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October 29, 2007
IITs say no to recruitment as Dow hides
Calcutta Telegraph, 28 October, 2007
American giants run into IIT backlash
New Delhi: Select US corporate giants — long viewed as symbols of America’s military-industry complex — have run into an unlikely hurdle in their plans to recruit and research at the Indian Institutes of Technology.
The red flag has passed on from the Left’s hands to students and faculty members at the IITs, which are as symbolic of India’s brain drain as George W. Bush is of the Iraq war.
Across the IITs, students and professors do not want companies like Halliburton, Lockheed Martin and Dow Chemicals to have “anything to do with IIT”.
“We don’t allow al Qaida to come and recruit from our campuses. There clearly is some line which has to be drawn,” said Siddharth Sareeen, an IIT Madras student.
The students and faculty want the companies to be scrutinised for their past record in business ethics, environmental issues and human rights before being allowed into any IIT campus.
While Dow and Halliburton want to recruit from the IITs, Lockheed Martin has made requests for cooperation with specific departments like aerospace engineering.
A petition against Dow has been signed by over a thousand IITians, including several faculty members, and submitted to the directors of the seven institutes across the country.
Dow had provided the notorious Napalm — a chemical that sets on fire anything that it falls on — to the American military during the Vietnam War. “Dow’s history, particularly its role in the Vietnam war, is an important reason for our opposition,” Milind Brahme, assistant professor at IIT Madras, said.
Methane leaked from a plant of Union Carbide, now owned by Dow, on a December 1984 night killed thousands — some immediately and many more later from medical complications caused by the gas.
“Dow coming to the IITs is quite disturbing. It has a lot of unfulfilled economic and environmental liabilities in Bhopal,” a professor at IIT Bombay said, clarifying that these were his personal views and not those of the institute.
Lockheed Martin, one of the world’s largest defence contractors, is an integral part of the US military-industrial complex. It is one of the bidders for the 126 fighter aircraft India is seeking.
Halliburton was one of the first companies to win oil contracts in Iraq after the Americans quelled the initial resistance in that country, and has been at the centre of controversies because of its links to US Vice-President Dick Cheney.
At IIT Madras on Friday, students and faculty — including some who believe Dow should be allowed to come to the campus — held a debate. They had invited a Dow representative to participate, but the company did not send one.
IIT Bombay’s placement committee is examining the request to scrap Dow from the list of visiting companies. The company’s representatives were scheduled to come yesterday, but the IIT has asked for the visit to be postponed, citing a busy Sunday schedule.
Dow had also postponed its visit to IIT Madras for recruitment on Friday. The company, which has paid compensation to Bhopal victims but is still battling a case on environmental compensation against the Indian government, said the postponement was unrelated to the campaign against it.
“Our officials who were to visit the campus could not come on the pre-decided date as other meetings suddenly came up. This has been conveyed to the IIT,” Nand Kumar Sanglikar, Dow India’s spokesperson, said. “We are expanding in India. We want the best brains in the country to join us.”
Building consensus against Lockheed Martin or Halliburton will not be as easy as the campaign against Dow, Brahme confessed, because of the absence of an India link.
“But the main issue is to put in place guidelines by which companies would be evaluated on an ethics compliance scale. There is growing sentiment on campus for such guidelines,” Brahme said.
Posted by tim at 03:31 PM | Comments (0)
October 24, 2007
IIT alumni gang up against Dow Chemicals
Business Standard, New Delhi October 24, 2007
See more on the IIT actions against Dow
Dow Chemicals, the new owners of Union Carbide plant in Bhopal are facing opposition from a new quarters over issues related to Bhopal gas disaster.
Alumni of various Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are now putting pressure on the institutes to prevent campus interviews being conducted by the company. The company was recently forced to cancel its pre-placement talks in IIT Madras and Bombay after students raised the issue about its entry into IIT. Now about 1000 alumni members have sent a petition to the directors of various IITs urging them to bar Dow Chemicals from any partnership or role in the premier institutes of the country.
Magsaysay awardee Arvind Kejriwal and activist Prafool Bidwai, both alumni of IIT said that the public outrage stems from Dow's continued evasion of legal responsibilities in Bhopal.
"Dow Chemicals not only acquired Union Carbide but also its liabilities as well. The company has to clean-up the toxic waste in Bhopal, compensate the victims of contamination and force its subsidary to face criminal trial in the Bhopal court. Otherwise, Dow will be met with hostility wherever it goes in India," Bidwai said.
"A separate petition signed by 89 of the faculty and students within IIT Madras urged its director to bar Dow from recruiting students on campus. The company cancelled its pre-placement talks in IIT Madras and Bombay after students raised the issue about its entry into IIT,'' they said.
The activists also said that ever since it took over Carbide in 2001, Dow Chemicals has actively shielded the company from the Indian courts even while profiting from the illegal sale of its products in the country. Stating that the company is involved in dishonest and corrupt practices, they said that in early 2007, Dow was caught for paying more than $200,000 in bribes to senior agriculture ministry officilas to expedite registration of three pesticides including the one banned for household use in the US owing to its toxicity.
In 2005, Indian Oil Corporation was forced to cancel a technology contract with Dow after survivors demonstrated that Dow had lied to IOC about the ownership of the technology. It had tried to pass off Union Carbide technology as its own to avoid legal action because of Carbides' status as an absconder, they said.
Calling upon the students of IITs to bar Dow from entrering their campuses, Bidwai and Kejriwal urged the IITs to set an example by developing a screening criteria for corporations wishing to partner or recruit from IITs. "In the absence of any screeing mechanism in IITs, all kind of companies including those with horrendous environmental and human rights records and those found corrupt and unethical like Dow enter the campuses easily, they said.
Even as Dow is exerting pressure on the Indian government to get all liabilities related to Bhopal waived, the petition says Dow's motive in forging ties with IIT Madras is merely to acquire credibility to its tainted image.
Posted by tim at 05:31 PM | Comments (0)
October 22, 2007
Govt may clear Dow Chemicals path
The game is afoot: the PMO's office appears to have made a significant move in its attempts to satisfy the wishes of the Dow Chemical company. As anticipated, the Law Ministry has prepared a note asserting that "the government can opt to settle out of court with Dow Chemicals as the latter does not own the financial liabilities of Union Carbide". The opinion is evidently predicated upon a quite deliberate misinterpretation of US merger law. See here for an analysis of the actual legal position Dow inherited through its merger with Union Carbide.
Chetan Chauhan, Hindustan Times, October 22, 2007
New Delhi - The centre is all set to pave the way for Dow Chemicals to invest in India, by removing all “legal hurdles” related to the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy, one of the world’s biggest industrial disasters that claimed thousands of lives.
The Department of Industries has moved a Cabinet note asking the government to absolve Dow Chemicals of all legal liabilities. The Chemicals and Fertilizers Ministry had earlier filed an affidavit in the Madhya Pradesh High Court seeking Rs 100 crore from the company as initial compensation.
The note provides for withdrawal of the affidavit and out-of-court settlement. It is based on the Law Ministry’s opinion that the government can opt to settle out of court with Dow Chemicals as the latter does not own the financial liabilities of Union Carbide, the main accused in the case. The Chemicals Ministry has opposed this view.
Dow Chemicals claims it is not liable to pay compensation because it did not inherit the liabilities of Union Carbide when it bought the company.
Magsaysay Award winner Sandeep Pandey, who is associated with the tragedy victims, described the move as cheating on the part of the government. “Allowing Dow Chemicals in India without paying the liabilities is a crime,” he said.
The government had sought the Law Ministry’s opinion after Dow Chemicals had expressed its wish to make huge investments in India, provided the legal hurdles were removed.
In April, the then Cabinet Secretary B.K. Chaturvedi had favoured settling the issue with Dow Chemicals “appropriately”. Even Ratan Tata had written to the Planning Commission and Finance Ministry earlier this year, recommending an out-of-court settlement.
The Tata group had even proposed a remediation fund to clean up 8,000 tonnes of waste at the tragedy site. Last year, four US senators and Dow Chemicals chief executive officer Andrew N. Livers had written to the Prime Minister seeking his intervention to settle the issue.
Within a year of these suggestions, the government has acted and the Cabinet will soon examine the proposal, a senior government functionary said.
Posted by tim at 02:09 PM | Comments (0)