Dow’s moral responsibilities towards Bhopal victims. Said a professor: “It is not clear if the IITs can take a position against Dow Chemical when the government itself is welcoming the company with open arms.”
The current student campaign against Dow in the IITs evokes a sense of deja vu. In the 1960s, American universities campaigned vigorously against Dow as it was the sole supplier of napalm to the U.S. military for use in the Vietnam War. American historian and anti-war activist Howard Zinn’s Dow Shalt Not Kill was written in 1967 at the height of the student protests in Michigan and elsewhere against Dow for its “immoral profiteering”. Student bodies from Stanford University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Michigan resisted campus recruitment for Dow between 1966 and 1969 owing to the moral outrage following the killing of innocent people with napalm.
More recently, the international student community campaigning against Dow has also pressured the company to respond to the Bhopal disaster. In February, following a decision taken by the Associated Students of the University of California, Berkeley, the Berkeley Energy and Resources Collaborative turned down funding from Dow for its energy symposium.
Nandkumar Sanglikar, the spokesperson for Dow based in Mumbai, told Frontline that matters relating to liability in Bhopal were the concern of the Dow Chemical Company in the United States. He emphasised that Dow in the U.S. and its Indian subsidiaries were “separate legal entities”.
He added that Dow was all set to expand in India. “Our upcoming R&D centre in Pune will conduct basic chemical research and will be one of its kind in India. We have already got the best and brightest working with us,” he said.
However, if civil society intensifies its campaign against Dow, it would cost the company its reputation. Said a student campaigner from IIT Kharagpur: “Dow will have to come up with convincing answers on Bhopal, not mere public relations stunts. It is a question of ethics, not just legalese.”
Posted by tim at 05:12 PM | Comments (0)
November 14, 2007
Bhopal's gas-affected kids protest on Children's Day
Bhopal's gas-hit kids held a demonstration to demand social security pension for the families with birth defects, as the nation celebrated Children's Day Wednesday.
Children whose health has been impaired due to poisonous gases that leaked from the Union Carbide's pesticide plant on Dec 3, 1984, held a demonstration at the residence of the principal secretary of Bhopal Gas Tragedy, M.M. Upadhyaya to demand medical treatment and monthly pension of Rs.1,000 for the affected families.
The demonstration was held under the aegis of Bhopal Group for Information and Action (BGIA), Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationary Karmchari Sangh and Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Purush Sangarsh Morcha, the organisations that have been fighting for the victims of the Bhopal gas disaster.
Children, including hundreds born with birth defects to gas exposed parents, lamented the failure of the state government to provide security to the victims.
'The government was totally insensitive to our problems -- both medical and economic. I had appealed to Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan for the treatment of my 12-year-old son, Jeet, suffering from congenital heart disease but to no avail,' said Vinuta Lakhera, a gas victim from Kainchi Chhola -- one of the worst gas-affected localities adjacent to the now defunct pesticide plant.
'About 200 children suffering congenital deformities continue to be denied medical attention,' said Rashida Bee of the Chingari Trust working for gas survivors.
'Fourteen children had received official assistance for heart surgery and 13 assistance in diagnosis for congenital brain anomalies between 1992 and 1997, under the programme SPARC (Special Assistance to At Risk Children) but it was suddenly withdrawn in 1997 citing financial constraints.'
'There are an unusually large number of children with cerebral palsy too in the communities affected by gas or contaminated groundwater,' Rashida alleged, lamenting that between 1984 and 2000, the government spent a paltry sum of Rs.3,761 per year per child orphaned by the disaster.
And this despite the fact that an amount of Rs.497 million was allocated for social rehabilitation of victims of the disaster in 1986, she said. But the government was yet to spend the amount. There has been no expenditure by the government on social rehabilitation of gas victims for the last 13 years.
'In addition to children with birth defects, thousands of widows and destitute victims are being denied social support pension. In the last 23 years, the official administration of rehabilitation of victims of Union Carbide has been riddled with corruption, apathy and incompetence,' said Rachna Dhingra of the BGIA.
'The chief minister has not fulfilled any of the promises made to the organisations after our month-long agitation this year and the principal secretary, Upadhyaya, has not followed up with any decision taken by the coordination committee on Bhopal set up after the prime minister's directives last year,' she said.
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