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July 29, 2008
Limited victory
AJOY ASHIRWAD MAHAPRASHASTA AND V. VENKATESAN, Frontline, Volume 25 - Issue 16 : Aug. 02-15, 2008
The survivors of the Bhopal gas tragedy secure from the government promises to implement part of their demands.
AT a small park in New Delhi on June 21, a few children, aged between five and 15, from Bhopal made paper hearts and wrote messages on them. It was their way of telling Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to have a heart and do justice to the survivors of the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy.
These children, along with the survivors and activists, began a dharna at Jantar Mantar on March 28, agitated outside the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) on June 9, and courted imprisonment following their unique “die-in” protest by lying on the ground with shrouds covering their bodies. Nine activists began an indefinite hunger strike on June 10. They ended their fast after 22 days but nine others took over from them. The agitation, led by the Bhopal Group for Information and Action (BGIA), demonstrates what Gandhian methods of peaceful protest and self-inflicted suffering can achieve. The agitators undertook a gruelling 500-mile (800 km) walk, which lasted 38 days, from Bhopal to New Delhi on February 20 in order to strengthen their resolve to fight for their rights and also build public opinion.
Their peaceful agitation did not go in vain. A set of documents procured by the activists from the PMO under the Right to Information Act reveals the government’s thinking on some of the major demands put forward by the agitators.
These include a Commission on Bhopal, specially empowered by the Prime Minister, to plan and carry out medical, economic, social and environmental rehabilitation of the gas victims and civil action for environmental and health damage caused by soil and water contamination by taking appropriate legal action against Union Carbide and Dow Chemical Company (DCC), which owns it now.
The meeting of the Group of Ministers (GoM) on Bhopal Gas Leak Disaster, which was held on April 17, decided to take further action on setting up the commission in consultation with the Ministry of Law and Justice. It also decided to request the Health Ministry to consider continuing the research carried out by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on the effects of the gas leak on the survivors and their families.
A contentious issue was the approval given by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion for the foreign technical collaboration (FTC) between the Dow Global Technologies and Reliance Petroleum Limited, which would facilitate the import of UNIPOL-PP, a technological process patented by Union Carbide to manufacture polypropylene, a thermoplastic used chiefly for electrical insulation and packaging.
The Department of Chemicals and Petrochemicals, (DC&PC), the nodal department dealing with the aftermath of the gas tragedy, sought a reconsideration of the approval. It submitted that any future investment of Dow Chemical should be allowed only after the company met the Central government’s submission in the ongoing case in the Madhya Pradesh High Court. In this case, the DC&PC has, as an interim measure, sought Rs.100 crore from the DCC towards environmental remediation of the gas leak disaster site.
The Law Ministry has, however, disagreed with the DC&PC’s view. It held that the two issues of site remediation and approval of the FTC were unrelated. The Ministry also opined that it was almost impossible to foresee what view a court of law might take in the absence of any precedent.
The Law Ministry, nevertheless, shared the DC&PC’s stand on the question of Dow Chemical’s liability. It opined that it was doubtful whether by virtue of any clause in a merger agreement, companies could wipe out any liability incurred under any law or judicial decisions. “Any such liability unless extinguished by discharge of the liability or by any law, cannot evaporate in thin air. Any clause in an agreement between parties will be against the public policy and will be void and unenforceable in Indian courts,” it said in its opinion given to the Department of Chemicals.
On May 29, Prithviraj Chavan, Minister of State in the PMO, revealed on behalf of the Prime Minister that the government had sanctioned a project under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission to provide safe drinking water through pipelines from the Kolar Reservoir to the 14 localities situated in the vicinity of the abandoned site of Union Carbide of India Limited (UCIL). The Bhopal Municipal Corporation would be responsible for executing the project, which is slated to be ready by the end of the year. This was one of the long-pending demands of the gas victims.
On June 3, Manmohan Singh convened a meeting to discuss the issues relating to Bhopal gas survivors. The minutes of this meeting, as revealed under the RTI Act, show that the government took several decisions. Those present at the meeting included, Prithviraj Chavan; K.M. Chandrasekhar, Cabinet Secretary; V.S. Sampath, Secretary, DC&PC; and senior officials from the PMO. The decisions taken at the meeting partly satisfy the demands of the agitators.
The meeting decided to ask the DC&PC to submit to the GoM a detailed proposal to set up the Commission on Bhopal. The Department was also asked to obtain from the State government a detailed plan of action for the rehabilitation schemes as decided by the GoM and take appropriate action.
It was decided that the DC&PC would expedite the site remediation, particularly the task of transporting the toxic waste for incineration and to the designated landfill. More important, the Department would request the Law Ministry to appoint a senior lawyer to pursue the application filed by it before the High Court seeking an advance of Rs.100 crore from Dow Chemical and two other companies for remediation of the site of the gas leak.
The meeting directed the Ministry of Agriculture to pursue the investigations into the allegation that its officials had taken bribes for the registration of four pesticides by DCC, with the Central Bureau of Investigation for an early and appropriate resolution of the matter. The Ministry has registered three pesticides patented by Dow to be sold in India. They are Dursban, Pride and Nurelle. The Committee of Secretaries convened by the Cabinet Secretary on May 30 recorded that the Registration Committee in the Ministry did not find any compromise on the efficacy of the pesticides.
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission filed a settled civil action in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on February 13, 2007, alleging that DCC violated the books and records and internal controls provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) in connection with an estimated $200,000 in improper payments made by a fifth-tier foreign subsidiary of Dow Chemical to Indian government officials from 1996 through 2001. Without admitting or denying the allegations in the commission’s complaint, DCC consented to pay a $325,000 civil penalty. ’
The police remove children who staged a demonstration outside the Prime Minister’s residence in New Delhi. Pic: V. SUDERSHAN
The gas leak survivors and the activists working among them are satisfied that their five-month-long agitation has yielded at least partial results. The BGIA wants the proposed Commission on Bhopal to be set up through an Act of Parliament, with a tenure of 30 years and a budget of Rs.2,000 crore, to deal with the rehabilitation of the survivors of the disaster and their progeny and provide them with proper living conditions. According to Satinath Sarangi of the BGIA, the 30-year term is necessary as there will be many more people, yet to be born, who will still be affected by the harmful effects of the disaster.
It appears that there will be considerable debate over the proposed terms of reference of the Commission. According to Sarangi, the commission should have the power to summon the officials of DCC so as to make the company liable to the survivors of the disaster. It remains to be seen whether the government will agree to this suggestion from the activists, who are likely to be involved in drafting the terms of reference of the commission.
The activists are also satisfied with the government’s decision to pursue the case of legal liability for the disaster against DCC despite pressures to dilute this charge to facilitate investments in India by DCC.
However, the activists are unhappy that there has been no substantive commitment on reversing the approval given to Reliance Industries to purchase the UNIPOL technology.
At the GoM held on July 11, Union Ministers Arjun Singh and Ram Vilas Paswan agreed that the permission given to Reliance Industries should be revoked, but a decision could not be taken as another Minister, Kamal Nath, reportedly disagreed with the suggestion.
But the meeting, according to informed sources, decided that there would not be any more transfer of UCC-patented technology to India.
The activists are also disappointed that the government has not been sincere in seeking extradition from the U.S. of Warren Anderson, the UCC chief at the time of the disaster. He continues to be a fugitive before the Court of Chief Judicial Magistrate, Bhopal, where the criminal case regarding the disaster is being heard.
The activists and the survivors of the disaster will end their current agitation in the national capital once the PMO issues a directive to the DC&PC to prepare a blueprint for the proposed commission.
So far, they have secured only a limited victory, and this was made possible by sheer perseverance, good organisation and novel forms of protests.
Posted by tim at 02:13 PM | Comments (0)
July 14, 2008
IITians protest Dow sponsorship of golden jubilee celebration
Mumbai/New Delhi, July 14 (IANS) Hundreds of former and present students, including many faculty members of the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-B), have protested acceptance of sponsorship by an alumni group from US-based Dow Chemicals for a golden jubilee conference in New York July 18-20. Addressing the media in Mumbai Monday, Janak Daftari, an IIT-B alumni, said: “A group of IIT-B alumni, mostly from Silicon Valley, in total disregard to the sentiments and the callous practices being followed by the firm in their (alumini’s) origin country, has gone ahead and under the aegis of IIT-Bombay Heritage Fund are organizing a two-day golden jubilee function in New York between July 18-20.”
The Bhopal gas tragedy, which is often considered as one of the world’s biggest industrial disasters, took place December 3, 1984. A Union Carbide subsidiary pesticide plant released 40 tonnes of methyl isocyanate, which killed more than 3,800 people and affected many thousand more. The Dow Chemicals now owns Union Carbide.
Daftari said that over 1,000 students signed a petition last year urging the IITs to debar Dow from on-campus recruitment or sponsoring programs, “purely because of Dow’s mishandling of its subsidiary Union Carbide’s environmental and criminal liabilities in Bhopal and its disregard for Indian courts.”
He said the company was forced to call off its recruitment plans in Mumbai, Chennai, Kharagpur and New Delhi and “IIT Kanpur and IIT Delhi returned Dow’s sponsorship at the last minute, succumbing to pressure from alumni, faculty and students”.
“It is a sheer irony that in 2005, the organisers of Global IIT Conference in the US, cancelled their invitation to the then CEO of Dow, William Stavropoulos. And here the IIT-B Heritage Fund has gone ahead and not just accepted the sponsorship but has even put the firm at the pedestal of gold sponsor,” Daftari said.
Asked whether IIT authorities have given any approval to the contentious event, Daftari said an invitation has been sent to all senior members of the institution.
“Obviously, the golden jubilee celebration is being done privately but then there is a tacit approval from the senior administrators. After all they are seriously contemplating to attend the event even though scores of faculty members have opposed the sponsorship itself,” he said.
In Delhi, Ravi Kuchimanchi, another alumni, said he, like scores of others, was shocked that the organisers of the conference could even think of associating themselves with a company that has caused such an enormous disaster and given birth to innumerable tales of agony.
“In 1984 when the gas leaked in Bhopal, I and other students in IIT-Bombay were shocked and angry. Today I am shocked to see, instead of forcing Dow to fork up money and clean up the Bhopal site, the organisers of the 50th anniversary celebrations have sought its money. As IIT alumni we can do better,” a disappointed Kuchimanchi said in a press statement in the national capital.
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July 07, 2008
Decades Later, Toxic Sludge Torments Bhopal
SOMINI SENGUPTA, New York Times, July 7, 2008
In 2004, complaints from area residents led the Supreme Court to order the state to supply clean drinking water to the people living around the factory, like this young girl, filling buckets fed from a government-provided tank. By then, nearly 20 years had gone by, with residents of the nearby slum drinking contaminated water, with often disastrous results on their health.
Photo: Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
BHOPAL, India — Hundreds of tons of waste still languish inside a tin-roofed warehouse in a corner of the old grounds of the Union Carbide pesticide factory here, nearly a quarter-century after a poison gas leak killed thousands and turned this ancient city into a notorious symbol of industrial disaster.
The toxic remains have yet to be carted away. No one has examined to what extent, over more than two decades, they have seeped into the soil and water, except in desultory checks by a state environmental agency, which turned up pesticide residues in the neighborhood wells far exceeding permissible levels.
Nor has anyone bothered to address the concerns of those who have drunk that water and tended kitchen gardens on this soil and who now present a wide range of ailments, including cleft palates and mental retardation, among their children as evidence of a second generation of Bhopal victims, though it is impossible to say with any certainty what is the source of the afflictions.
Why it has taken so long to deal with the disaster is an epic tale of the ineffectiveness and seeming apathy of India’s bureaucracy and of the government’s failure to make the factory owners do anything about the mess they left. But the question of who will pay for the cleanup of the 11-acre site has assumed new urgency in a country that today is increasingly keen to attract foreign investment.
It was here that on Dec. 3, 1984, a tank inside the factory released 40 tons of methyl isocyanate gas, killing those who inhaled it while they slept. At the time, it was called the world’s worst industrial accident. At least 3,000 people were killed immediately. Thousands more may have died later from the aftereffects, though the exact death toll remains unclear.
More than 500,000 people were declared to be affected by the gas and awarded compensation, an average of $550. Some victims say they have yet to receive any money. Efforts to extradite Warren M. Anderson, the chief executive of Union Carbide at the time, from the United States continue, though apparently with little energy behind them.
Advocates for those who live near the site continue to hound the company and their government. They chain themselves to the prime minister’s residence one day and dog shareholder meetings on another, refusing to let Bhopal become the tragedy that India forgot. They insist that Dow Chemical Company, which bought Union Carbide in 2001, also bought its liabilities and should pay for the cleanup.
“Had the toxic waste been cleaned up, the contaminated groundwater would not have happened,” says Mira Shiva, a doctor who heads the Voluntary Health Association, one of many groups pressing for Dow to take responsibility for the cleanup. “Dow was the first crime. The second crime was government negligence.”
Dow, based in Michigan, says it bears no responsibility to clean up a mess it did not make. “As there was never any ownership, there is no responsibility and no liability — for the Bhopal tragedy or its aftermath,” Scot Wheeler, a company spokesman, said in an e-mail message.
Mr. Wheeler pointed out that the former factory property, along with the waste it contained, had been turned over to the Madhya Pradesh State government in June 1998, and that “for whatever reason most of us do not know or fully understand, the site remains unremediated.”
He went on to say that Dow could not finance remediation efforts, even if it wanted to, because it could potentially open up the company to further liabilities.
In a letter to the Indian ambassador to the United States in 2006, the Dow chairman, Andrew N. Liveris, sought assurance from the government that it would not be held liable for the mess on the old factory site, “in your efforts to ensure that we have the appropriate investment climate.”
The claims have divided the government itself. It is now in the throes of a debate over who will pay — a debate that might have taken place behind closed doors were it not for a series of public information requests by advocates for Bhopal residents that turned up revealing government correspondence.
It showed that one arm of the government, the Chemicals and Petrochemicals Ministry, entrusted with the cleanup of the site, has wanted Dow to put down a $25 million deposit toward the cost of remediation, while other senior officials warned that forcing Dow’s hand could endanger future investments in the country.
A senior government official, prohibited from speaking publicly on such a contentious issue, described the quandary. “Do you want $1 billion in investment, or do you want this sticky situation to continue?” the official said, calling it a stalemate.
The government is expected to make a final decision later this year.
Beyond who will pay for the cleanup here, the question is why 425 tons of hazardous waste — some local advocates allege there is a great deal more, buried in the factory grounds — remain here 24 years after the leak?
There are many answers. The company was allowed to dump the land on the government before it was cleaned up. Lawsuits by advocacy groups are still winding their way through the courts. And a network of often lethargic, seemingly apathetic government agencies do not always coordinate with one another.
The result is a wasteland in the city’s heart. The old factory grounds, frozen in time, are an overgrown 11-acre forest of corroded tanks and pipes buzzing with cicadas, where cattle graze and women forage for twigs to cook their evening meal.
The old factory grounds, frozen in time, are an overgrown 11-acre forest of corroded tanks and pipes. The toxic remains have yet to be carted away. At least 3,000 people were killed on Dec. 3, 1984, after a tank inside the factory released 40 tons of methyl isocyanate gas, killing those who inhaled it while they slept. Thousands more may have died later from the aftereffects, though the exact death toll remains unclear.
Photo: Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
Since the disaster, ill-considered decisions on the part of local residents have only compounded the problems and heightened their health risks. Just beyond the factory wall is a blue-black open pit. Once the repository of chemical sludge from the pesticide plant, it is now a pond where slum children and dogs dive on hot afternoons. Its banks are an open toilet. In the rainy season, it overflows through the slum’s muddy alleys.
Hundreds of tons of waste still languish on the old grounds of the Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, India, nearly a quarter-century after a poison gas leak killed thousands and turned this ancient city into a notorious symbol of industrial disaster. Just beyond the factory wall is a blue-black open pit. Once the repository of chemical sludge from the pesticide plant, it is now a pond where slum children and dogs swim on hot afternoons. It has only heightened health risks for residents.
Photo: Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
The slum rose up shortly after the gas leak. Poor people flocked here, seeking cheap land, and put up homes right up to the edge of the sludge pond. Once, the pond was sealed with concrete and plastic. But in the searing heat, the concrete cover eventually collapsed.
The first tests of groundwater began, inexplicably, 12 years after the gas leak. The state pollution control board turned up traces of pesticides, including endosulfan, lindane, trichlorobenzene and DDT. Soil sediments were not tested. The water was never compared with water in other city neighborhoods. The pollution board saw no cause for alarm.
Nevertheless, in 2004, complaints from residents led the Supreme Court to order the state to supply clean drinking water to the people living around the factory. By then, nearly 20 years had gone by.
“It is a scandal that the hazardous wastes left behind by Union Carbide unattended for 20 years have now migrated below ground and contaminated the groundwater below the factory and in its neighborhood,” wrote Claude Alvares, a monitor for India’s Supreme Court, who visited here in March 2005.
He tasted the water from one well. “I had to spit out everything,” he wrote in his report. The water “had an appalling chemical taste.” Neighborhood women brought out their utensils to show how the water had corroded them.
As his report went on to point out, the government was long ago made aware of the likelihood of contamination. A government research center warned more than 10 years ago that, if left untreated, the toxic residue on the factory grounds would seep into the soil and water.
A guard on duty in the remains of the Union Carbide plant. No one has examined to what extent, over more than two decades, the toxic remains have seeped into the soil and water, except in desultory checks by a state environmental agency, which turned up pesticide residues in the neighborhood wells far exceeding permissible levels.
Photo: Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
Around the same time, under public pressure, state authorities finally scooped up the toxic waste that had lain in clumps around the factory grounds, and stored it inside the tin-roofed warehouse. The warehouse was padlocked only about four years ago.
The waste was supposed to be taken to an incinerator in neighboring Gujarat, but the government has yet to find a contractor willing to pack it into small, transportable parcels. There have been delays in acquiring transport permits, too, with citizens groups raising new questions about the hazards of transporting the waste.
Ajay Vishoni, the state gas and health minister, said he was confident that none of the waste was hazardous anymore, nor had anyone proved to his satisfaction that it had ever caused the contamination of the groundwater. “There is hype,” he said.
In 2005, a state-financed study called for long-term epidemiological studies to determine the impact of contaminated drinking water, concluding that while the levels of toxic contaminants were not very high, water and soil contamination had caused an increase in respiratory and gastrointestinal ailments.
In the Shiv Nagar slum about half a mile from the factory, there is a boy, Akash, who was born with an empty socket for a left eye. Now 6, he cannot see properly or speak. He is a cheerful child who plays in the lanes near his house.
In the Shiv Nagar slum, about a half-mile from the factory, Akash was born with an empty socket for a left eye. Now 6, he cannot see properly, nor speak. His father, Shobha Ram, blamed the boy's afflictions on the hand-pumped well from where his family drew water on the edge of the sludge pond for years. "We knew the gas incident took place," he said. "We never thought the contaminated water would come all the way to our house."
Photo: Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
His father, Shobha Ram, a maker of sweets who bought land here many years after the gas leak and built himself a two-room house, said the boy’s afflictions were caused by the hand-pumped well from where his family drew water on the edge of the sludge pond for years. He said it had not occurred to him that the water could be laced with pesticides.
“We knew the gas incident took place,” he said. “We never thought the contaminated water would come all the way to our house.”
The stories repeat themselves in the nearby slums. In Blue Moon, Muskan, a 2-year-old girl, cannot walk, speak or understand what is happening around her. Her father, Anwar, blames the water.
In Arif Nagar, Nawab and Hassan Mian, brothers who are 8 and 12, move through their house like newly hatched birds, barely able to stand. They have no control over their muscles. Their mother, Fareeda Bi, is unsure of exactly what caused their ailment, but she, too, blames the water.
Fareeda Bi sitting with her two sons, Nawab, 8, in her lap, and Hassan, 12, in their home in the Arif Nagar slum near the factory. The boys have no muscle control and are barely able to stand. "There are more children like this in the neighborhood," she said, "who cannot walk, who cannot see." To compound the tragedy, there is no way to know to what extent the water is to blame. The government suspended long-term public health studies many years ago.
Photo: Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
“There are more children like this in the neighborhood,” she said, “who cannot walk, who cannot see.”
To compound the tragedy, there is no way to know to what extent the water is to blame. The government suspended long-term public health studies many years ago.
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