Bhopal: The victims of the world's worst industrial disaster, the Bhopal Gas Tragedy of 1984, continue to battle the deadly diseases due to the side-affects of the toxic gas leaked from the pesticide plant 23 years ago.

On the night of December 2, 1984, tonnes of a toxic gas leaked from the pesticide plant owned by Union Carbide, killing 3,800 people almost immediately. Thousands more sustained severe afflictions.

"The deaths continue even today. A fortnight back, one person, Idris, who was being treated for illness sustained after the gas tragedy, died. There's a whole new generation, the offspring of the gas-hit, who are suffering the horrendous side effects of the disaster, from deep psychiatric disorders to stunted growth. Almost 25,000 people living near the Carbide factory are forced to drink poisonous water even now," said Satya Narayan Sarangi, coordinator of Bhopal Group for Information and Action.

Victims of the worst tragedy are leading pitiable lives due to lack of adequate compensation to the deserving.

"The afflictions after the tragedy have hit me so badly that I am unable to work and practically no money to bring up my children. There is no succour from the government in these times of soaring prices," said Sushila Mishra, a gas tragedy victim.

Meanwhile, activists say that the court should reconsider its decision rejecting the petitions filed seeking enhanced compensation to gas victims.

"We have demanded that the court should reconsider the petition it rejected on May 3, 2007, and the affected should get adequate compensation," said Abdul Jabbar, coordinator of the Women Gas Tragedy Victims Organisation, an NGO.

Union Carbide in 1984 accepted moral responsibility for the tragedy and established a 100 million dollars charitable trust fund to build a hospital forictims. Later, the Union Carbide was taken over by the Dow Chemicals.

Union Carbide India Ltd. began the cleanup work at the site after the incident, spending some 2 million dollars.

The Union Carbide, after a protracted legal battle, paid 470 million dollars to the Indian government in a settlement reached in 1989. The victims, on an average, received 25,000 rupees in case of illness and 100,000 rupees in case of a death in the family. (ANI)

Paul Watson, Los Angeles Times, August 30, 2001

BHOPAL, India -- Sunil Verma just wants to be left by himself. He doesn't trust strangers. Companionship is a creeping terror.

Almost 17 years ago, a toxic cloud drifted from the Union Carbide pesticide plant here, turning the air lethal and the leaves black. It killed seven members of Verma's family, including his parents, and he still lives in fear of demons he cannot see.

No More Bhopal!
Remembering Bhopal at the Seattle WTO Summit Demonstrations, November 30th, 1999
Photo Credit: Miho Kim/www.corpwatch.org
"I hear sounds in my mind," Verma said through an interpreter. "I only feel like staying in a lonely room. I can't stand going into a crowd." Verma is a patient at a clinic for survivors opened five years ago by a charity called the Sabhavna Trust. Up to 100 patients come to the two-story building every day for treatment of chronic lung ailments, eye problems, psychiatric disorders and other illnesses common among Bhopal victims.

Satinath Sarangi, a metallurgical engineer who manages the trust, rushed to Bhopal after hearing the first radio reports about the disaster in 1984. He made Bhopal his adopted home, its survivors his extended family and, through it all, became a determined campaigner against economic globalization.

He sees Bhopal not as a tragedy in one act but part of a dangerous trend that continues to play itself out across the developing world.

"We call it the curtain-raiser," Sarangi said.

To Sarangi, and the like-minded who protest with him in the streets of richer nations, the lessons of Bhopal have been lost on governments of the developing world. Those countries are paying a high price, he says, as they try to balance the need for jobs against the pressures of foreign investment, often in hazardous industries considered too dirty--and risky--for more developed nations.

While Bhopal's survivors try to live with the medical fallout of a long-ago disaster, thousands of them also are fighting in U.S. and Indian courts for damages.

Tribunals set up by India's government to settle claims are attempting to close the books on Bhopal this year, amid widespread accusations of corruption. Victims complain that compensation payments, averaging about $580 each, cannot even cover loans many took out to pay medical bills, funeral costs and other expenses.

Tribunal authorities say they were inundated with false claims. But activists suspect India's government is keeping payouts to the bare minimum so that foreign investors will see that cheap labor comes with a bonus: low liability for industrial accidents.

As if that weren't enough, no one has yet decided who will clean up toxic waste that environmental groups say is still seeping into drinking water from the ghostly ruins of the abandoned pesticide plant. And even now, no one is certain whether the disaster was caused by negligence or, as Union Carbide insists, was an act of sabotage by an unhappy worker.

A new day had just begun on Dec. 3, 1984, when a runaway reaction overheated a holding tank of highly toxic methyl isocyanate. It spewed out a poisonous cloud that the moist night air transformed into a swirling chemical vapor of at least 65 gases, including hydrogen cyanide.

The cloud of toxins crept close to the ground and enshrouded people as they lay in their beds or tried to outrun the gas, burning their eyes, throats and lungs.

Verma was sleeping on the floor with four brothers, four sisters and their mother and father when the gas seeped into every corner of their crowded slum around 1 a.m.

Within hours, at least 2,000 people were dead. Nearly 600,000 have received compensation for injuries, either from the initial leak or its aftereffects.

Years later, the official death toll is more than 5,000, but activists say the number of deaths from gas-related illnesses is closer to 20,000. And a few hundred thousand survivors are still fighting the noxious legacy of the world's worst industrial disaster.

They are trying to sue Union Carbide in the United States despite the company's $470-million out-of-court settlement with the Indian government in February 1989.

India's Supreme Court said the settlement was better than the victims could have received under local law. But by keeping the claims out of U.S. courts, the deal also forced the tens of thousands of unsatisfied claimants to search for justice in the crooked maze of India's judicial system.

More than 1 million people, almost double Bhopal's estimated population at the time of the gas leak, filed claims with the local tribunals created by the federal government to decide compensation. The tribunals rejected almost half. The average payout to almost 560,000 survivors who received settlements as of June 1 was $580, official figures show.

That's much less than a year's starting salary for the lowliest of government workers, the messenger who delivers everything from memos to tea and is officially known as a peon. India's government set compensation limits based on incomes from the 1980s, even though the first payments were not made until almost a decade after the leak.

The government still is sitting on a large chunk of Union Carbide's original payout, plus interest, and it refuses to say how much of the money is left. But the figure is estimated to be at least $240 million, said Srinivasan Muralidhar, a lawyer who has represented Bhopal victims in Indian Supreme Court appeals for almost seven years.

In a country where public servants from the letter carrier on up are chronically on the take, the victims are naturally suspicious about what the government is doing with their money.

"It's unpardonable, particularly since they continue to settle claims more than 16 years after the event, and not one of the victims has earned interest on the award," Muralidhar said.

The tribunals approved payments in 14,824 claims for deaths blamed on the disaster, most of which occurred years after. The average compensation was about $1,300, or about 15% of the maximum allowed.

Most of the death settlements were low because the tribunals reduced the majority to injury cases, Sarangi said. The tribunals settled more than 90% of claims for about $550 each, the smallest payment allowed under guidelines the federal government set in 1993, when the tribunals began processing claims.

Abdul Jabbar, now a hard-line Bhopal activist, was living with his family about a mile from the pesticide plant on the night of the leak. His father, Abdul Sattar, died less than two years later. His brother, Munne Khan, died in 1996.

Both succumbed to lung ailments, said Jabbar, who has fibrosis in one lung and can't breathe properly.

The claims tribunal paid about $1,300 for his brother's death and about $550 for his father's, he said. The money went to his widowed mother.

The tribunal is offering Jabbar about $550 for his own suffering, but he refuses it and is among the thousands of survivors fighting in Indian and U.S. courts for more. Their lawyers are arguing, for instance, that the victims have a right to sue in the U.S. for compensation and a cleanup of pollution that endangers the health of up to 20,000 people in Bhopal. A U.S. appeals court heard the case this spring and is expected to rule this year.

"When I'm alone, I feel like tearing my hair out," Jabbar said. "There's one disaster after another. It's only happening because the affected people are poor people."

An investigation ordered by India's Supreme Court in 1995 found evidence that some tribunal officials were demanding bribes from the gas victims. It also concluded that the system was intimidating claimants into accepting the smallest settlements allowed.

Justice Subash Balwant Sakrikar, who heads the tribunals as welfare commissioner of Madhya Pradesh state, denied that the system is flawed. "There are so many complaints, and in most of the cases these complaints are bogus," the judge said in an interview.

Sakrikar said he couldn't discuss details of the complaints or the settlements because matters still are before the courts. But in a written reply to the Supreme Court's 1995 probe, the welfare commissioner's office confirmed that it had fired 12 tribunal staff members for misbehavior, such as demanding bribes from gas victims pleading for higher compensation.

From the start, the Bhopal victims have argued that Union Carbide Corp. should be held accountable in a U.S. court because, they say, the Connecticut-based company designed and built the Bhopal plant, had strict control over its operations and finances and owned a controlling share in its subsidiary, Union Carbide India Ltd.

But a U.S. District Court judge ruled in 1986 that the lawsuit was a matter for India's courts. A U.S. appeals court upheld the decision in 1987, ruling that Union Carbide's Indian subsidiary was a separate and independent legal entity, managed and operated by Indians.

Union Carbide sold its 50.9% share of the subsidiary in 1994 to a Calcutta-based firm. Union Carbide merged with Dow Chemical Co. in February of this year.

Ram Kuwar Bai, 80, received the minimum payout in death cases of 100,000 rupees--about $2,200--in 1994 for the death of her husband, Devi Ram. She split it with her four daughters. Today, Bai has no money left to pay a 3-year-old electric bill of about $380.

She is nearly deaf and blind and dying alone, in a room just big enough for her bed. Her home is in a government-built "widows colony" where gas survivors live amid raw sewage that spills into the streets from leaky pipes.

"I'm running out of breath," she apologized after coughing so hard she had to spit into the hole in the floor that is her toilet. "I'm just waiting for God to come and take me away. Instead of living like this, it's better to die."

The tribunals also paid about $2,200 for each of Sunil Verma's seven relatives, even though the panels' own guidelines allowed a payout four times larger.

Verma spent his share to make a down payment on a bus. He was trying to start a business, but it quickly went bust.

A doctor has diagnosed him as suffering from paranoid psychosis. There is no medical proof that it was caused by the gas leak, but survivors frequently complain of depression, memory loss, panic attacks and other psychiatric disorders, according to studies by the Indian Council of Medical Research.

Dr. Ashok Bhiman found twice as many cases of "organic brain damage" in an area of severe exposure to the toxic gas than he did in an unaffected district. He concluded that the leaked gas caused brain damage, but the government pulled the plug on Bhiman's study and other research on long-term effects six years ago.

The research, including studies into suspected links to birth defects, psychiatric problems and other ailments, was shut down without publication of its results. There was no official explanation.

In the years just after the leak, before Bhopal joined the list of vaguely remembered calamities, the focus was on getting justice for the dead and injured. Few paid much attention to the toxic mess experts say still poisons people.

Today the plant is a rusting hulk of ruptured tanks and empty buildings with broken windows. In the drains, rainwater mixes with contaminated sediments that contain, among other things, mercury. Exposure to high levels of mercury can cause nervous system damage, mood and personality shifts and birth defects, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency warns.

A large sign in the middle of the deserted complex says: "Not For Sale." Graffiti sprayed in white paint on the wall surrounding the property declare, next to a skull and crossbones, "Union Carbide Killers."

Environmental groups such as Greenpeace say the company left behind an oozing industrial sore. Although it was partially cleaned up in 1996, the plant continues to poison the ground water that runs to hand pumps in the same slums that suffered the brunt of the 1984 gas leak.

In a 1999 study of soil and water samples in and around the plant, scientists from the Greenpeace Research Laboratories at Britain's University of Exeter found "overall contamination" and "hot spots of severe contamination with heavy metals and/or persistent organic pollutants."

The list includes an organochlorine that is a potent kidney toxin and suspected carcinogen, and carbon tetrachloride at levels 1,700 times above the World Health Organization's limit for drinking water. Short-term exposure to carbon tetrachloride may cause liver, kidney and lung damage and long term may cause cancer, according to the EPA.

The pollution is "likely to have serious consequences for the health and survival of the local population," the 109-page Greenpeace report concluded.

Despite earlier environmental warnings, the state Pollution Control Board declared the dump site next to the Bhopal plant "a secure landfill" in 1997. The state government, insisting the land is safe to live on, is offering to return it to farmers who owned it before Union Carbide set up the pesticide plant.

The search for justice isn't just about safety issues and money. The Bhopal victims also want to know who was to blame. Muralidhar, one of their lawyers, says some of the strongest evidence that the plant was accident-prone surfaced just five years ago and, he claims, is still being ignored by India's federal police.

Union Carbide insists that a disgruntled worker caused the Bhopal disaster by connecting a water hose directly to the tank of methyl isocyanate, setting off an unstoppable chemical reaction.

No suspect was ever named, and a study by Indian scientists blamed faults in the plant's design, including insufficient safeguards that they said allowed contaminants into the tank.

But a 1988 investigation conducted for Union Carbide by Arthur D. Little International, a Massachusetts-based consulting firm, concluded "with virtual certainty" that the plant was sabotaged and said "it is equally clear that those most directly involved" tried to cover it up.

Kamal Pareek, who was in charge of plant safety until he quit a year before the gas leak, thinks sabotage was impossible.

"It's so difficult, at any given moment, to consciously release MIC [methyl isocyanate gas] into the atmosphere," Pareek said in an interview in New Delhi, where he now works as a consultant.

The factory had lost so much money since 1981 that safety measures were cut, he said, adding that managers in India and the U.S. ignored many warnings that disaster was inevitable. Separate investigations by Indian scientists and police reached similar conclusions.

A poster left by a leftist workers group on walls near the plant more than two years before the leak warned of danger. It was entered as evidence before India's Supreme Court in a failed 1996 appeal.

In addition, at least one worker was killed and several others injured in a string of phosgene gas leaks that continued at least until 1982, according to reports filed with the Supreme Court. Union Carbide used phosgene, which was a chemical weapon in World War I, to make methyl isocyanate. In 1986, the U.S. government imposed a then-record fine on Union Carbide, alleging safety violations at a pesticide plant in West Virginia; one alleged infraction was that workers checked out suspected phosgene leaks by sniffing equipment vents. Union Carbide denied violating the law but agreed to pay a reduced fine.

Pareek said he had suggested not long before he quit that the company put up its own posters and hand out pamphlets in nearby shantytowns to teach people what to do if a major leak occurred. Management rejected the idea, he said.

Had the messages gone out, people would have learned a simple way to protect themselves: Hold a wet cloth over your face until the deadly gas passes on the wind.

But as it turned out, the victims, most of them asleep, wouldn't have had much warning.

People in the shanties had complained about the noise from Union Carbide's emergency siren, Pareek said.

"The shift superintendent on that night of the disaster decided not to blow the siren," he said, "so that people would not get alarmed unnecessarily, on a very cold night."

[Based on a statement reported on bhopal.net in September, Ed]

BHOPAL: The organisation of the Welfare Commissioner has disposed of all the claim cases that were filed by the victims of the Union Carbide gas disaster till the end of 2003. Of the 90,600 appeals and revisions that were subsequently filed, only about 300 appeals are now pending for adjudication.

The organisation of the Welfare Commissioner was constituted under the Bhopal Gas Leak (Processing of Claims) Act, 1985 to adjudicate claims and disburse compensation to the victims of the Union Carbide gas disaster that struck Bhopal on the midnight of December 2 and 3, 1984.

The Bhopal Gas Leak (Processing of Claims) Act, 1985 was enacted by Parliament as the Government of India took up the role of "Parens-Patrie" for the gas victims. In February 1989, the Supreme Court had passed the order of settlement of claims under which the multinationl Union Carbide Corporation was asked to pay $ 470 million to the Union of India in full and final settlement.

The last of more than 20,000 "revision of compensation claims" arising from the Bhopal Gas Tragedy was decided on September 9th by Welfare Commissioner Justice Deepak Verma. The cases had been pending, awaiting hearing, to decide the proper amount of compensation each claimant should receive.

According to Welfare Commission Registrar, SM Shrivastava, the number of cases filed by September 9th was 10,323 and a total of 20,124 compensation cases were resolved at 253 sittings.

In order to clear the backlog without choking the High Court, Justice Verma held sittings during public holidays. Bhopali lawyers had offered commendable co-operation in resolving the cases, the Registrar added.

When future historians evaluate the current Session of Parliament, they will rate it as one of the most raucous and unproductive series of sittings ever held by India's lawmakers. Its first half was dominated by a non-issue- a hollow, unsubstantiated, cheaply sensationalist claim made by one of India's most hollow, pompous and ridiculous politicians. Jaswant Singh of Kandahar couldn't produce even an iota of evidence to show that there was a "mole" in PV Narasimha Rao's inner circle, who passed sensitive information on to the United States on India's nuclear programme.

The Monsoon Session's second half is being consumed by another issue, which too is trivial to Parliament's overall agenda: the leak to the media of the Pathak Commission's report on the Iraq oil-for-food scam, before it was presented to Parliament. A peculiar line-up is emerging on the "breach-of-privilege" issue. Along with Singh, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance has been joined by the Regional-3-Samajwadi Party, Telugu Desam and AIADMK Whether this develops into the kernel of a new political front or not, it speaks of these parties' short-term, parochial calculations.

Admittedly, it's perfectly legitimate to cast doubt on the integrity of the Pathak panel. With due respect, the former Chief Justice has a colourful record. In 1989, he imposed a patently unjust settlement upon the Bhopal gas victims on Union Carbide's behalf, letting one of the world's greatest corporate criminals off the hook. He was handsomely rewarded for this- with a position on the International Court of Justice at The Hague.

However, neither that, nor the politics behind the Volcker commission, can exonerate Natwar Singh of the charge of facilitating the Iraqi contracts. Although Justice Pathak has found no evidence that Singh personally received money from the shady deals, it's undeniable that he introduced his son and Andaleeb Sehgal to the Iraqi government. Singh stands morally and politically indicted. The SP-TDP-AIADMK have a narrow, parochial, opportunist motive behind backing him-namely, embarrassing the Congress through the privilege motion.

However, there's no prima facie evidence of any breach of Parliamentary privilege. Nothing suggests that an official body leaked the Pathak report. (It probably came from a lawyer until recently associated with the Commission.) In any case, a leak involves an impropriety, not breach of privilege. The legitimate way to fight the Congress is to dissect the Pathak report, and question the process through which Volcker came selectively to name names in his multiple-version/instalment report. But The Regional-3 are looking for cheap gains.

The SP is keen to recruit Mr Singh as its Jat face-a poor replacement for Mr Ajit Singh, who's in departure mode. The BJP, of course, makes no bones that its real, indeed only, target is Ms Sonia Gandhi-no matter whether she was or wasn't involved in the Iraq deal. She's an "evil foreigner". But this is irrelevant to the issue at stake.

In fact, there has been more shadow-boxing than debate in Parliament so far. Even on the nuclear deal with the US, a far more important matter, the emphasis has been on procedure, rather than substance. The question being asked is not if the deal is in India's interest, promotes world peace, and defends sovereignty-or doesn't. Rather, it's whether the US Congress has changed the goalposts from July 18 last year.

However, for those from the Left who criticised the original deal, this should be of much less consequence than their basic opposition to an India-US "strategic partnership"-as well as to uncritical promotion of nuclear power. They can't treat the original deal or the PM's statements on it as sacrosanct and keep silent on their own concerns about sovereignty (which lies in the people, not mass-destruction weapons), nuclear disarmament and peace, or the environmental and health effects of nuclear power.

Those who attacked the original deal from the Right are even more inconsistent. If, in the first place, the deal is a "sellout" and will cripple India's capacity to make enough nuclear weapons, it cannot be remedied by minor changes to the Bills drafted in the US, and even less by the PM's assurance that he will stick to the July 2005 parameters, no more, no less. However, the BJP doesn't even behave like a proper, sincere, principled Right-wing party, which takes its ideology seriously. It's just plain opportunist and obsessed with attacking the Congress on every conceivable issue, with or (generally) without, argument or reasoning.

The time claimed by the incredibly noisy, singularly unenlightening and largely futile debate on such trivial issues is not only a waste. It carries a heavy opportunity cost. Quite simply, it means that major issues worthy of serious debate are bypassed, important Bills are shelved or rushed through without the required readings, and precious opportunities to improve governance are squandered away.

Typically, 40 to 65 percent of all Bills listed for a Parliament Session are skipped for lack of time. In this Session, for instance, important business like the 33 percent reservations-for-women Bill, measures to provide social security to unorganised workers, and drastic changes in the Right to Information Act, will not be taken up. Some of these have been hanging fire for as long as 10 years. This is a sad comment on our apex legislature.

Other Parliamentary functions such as debating important national and international events, and articulating peoples' grievances and analysing their causes, have also suffered. Over two decades, the number of working days during which Parliament meets has shrunk by a fifth. Typically, Parliament now devotes only 14 percent of its time to legislative business, compared to 48 percent in the first two Lok Sabhas. The reason isn't that it discusses emergent developments and policies at greater length. Rather, its time is taken up in procedural matters, stonewalling questions, in acrimonious exchanges or noisy walkouts. Parliament is becoming less and less relevant in voicing popular concerns.

Parliamentary questions and the Zero Hour are extremely important instruments for drawing out information from the government and pointing its attention to major events. Even the most cynical of politicians and bureaucrats answer Parliament questions relatively honestly. They know they will pay a personal penalty if they're caught lying. But the number of questions that can be asked during Zero Hour has just been reduced to just 10. The overall proportion of starred questions-on which further debate is allowed-has decreased. As has the quality of the information contained in the answers. This bodes ill for transparency.

This should give serious cause for concern to our leaders, both in and outside government. By contributing to the trivialisation of Parliamentary discourse, they risk damaging the greatest assets they can possess in the eyes of the people: credibility and legitimacy. Without these, our leaders won't count for toffee. The era of manipulative politics, in which people voted naively, has ended. Identity representation is no longer enough. People want direct power-as well as transparency, action, accountability.

Today's wholly justified outcry over the government's disgraceful attempt to exempt file notings from the purview of the RTI Act is an expression of this grass-roots urge, which is increasingly proving irrepressible. People want to know how their money is spent, how corruption can be punished and eliminated, how governments can become more responsive. That's why the growing demand that policies should be discussed and approved in Parliament. As also the demand for Parliamentary ratification of all international treaties and agreements.

The thrust of all these is unambiguous: greater transparency and accountability from every institution, every official, every service provider. Parliament is clearly central to this. If it lets the people down, it will jeopardise India's own future. From the current farce, we would then move on to a true tragedy.

Praful Bidwai (The author is a well known columnist)

With increase in number of incidents occurring consequent to floods, earthquakes, riots/civil disturbances, fires, explosions, terrorist activities, the issues relating to taxability of compensation/monetary relief in cash and kind are cropping up in big numbers. The problems that arise in this context are whether the sums received by the affected parties are liable to Income-Tax?

That such sums are not exempt from tax automatically and special provisions are needed to secure tax benefits for these is clear from the subsequent discussion.

• Section 10(BB) was required to be inserted in the I-T Act, 1961 (Act) by the Finance Act, 1992, to give exemption from tax for payments made under Bhopal Gas Leak Disaster (Processing of Claims) Act, 1985 and any scheme framed thereunder to assessees in receipt of such sums with a rider to prevent double advantage.

• Section 33B from April 1, 1967, gave deduction from total income equal to 60% of the amount admissible as deduction in respect of depreciation u/s 32(1)(iii) when extensive damage was caused to any building, machinery, plant or furniture of an assessee because of flood, typhoon, hurricane, riot or civil disturbance, fire, explosion, enemy action, etc. The tax benefit was by way of deduction - not to any grant of compensation received to compensate the assessee for the loss suffered. However, this benefit stands withdrawn from April 1, 1985.

These illustrations show that the I-T Act does not contain any in-built provision to exempt such benefits from Income-Tax even though these are received in unusual/extraordinary circumstances - not within the control of an assessee.

Position worsens after gifts are taxed as income

For the amounts received consequent to tragedies (supra), it could have been argued that such receipts are not taxable because these do not have any 'source'. These come as a windfall and hence, not taxable. However, this argument may no longer be valid after insertion of clause (v) in sub-section (1) of section 56 from April 1, 2004, which taxes receipts under the head "income from other sources" and provides for taxation of gifts as income in the specified circumstances. This provision applies only to individuals and Hindu undivided families and is attracted when amounts are received by such assessees "without consideration". The limit of the exempt amount, which was Rs 25,000 on each occasion without "aggregation" has been raised to Rs 50,000 from the AY 2007-08, applicable to aggregate of money (gifts) received during a financial year. The liability to tax extends to sums received from local authorities/corporations/ governments/charitable institutions, etc., whose income is exempt from tax except when such sums are received on the occasions of marriage under wills/inheritance/in contemplation of death. Amounts received from relatives are exempt and for this, the term "relative" has been defined in the explanation thus:-

(i) spouse of the individual;

(ii) brother or sister of the individual or spouse;

(iii) brother or sister of the parents of individual;

(iv) any lineal ascendant or descendent of the individual;

(v) spouses of the persons referred to earlier at (i) to (iv).

Thus, from April 1, 2004, gifts or voluntary payments, compensations, etc, received on account of the loss suffered consequent to tragedies of the nature described earlier are liable to tax unless exempted as in the case of Bhopal Gas victims. The sums received by the family members of persons killed in Jammu & Kashmir or in other places in the country (like Bombay blasts of 11/7) or in countries like Afghanistan (in the case of persons like Suryanarayana) would be liable to tax unless exempted by law or notifications. The payments received in the above situation cannot be said to be in lieu of some 'consideration' as the term "consideration" has been assigned legal meaning.

Urgent attention to the problem mentioned is necessary to avoid hardships in the case of families of recipients of the tragedies. The practical way to exempt such receipts is to authorise the CBDT to give exemption in such situations by notifications, whose copies can be placed on the tables of the two Houses of Parliament. Amendment of law (as in cases of Bhopal Gas victims) may not be possible when such situations arise. Further, such amendments would make the law cumbersome and long. Immediate action in this regard is necessary.

The author is former chairman, Central Board of Direct Taxes

There are still about 20,000 people who were affected in the Bhopal gas tragedy but have neither got compensation nor medical aid.

A PIL for relief for these victims is pending in the Supreme Court. An NGO has now moved another application for urgent medical aid for these victims, some of who may not survive till the court settles their compensation case.

Twenty-six-year-old Sayara was four when the tragedy struck in 1984. Her mother died and she developed a breathing disorder.

Over the years her organs have disintegrated. Doctors say this is what happens to people who have been exposed to MIC, the gas that leaked from the Union Carbide factory.

Sayara now has rheumatic heart disease and weighs just 35 kg.

When Sayara was a child she got Rs 200 a month as compensation. But she moved to Lucknow after marriage and was not in Bhopal to collect the Rs 25,000 that the government gave as final compensation.

Now when the government is planning to give more compensation, this time in lakhs, Sayara still can't claim it because the government does not consider someone to be a victim if they did not claim the Rs 25,000 earlier.

She cannot even get free treatment at the hospitals that the government has set up for victims.

In most cases the victims were illiterate and just could not keep up with the paperwork.

It may be just too late when Sayara is able to prove that she is indeed a gas tragedy victim in order to get the required medical aid.

Everyday is a battle for survival for Sayara who only wants to live for her two daughters.

This is all it amounts to per victim per day - and dwindling.

In a written response to Mr Umashankar Gupta, Bhopal Gas Tragedy Relief and Rehabilitation Minister Babulal Gaur said the total number of claimants from the state capital's 56 wards and outside stood at 10,29,516.

Let's put this figure in perspective.

A crore is 10 million, so the sum claimed to have been disbursed is equal to £199.72 million, US$347.58 million or €292.43 million.

Divided between 5,73,816 registered victims of Carbide's gases, this provides an average to each victim of £348.05, US$605.73 or €509.62.

This compensation was supposed to last a lifetime and provide medical care. But spread out over the 7,751 days (21+ years) they have already been suffering, many having lost their livelihoods and homes due to ill health, this dole that ministers are boasting about comes to a meagre 4.4 UK pence, 7.8 US cents or 6.5 European centimes per day.

In Indian terms the sum is 3 rupees 40 paise.

A quick call to the city's swanky Jehan Numa Hotel (00 91 755 2661100) establishes that a pot of tea (two cups) there costs 69 rupees. Even in the less salubrious surroundings of Pir Gate's RTI roadside chai shop, you are unlikely to get much change out of 3 rupees.

A cup of tea a day, and that's your lot.

"Compensation" on this level can hardly begin to pay for medicines, clothes, shelter or to make up for years of lost income. Many families are horribly and inextricably in debt to moneylenders to whom they have had to turn in desperation.

The twenty thousand people poisoned by Carbide's chemicals leaking into their wells are not classified as gas victims and have got nothing at all.

To his compensation statement to the state assembly, Babu Lal Gaur added the following: "On August 25, 2005, the state government interacted with the Centre about declaring all city wards as Gas Tragedy-affected."

Declaring middle class neighbourhoods that were never touched by the gas to be "gas-affected" is not merely voter bribery on a grand scale, so corrupt are the state's politicians that they do not even bother to pretend otherwise.

Gaur accepts rakhees from women and promises to help

Babu Lal Gaur, incidentally, is the minister whose cabinet for nearly two years ignored an Indian Supreme Court order to provide clean drinking water to the communities whose wells are poisoned. He has repeatedly broken promises to help those communities, three quarters of whom, some 15,000 people are still forced to drink, cook and bathe in dilute poisons.

Last May, when women from those bastis took their children and went to government offices to protest, they were kicked and beaten by police.

The same Babu Lal Gaur, when he was Chief Minister, announced grandiose plans to spend US $180 million beautifying cities with public fountains, badminton courts and gymnasia, while, as The Statesman pointed out, almost half the state's children were suffering from malnutrition.

Uma Shankar Gupta, the minister to whom Gaur's boast of thousands of crores was directed, last year celebrated his birthday with elephants, camels, dancing horses and a 53 kilogram cake.

Uma Shankar Gupta and his cake

Such are the politicians of Bhopal.

The Times of India reported after the Exxon Valdez clean up that sea otters damaged in the incident were fed fresh lobster flown in at a cost of US$500 per day per otter.

Compensation offered by Union Carbide in a 1989 agreement with the Indian government (with no consultation of survivors) gave those injured an average of some $500 to pay for a lifetime of medical care. Averaged over the 21 years they have so far been suffering this comes to about £0.04p, or US¢7 a day.

But Dow is nice, Dow is sweet; Dow is the teddy bear you hug at night. And they don’t want you to forget it. That’s why they just gave $100 million to the Dow Chemical Company Foundation, so named so your gratitude isn’t misplaced. Thank Dow. Thank Dow. Love Dow.

And what might Dow’s blessed money be spent on? No doubt you’re wondering. Bhopal? Heavens no! Why would Dow spend anything to end the contamination there – that would only save lives, and we can’t have that. I mean, Dow may be generous and all, but only a fool would bite the hand that feeds you. Dow and death have been lip-locked for decades.

So where is all that money going? I must tell you. Baseball.

Among a myriad of other community needs across the nation, the new pot is a place from which money can be drawn and given to the Michigan Baseball Foundation, which is the mode of transportation for bringing a new minor league baseball stadium and team to Midland. While a number of local foundations are expected to contribute to the effort, Dow is one of them.

Who doesn’t love baseball?

"The company's ability to present itself as a good corporate citizen is multifaceted. Corporate giving is one of them," said Bo Miller, director of corporate citizenship and global contribution and president and CEO of the Dow Foundation. “Oh, and Bhopal? Shit on you.”

Money for badminton but not for the hungry and thirsty

Meanwhile, writes The Statesman newspaper, almost half the state's children are suffering from malnutrition.

The Gaur regime, it can hardly be described as "government", has for more than a year also ignored an Indian Supreme Court ruling to provide safe drinking water for families in Bhopal whose wells and stand-pipes have been poisoned by chemicals leaking from the derelict Union Carbide factory.

Last month, women who went with their children to a government office to protest were beaten and kicked by police.

Gaur and his politicians have also sent barefoot women and children into the factory to begin a "clean-up" of the hazardous chemicals left there by Union Carbide.

On this website are plenty of pictures of workers with no protection whatsoever, breathing in clouds of lindane and ddt dust.

Indian politicians, both at state and central level, hold Dow Chemical, the present 100% owner of Union Carbide, liable for the pollution and the cost of the clean up.

UPDATE FROM BHOPAL ON FACTORY "CLEAN-UP"

After the intervention of the Supreme Court Monitoring Committee, the MPPCB (Madhya Pradesh Pollution Control Board) has agreed to let community respresentatives into the factory to oversee a transfer of toxic waste from open areas to sheltered spaces within the site.

This is neither a containment, nor a clean-up, and is merely a prelude to the big affair.

So for now please hold off on phone calls or SMSs to PCB members or the Chief Secretary.

Please continue below for the The Statesman article.