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April 28, 2006

Victims of 'development'

OPINION - BHOPAL CENTRAL CHRONICLE

Over the past few days, Jantar Mantar has been the venue of two protests - against two of worst tragedies Independent India has witnessed. On one side of the road were activists fighting for justice for the victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy - the chemical disaster that killed, maimed and devastated tens of thousands of people. On the other side were villagers and activists fighting for justice for those displaced by the Sardar Sarovar dam over the Narmada river - which has submerged countless homes. Both groups had decided that they had been left with no option but the ultimate non-violent protest - an indefinite hunger strike - to bring justice to their cause.

Since then, there have been developments. The police have removed Medha Patkar, the indomitable woman who has fought for the rights of the people displaced by the Narmada dam, to hospital to force-feed her, intravenously. Three ministers of the Union government have gone to Madhya Pradesh to assess the state of rehabilitation and returned to file a report to the Prime Minister. The Narmada activists want the government to stop increasing the height of the dam until, as per judicial direction, people who will be displaced are rehabilitated. The decision of the government is awaited. The activists continue their sit-in.

The Bhopal protesters want polluters - the then CEO of Union Carbide, the company responsible for the gas leak - to be brought to book. They want drinking water not contaminated by the toxic chemicals dumped in the closed factory and need the government for medical relief and full compensation. They too still sit at Jantar Mantar, the 'official' protest space. Close enough to parliament to be seen but far enough to remain out of sight.

Both cases involve victims of 'development'. The answer in both cases is to find and to ensure a resolution so that not only one side wins the battle of wealth creation. All win. Or, at least, one side does not lose so desperately. But I write this today not to discuss the specifics of each case. I write this to discuss troubling issues: why is it that the Indian state is increasingly unable to find this balance?

What is the nature of protest, if the democratic institutions of governance - including electoral democracy - fail in public perception and on the ground by failing to reconcile competing interests?

We can also ask if we even have the capacity (institutional, technical, financial) to resolve inherent conflicts? Simply put, can we really resettle thousands of families? Or, in Bhopal, do we have the capacity to treat unknown diseases or even the capacity to identify the victims correctly, without fraud. If we believe we do then we simply must deliver.

It is here that we must begin to look the state of our institutions, which need to deliver on these promises. Take Narmada. The Supreme Court, which granted permission to build the dam, gave specific directions that it would be built pari passu (in conjunction) with safeguards against environmental damage and rehabilitation of affected villages. To ensure this was done an institutional framework was set up. It involved two separate sub-groups on environment and rehabilitation. These sub-groups are headed by senior bureaucrats to the government of India - the secretaries of environment and social justice and empowerment. It is only on their assessment that the Narmada Control Authority - chaired by the secretary of water resources - can give clearances. The bottom line is if these institutions 'worked' perhaps the balance could be secured.

The issue today is two-fold: first, these institutions do not work. In this specific case, because people have not been rehabilitated as was required. The other is that the institutions may have worked but people do not believe they do. In other words, these institutions have a fatal credibility crisis. In both cases, people have no option but to take to the streets - peacefully and then with growing despair violently.

Unfortunately we talk about institutional reform using glib (and meaningless) words like accountability and participation. I say glib, because we do the opposite of what we say. Our institutions are less accountable today than they were before the information revolution. Our institutions are less open than before media and civil society empowerment. Our institutions are certainly less knowledge-driven than they were before computers and the Internet. As a result, we are fast losing our ability to 'work' democracy.

If we accept this, we must re-design. Firstly, we know that 'personnel' is 'policy'. In other words, our institutions will run as effectively as the people we put in charge of running them. Secondly, we will need to work at repairing credibility. We can do that by seriously engaging with people, by disseminating knowledge. It is increasingly the case that institutions do not engage with critics; they do not work with information and they certainly ensure that the data and information on the basis of which they take decisions is not open to scrutiny.

We still don't know, for instance, in this case of Narmada, how the sub-committee on rehabilitation and then the water resources secretary decided and verified the claims made by state governments on rehabilitation and their process to ensure that ground realities were considered. We still don't know because data is never made public; critics are never consulted; and even the affected people are never asked. The institution loses credibility. We all lose.

Our institutions are increasingly weak, because we have de-politicised governance.

The role of politicians is not to be middlemen in governmental contracts but to resolve societal contracts, through arbitration and empathy. Narmada and Bhopal are about the failure of negotiated democracy. They are our failures. They are our shame.

The writer is Director, Centre for Science and Environment

Posted by bhola at 01:27 AM | Comments (0)

April 26, 2006

Bhopal: Beyond the Bottom Line

ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL WEEKLY

They set out on an 800 km 'padyatra' to Delhi – from the poisonous remains of the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal on February 20 to the capital on March 27 – on a justice march. All along the way, the hospitality of the people was heartening; ordinary people were sensitive to their plight. In sharp contrast, the powers that be in New Delhi have been heartless.

The catastrophic leakage of deadly chemicals from Union Carbide's factory in Bhopal on December 3, 1984, followed by the callousness with which successive governments in Bhopal and New Delhi have treated the survivors, has so far left more than an estimated 20,000 persons dead and 1,50,000-2,00,000 or so disabled. No one knows for sure and no government agency has cared to establish with some certainty how many really died that terrible night, how many have died since then of the after-effects and how many carry the burden of the world's worst industrial disaster. Even now, 350-400 of the affected persons are believed to die every year of the after-effects. Indeed, children of the gas-affected parents have also been afflicted. Yet, Dow Chemical, which took over the Union Carbide Corporation in 2001, refuses to even clean up the site.

In Delhi, the padyatris are on a satyagraha, wanting to meet the prime minister. But Manmohan Singh, who makes time to meet visiting corporate chiefs, shows no sign as yet of giving an appointment to the representatives of the company's victims. When one looks at some of the demands the satyagrahis have had to make, one is struck by the utter insensitivity of the Indian state. First, they are demanding the setting up of a national commission on Bhopal to oversee the medical and social rehabilitation of the victims. The medical response has been wholly inadequate – symptomatic treatment remains the mainstay of such response. Adding to the survivors' distress, the lack of access to a proper livelihood is driving them to desperation. It must be added that the compensation given is a pittance, far from being in proportion to the damage caused. Second, in line with a Supreme Court order of May 2004, the survivors are asking for safe drinking water.

Third, the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Purush Sangharsh Morcha, the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationary Sangh, the Bhopal Group for Information and Action, Bhopal ki Awaaz and the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal are demanding that the government set up a special prosecution cell to pursue the fugitive company and its head, and bring them to trial. Union Carbide and its former chairman Warren Anderson face criminal charges in a case of culpable homicide before the chief judicial magistrate's court in Bhopal, a case that the survivors managed to press the courts to reopen after the shameful settlement of 1989. Fourth, the satyagrahis are demanding that the contamination be comprehensively assessed and Dow be asked to clean it up. Twenty-one monsoons since the disaster have washed the toxins left behind into the soil and poisoned the water that people are forced to drink. Fifth, the survivors' organisations are demanding that Dow Chemical be blacklisted and not be allowed to do business in and with India. Sixth, the survivors want the disaster to be documented and included in school and college curricula and the anniversary declared a national day of mourning. Bhopal must not be forgotten.

It might be appropriate to recall the ecological economist, K William Kapp's remark way back in 1971: "Capitalism must be regarded as an economy of unpaid costs". Fortunately for humanity though, capitalism has never been allowed to unfold solely in terms of its own logic; opposition movements inevitably emerge – whether of the working class struggling for better working conditions or of conservationists trying to overcome environmental degradation – that force the system to moderate its worst excesses. So, for instance, the Narmada Bachao Andolan and the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Purush Sangharsh Morcha are forcing Indian capitalism to moderate some of its worst depredations.

Given the interconnectedness of Bhopal's accumulated social and environmental problems, ecology and social justice cannot be separated in the search for a solution to the problems caused by the disaster. It's been a long time coming, but even in these hard times, as long as the struggle for justice is kept alive, the final outcome can never be destiny for the afflicted and the relatives of the deceased. Now, Shehazadi Bee, Champa Devi and four of their comrades from the affected areas of Bhopal have gone on an indefinite fast. The satyagrahis say they have come to Delhi for justice and will not leave without it.

The corporate logic is that the bottom line should not reflect the cost of externalities and compensation need not be paid for environmental depredation. The tragedy of our times is that even governments have imbibed this logic, knowing very well that just solutions to what are essentially interconnected environmental and social problems lie beyond the bottom line.

Posted by bhola at 03:58 PM | Comments (0)

April 21, 2006

Leader piece in The Hindu: Question of culpability

This week a group of protesters other than the Narmada Bachao Andolan called off its hunger strike. These protesters were the victims of what is still called the world's worst industrial disaster — the Bhopal gas calamity of December 2-3, 1984. Forty survivors of a tragedy that killed 3,000 people when deadly methyl isocyanate leaked out of the Union Carbide factory, and another 17,000 subsequently as a result of illness, took 33 days to march from Bhopal to Delhi. Their demands were not extravagant. Clean drinking water was one. Many of the survivors continue to live next to the now-defunct factory. But as the poisonous substances used for manufacture remain in the factory's compound, and no one is prepared to take the responsibility of cleaning it up, the surrounding water sources are heavily polluted. People living in the vicinity are forced to use this poisoned water. Survivors' groups have been demanding that the least that can be done is to provide them clean water. Yet, despite an earlier intervention by the Supreme Court, this simple demand was not met until April 17 — when the Prime Minister promised to do something. He assured them that the toxic wastes lying in the Carbide plant will be cleaned up and that a national commission for medical and economic rehabilitation of the gas tragedy victims will be constituted. December 3 will be declared a National Day of Mourning to remember the Bhopal Gas tragedy and a memorial will be built in Bhopal.

All this is very well, but it fails to address some critical issues thrown up by the tragedy. The Bhopal disaster stands out as an example of industrialisation gone wrong. A multinational, Union Carbide, was permitted to set up a factory that used hazardous chemicals adjacent to a large human settlement. The people around the factory were unaware of the nature of the poisons it used. When the accident took place, they were the first to die. Twenty-two years later, culpability for that disaster has still not been established. Although a criminal case is pending in the Chief Judicial Magistrate's court in Bhopal against the executives of the company, which has since been bought by Dow Chemicals, the Central Government has not pushed for the case to be heard. What is the message this sends out? That India is so anxious to invite foreign investors that it is willing to write off the lives and well-being of its citizens? If this is not the message the Government wishes to send, it must make it clear that just as infrastructure development has to take care of displacement and environmental damage, industries, Indian or foreign, will be held accountable if they poison people or the environment. Pursuing criminal as well as civil liability must form part of the `legal options' (to hold Dow Chemicals accountable) that the Prime Minister has promised to explore. Doing this earnestly will be the best memorial for the Bhopal gas victims.

Posted by bhola at 12:01 AM | Comments (0)

April 17, 2006

Well done FC United: Triumph of heart and soul

Bhopalis singing on the pavement at Jantar Mantar in Delhi, as the hunger strike begins. It is now in its seventh day.

CONGRATULATIONS TO FC UNITED

Bhopal allies FC United of Manchester have won the championship of their division in English football in the first season of their formation.

Congratulations from bhopal.net, and thanks to the Club for its help - FC United supporters have raised money for the Bhopal Medical Appeal (which has been the Main Club Sponsor for this historic season) and are sending two sets of kit to Bhopal to help the formation of FC United of Bhopal which will provide sporting opportunities for kids from gas- and water-affected areas of the city.

FC United has been with the Bhopali marchers every step of the way from Bhopal to Delhi, in the form of the umbrella made for the 21st annniversary commemorations and now with the hunger strike on the pavement at Jantar Mantar.

TRIUMPH OF HEART AND SOUL

SUNDAY MIRROR - Simon Mullock
16 April 2006

When I broke the story that rebel Manchester United fans, alienated by the pending takeover at Old Trafford by Malcolm Glazer, were planning to form a breakaway club there were some people who dismissed them as crackpots.

Fourteen months on, FC United of Manchester are champions of the North West Counties second division.

And it seems even the suits at the so called Theatre of Dreams are now
having nightmares about what is happening 12 miles away at Gigg Lane.

Last week, when given the chance to acknowledge the achievements of Karl Marginson and his team, Sir Alex Ferguson walked away from a press conference in some embarrasment.

I also understand the commercial department of the self styled biggest club in the world were less than impressed about the local rag devoting the back page to FC United following the 4 -1 win over Chadderton which sent them to within nine divisions of the Premiership itself.

There was apparantly even a veiled threat made to the paper that they would have their accreditation for United games removed if they continued to report a story which gives every football fan in Britain belief that sanity will one day be restored to the game.

FC United have pulled in average gates of 3,000 - more than many football league clubs - and their founders and supporters should be lauded for carrying out their threat to walk away from the most glamorous club in the country on principle.

But lets be honest, even if they win promotion for the next nine seasons, they will never rival Manchester United. So what is driving all the paranoia at Old Trafford?

Perhaps its the fact that while the Glazer clan talk about Manchester United being "a great franchise" the two words at the forefront of the other United are Football Club.

Maybe they're worried the local council may offer FC an open-topped bus parade of the city. More likely its the fact that while Old Traffords capacity will increase to 76,000 next season, United continue to lose their soul.

Last week the club confirmed our exclusive that ticket prices will rise by 10 per cent and more next season as the Glazers attempt to raise enough cash to meet the debts they took out to complete their takeover.

Why should a father break the bank to take his kids to the game when hes got Sky and can get his fix of live football by shelling out £7 for adults and £2 for Under-18s across the town at Gigg Lane?

That is the crux of the matter. At a time when the Glazers are desperate to maximise revenue streams they know that by doing so they risk sending more alienated supporters to the other side.

The Glazers obviously thought the battle was over, but it continues. Not only can the rebels raise a glass to their success on the pitch, they can also toast the fact that they have bloodied the nose of the United establishment.

There's no longer only one United.

Posted by bhola at 08:03 AM | Comments (0)

April 15, 2006

Will India sacrifice its own people to attract U.S. chemical companies?

OP-ED BY GARY COHEN, DIRECTOR, ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH FOUNDATION

After George Bush visited India last month, two different groups of people converged on New Delhi to press their case. The first group included CEOs of major U.S. companies wanting to take advantage of India's expanding economy and build their business in the subcontinent. The cast of luminaries included leaders of Dow Chemical, JP Morgan, Chase, Honeywell International, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and Pfizer Pharmaceutical. The other caravan included 60 people from Bhopal, survivors of the Union Carbide gas disaster, widely regarded as the world's worst industrial disaster. The corporate CEOs arrived in Delhi in a chartered jet. The gas survivors walked 800 kilometres (500 miles) from Bhopal.

The corporate executives were hoping to win the support of the Indian government to ease trade rules and protect intellectual property rights as they build their operations in the country. The Bhopal survivors were looking for the government to clean up the abandoned and leaking Union Carbide factory, provide clean drinking water to residents and bring Carbide officials to Bhopal to stand trial in the ongoing criminal case.

The common denominator in both groups is Dow Chemical, which stands at the center of the moral dilemma facing India as it rushes forward with its industrial development agenda. Dow bought Union Carbide five years ago, including the karma and ongoing liability for the Bhopal disaster. Dow would like to build its business in India while at the same time bury the memory and responsibilty for Bhopal. The Bhopal survivors have essentially said to Dow "over our dead bodies" and are now on an indefinite hunger fast in Delhi to push the point.

The key question is whether the Indian government will sell its own people out to cut a sweetheart deal with a company like Dow Chemical. Will the Manmohan Singh sacrifice his own people so he can bring more toxic chemicals to them? The answer to this question may well foretell the kind of path India takes in these next crucial decades of its development.

On the face of it, the Bhopalis demands are those that any citizen in the United States or any other country might expect. The factory that killed twenty thousand people in Bhopal twenty one years ago has still not been cleaned up. So the Bhopalis want the sprawling factory site cleaned up. If the factory was located in the United States, it would have been cleaned up more than 15 years ago.

Second, the toxic chemicals left behind by Union Carbide have leaked into the groundwater and polluted the neighboring wells. So the survivors want clean water. The United Nations Human Rights Commission recognizes clean water as a basic human right. All this seems pretty reasonable so far.

Third, the criminal charges against Union Carbide have still not been addressed. The Indian government even issued an extradition request to the Bush administration for Carbide's former CEO Warren Anderson, which was denied. Anderson has been a fugitive from justice for more than a decade.

Understandably, the Bhopal survivors would like to see those responsible for the destruction of their lives and the deaths of their loved ones brought to justice. This position has also been upheld by the Indian Supreme Court. And finally, until the Bhopal situation has been resolved, the survivors are asking the Indian government to restrict Union Carbide technology from being used in India. Otherwise, it sends a message to Dow, its subsidiary Union Carbide and other transnational companies that it is acceptable to poison an entire city, leave a toxic mess behind and get away with murder.

So why is the Prime Minister unwilling to meet these basic demands? Is the Singh government so timid that it can only imagine courting U.S. corporations if there are no conditions, even when those companies violate Indians’ basic human rights? Does the expansion of Dow’s toxic chemical business in India necessarily have to mean abandoning the survivors of Bhopal and their basic needs for health and justice?

A larger question is why India needs Dow Chemical in the first place. Dow has a notorious record of poisoning people around the globe with its chemicals. Dow is responsible for Agent Orange poisoning in Vietnam, sterility among farmworkers in Latin America and a major dioxin contamination mess in Michigan. Amnesty International has singled out Dow’s handling of its Bhopal liabilities as a global case study highlighting the need for human rights norms for corporations.

Of the two groups that converged on Delhi in the last month, the Prime Minister should listen to his own people more and to Dow Chemical less.

By Gary Cohen
Executive Director
Environmental Health Fund (Boston, USA)

The author is also on the International Advisory Board of the Sambhavna Clinic, which provides free medical care to the survivors of the Union Carbide chemical disaster.

Gary Cohen
Executive Director, Environmental Health Fund
Co-Executive Director, Health Care Without Harm
41 Oakview Terrace
Jamaica Plain, MA 02130
Ph: 617-524-6018
Fax: 617-524-7021

Posted by bhola at 10:50 PM | Comments (0)