Opinions

No Life Or Liberty

NITYANAND JAYARAMAN, Tehelka Magazine, Vol 5, Issue 24, June 21, 2008

A clause that could save lives doesn’t seem to apply to Bhopalis

SACHIN JATAV would like to play cricket like his namesake. But forget running between the wickets, this 13-year-old can barely walk properly. When he is not staggering on his feet, he just thrashes about, somehow coping with the excruciating pain in his legs. Sachin lives near Union Carbide’s football field-sized solar evaporation ponds in Bhopal. These were filled to the brim with the pesticide factory’s toxic effluents and were just left there to dry. Along with the rain, the poisons in the pond leached into the groundwater. Sachin and his parents are among more than 25,000 Bhopalis who use this poison-laced water for drinking, bathing, everything.

Like Sachin, numerous children living in Bhopal suffer from congenital and water contamination-related diseases. 14-year-old Sarita Malviya lives with her family in a community where the handpumps spit out poisoned water. Her hands and arms are perpetually sweat-soaked, covered with a light rash. Her palms look scaly, crisscrossed by abnormally deep lines. “This is because of the water,” Sarita says. Her youngest brother, nine-year-old Vijay — generally a helpful, energetic kid — is a terror when he gets agitated. He is uncontrollable, inconsolable.

The first signs of water contamination arose in 1982, when Madhya Pradesh’s former Gas Relief Minister, Babu Lal Gaur, was still a lawyer. He had helped some farmers get compensation from Union Carbide when their cattle died after drinking the contaminated water. Now, 26 years have passed and at least 10 governmental and non-governmental studies have confirmed the groundwater contamination. The poisons found in the water can cause cancers, birth defects, joint pains, behavioural disorders, chaotic menstrual cycles, and early onset of puberty and menopause.

On April 1 this year, Hazira Bi, a grandmother of five who lives near the Carbide factory, sent an RTI request to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) seeking inspection of files relating to the disaster. The desperation in her application was palpable: “I am a survivor of the 1984 Union Carbide gas tragedy. I am currently in New Delhi, after having walked 800 kilometres, seeking a meeting with the Prime Minister. The demands are integral to our well-being, health and the well-being of my children and grandchildren as they include actions on vital issues such as livelihood support, social support and drinking water. Therefore, I am constrained to make this request under the ‘Life and Liberty’ clause that requires you to furnish the information within two working days.”

The PMO responded on May 7, over a month later. “We treated it as a normal application because we felt that the information sought does not invoke life and liberty,” a PMO official said.

The response of the Central Information Commission (CIC), to whom the matter was referred to on May 12, was no better. In an email response to a complaint — about the lack of action — the Chief Information Commissioner, Wajahat Habibullah, wrote: “I’m sorry you haven’t received redress, but we could not see grounds for invoking the provision of life and liberty in this case. You may be assured of a decision in the immediate conclusion of the 10 days provided to the PMO.”

Till date, well beyond the stipulated 10-day notice period, no decision has been communicated.

What prompted the PMO and CIC to deny the application of the “life and liberty” clause to Hazira Bi’s application? The Bhopalis have been denied life, liberty and justice for more than two decades now. But that does not justify any further delay. The authorities cannot say: “You’ve been drinking poisoned water since 1981. What’s a wait of a few more months?”

Every day of delay in providing clean water to these communities means an added exposure to poisons for more than 25,000 Bhopalis. It means more stolen childhoods, and more hapless parents. Little wonder then that Bhopalis have not just walked from Bhopal to Delhi, but also spent more than 60 days sitting on the sidewalk in our hostile capital, pushing home their demands to the Prime Minister. On two occasions, they broke into the high-security zone to reach the PM’s residence, including the recent incident when nearly 40 of them chained themselves to the PM’s fence. Timely inspection of the files in the PM’s office could have given the Bhopalis a peep into the minds that are destroying their lives, and help them strategise their struggles accordingly.

What do you do when you know that a factory is spewing out life-threatening poisons into your primary school? You want to find what the Pollution Control Board is doing about it; instead you find that you are not entitled to receive the information without delay to enable corrective action. Is not condemning someone to drink poisoned water or breathe poisoned air, for even one day longer than can be helped, a perversion of ‘life and liberty’?

Why I'm going on hunger strike for Bhopal

Indra Sinha, guardian.co.uk, June 12 2008

Victims of the Union Carbide gas leak continue to suffer, their injuries and deaths uncompensated. We must support them

On July 26 2006, my friend Sathyu Sarangi called me in tears from Bhopal to tell me that our mutual friend, Sunil Kumar, had taken his life. Sathyu said that when they lifted Sunil down from the ceiling fan from which he had hanged himself, he was wearing a T-shirt that said, "No More Bhopals".

Sunil was an orphan of the Union Carbide mass-gassing of Bhopal, losing his parents and three siblings on that night of terror. Aged 12, he began doing two jobs a day to bring up his surviving sister and baby brother Sanjay. He became a leader of the survivors' struggle for justice and was one of the people I loved most in Bhopal.

The BBC reported, wrongly, that Sunil was the inspiration for Animal in my novel Animal's People, but Animal certainly benefited from Sunil's courage, sense of humour and ability to live on 4 rupees (£0.05) a day. Like Animal, Sunil heard voices in his head, and suffered nightmarish visions. You can read his story here.

On the day that Sunil died, Dow Chemical's CEO Andrew Liveris visited the UN to deliver a much-publicised speech. Fireboats hired by Dow's public relations agency jetted huge sprays aloft over the Hudson River as Liveris told the assembled diplomats "Lack of clean water is the single largest cause of disease in the world and more than 4,500 children die each day because of it … We are determined to win a victory over the problem of access to clean water for every person on earth … we need to bring to the fight the kinds of things companies like Dow do best."

Stirring words. But when asked if he would clean up Bhopal, where the drinking wells of 20,000 people have been poisoned by chemicals abandoned by Dow's subsidiary Union Carbide, causing an epidemic of cancers and hundreds of children to be born malformed and with brain damage, Liveris replied, "We don't feel this is our responsibility".

Liveris couldn't be more wrong. Under the "polluter pays" principle enshrined in both Indian and US law, Union Carbide is responsible for cleaning up the contamination and compensating the thousands whose lives have been ruined. In buying Union Carbide's assets, Dow also acquired its liabilities. Dow set aside $2.3bn to settle Union Carbide's US asbestos liabilities. How then can it refuse to accept Union Carbide's Indian liabilities?

The hard answer is that Indians are not quite as human as Americans. Dow paid $10m to settle out-of-court with an American child damaged by Dursban, a pesticide so dangerous that it has been banned for domestic use in the US. But Dow employees were found to have bribed Indian Ministry of Agriculture officials to license Dursban as safe for home use in India. If an Indian child dies I doubt if there'll be $10m or even $10,000. As a Dow public affairs chief famously remarked of the paltry compensation paid to Union Carbide's victims, "$500 is plenty good for an Indian".

Why doesn't the Indian government force Dow to clean up Bhopal? The Indian law ministry has advised Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that Dow is indeed liable for Union Carbide's misdeeds in Bhopal. It's exactly what he doesn't wish to hear. He and his ministers are in contortions to appease Dow, which has offered to invest $1bn in India if freed from its Bhopal liabilities. When news broke of this sordid backroom hustling, 280 legal professionals, among them retired judges and eminent lawyers, said the attempts to exculpate Dow were unconstitutional and illegal.

Earlier this year, 50 Bhopali survivors, many old and sick, walked 500 miles to Delhi to ask the prime minister for safe drinking water and to make Dow clean the factory. For two months Manmohan Singh left them camped on a sweltering pavement without a reply. When Bhopali women brought their damaged children to his house and chained themselves to his railings, he had them arrested. The policewomen who led them away wept.

When India's prime minister finally gave a reply, it was all prevarication, no substance. The Bhopalis then declared that they would launch an indefinite hunger strike until their demand for justice was met.

On the eve of the fast, police beat up women and children as young as six years old who had gone to protest outside the prime minister's office. The police said they'd been told to get tough. Many of us around the world rang to protest and I asked a Mr Muthukumaran of the prime minister's office if Manmohan Singh had ordered the beatings. "Are you joking?" he replied. On the contrary, I had rarely been more serious.

As I write this the Bhopalis are still in jail, and we hear that Dow Chemical is sponsoring an exhibition called The Gallery of Good at the Cannes advertising festival. Next Monday, Dow will present The Chemistry of Socially Responsible Marketing, which is presumably the advertising campaign on which it has lavished upwards of $100m. But telling lies beautifully does not make them true. Wouldn't it have more socially responsible to use the money for cleaning up Bhopal?

I have spent much of the last five years writing a novel in which victims of a chemical disaster caused by a rogue corporation are sold out by their own politicians, triggering a desperate hunger strike. Animal's People is set in the fictional city of Khaufpur, but whatever success it has had, it owes to the inspiring courage and spirit of the Bhopalis, and the descriptions of the hunger strike were drawn directly from the experiences of my friends.

Sunil is dead, but on their small stretch of pavement in Delhi, now battered by monsoon rain, nine others have sat down to begin an indefinite fast for justice. Among them are my old friend Sathyu and, grown up into a fine young man, Sunil's baby brother, Sanjay.

How can I not join them? How can we all not support them?

• To join the fast for a period, or to register your support, please visit www.bhopal.net. Donations for medical care in Bhopal may be made at www.bhopal.org/donations/

]]> Comments in chronological order (Total 21 comments)

Gigolo
Jun 12 08, 05:18pm
Wow. Thanks for this article, Indra. Here's hoping that the Bhopal victims finally get justice.

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Clip | Link AmanitaGalactica
Jun 12 08, 05:21pm
Sorry, but killing yourself through starvation is neither productive nor respectful to the victims.

Shall we all blind ourselves in sympathy of the mustard gas victims of the 1st world war?

Surely, your talents could be better spent in some other method.

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Clip | Link yungyoof
Jun 12 08, 05:36pm
The first time I heard about the Bhopal disaster was in GCSE geography, I was upset by it then and upset by it now.

I personally do not think you should go on hunger strike, the very people you are raising funds and awarness for/of do not have the things you are depriving yourself of.

It's nearing 30 years since it occured (being closer to thirty than fifteen years ago), there has to be another way to get bastards of such incomptent greed to do something subtantial nearly three decades down the line.

Anyway, good luck in all your endeavours.

YY 19yy

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Clip | Link shellshock
Jun 12 08, 05:53pm
As India is one of the most unequal unjust countries I have ever visited, I wish you luck in your endeavour.

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Clip | Link Indra
Jun 12 08, 06:26pm
AmanitaGalactica: I am fasting in support of the Bhopal survivors (they refuse to regard themselves as victims) who are themselves fasting in Delhi. The question of disrespect therefore can't very well arise.

We do hope the fast will be extremely productive, or we wouldn't be doing it. We are not trying to be martyrs, but want to make a powerful point, draw attention to the unethical behaviour of certain people in the Indian government, and the inhumanity of this corporation, Dow. We want to bring about a positive result for the survivors, real commitment to a Commission on Bhopal and real action against the two corporations involved.

Dow and Union Carbide have been treated with kid gloves for so long that for them the Bhopal issue is no longer a legal, social or humanitarian concern, but a mere question of PR.

I mentioned in my article the bizarrely Orwellian phenomenon of Dow Chemical at the Cannes Advertising Festival hosting an exhibition called "The Gallery of Good" during which they'll present "The Chemistry of Socially Responsible Marketing" -- in other words their "Human Element" campaign.

Dow, manifestly lacking in humanity, decided that the only way to get some was to buy it, and duly spent above $100 million on a set of exquisitely filmed platitudes: in effect a series of beautiful masks. I urge everyone to check out the counter-campaign by Paul Phare, which can be seen on my website at http://www.indrasinha.com/masks.html - and spread it round the net as widely as possible.

Finally, if anyone is in Cannes on the night of Monday 15th, please do go along to Dow's big show and let them know that telling lies beatifully does not make them true and humanity is not something that can be bought.

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Clip | Link FractionMan
Jun 12 08, 07:18pm
All the best my friend. No more Bhopals.

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Clip | Link Ieuan
Jun 12 08, 07:35pm
Wasn't their an international arrest warrant put out by the Indians for the head of Union Carbide... which the US authorities refused to implement?

One wonders what would have happened if it had been an Indian owned factory in an American city which had caused the disaster?

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Clip | Link nightships
Jun 12 08, 08:52pm
Just another honored human rights of poor Indians victims by the George Bush's Department of Justice and the complicity of the Indian Government, all in the name of profits of the industrial-pharmaceutical complex.

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Clip | Link afancdogge
Jun 12 08, 09:27pm
Indra

You have my full support as do the people of Bhopal. The more publicity the better. Take care of yourself and the other protesters, more deaths will not right the injustice.

Complex problems such as Bhopal always allow many defences - many of them spurious. The passing over of responsibilty from one company to another is a prime example of this kind of dishonest dodging of responsibilty. My approach to complex problems is to divide the isues into three parts. The Earth ( the planet and associated problems ) - the World (politics, systems etc) - the people who can be either bridges to a solution or walls preventing discussion or a way through to a solution. The Bhopal incident and the resultin g suffering has both roots and consequences in all three divisions.

The polluted wells and other environmental damage - this is a serious problem on its own.

The systems -once created by man , along with all the inbuilt limitations - allow for the manipulation which springs from self defence. We have allowed these systems, in many cases, to cut out any consideration of human rights or justice. The systems protect themselves.

Which leaves the people. you have lots of walls to circumvent or tear down. You and the people of Bhopal are the bridges. How can we, the would be bridge builders, help you?

There is always hope, that if enough of us get together that the internal logic of the systems you are up against can be overcome. We have to be imaginative and determined.

----------------------------

yungyoof

I think, from previous post that you are 19. Welcome to CiF. Happy to know that the youngsters are joining in on the side of justice.

Leni uk

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Clip | Link afancdogge
Jun 12 08, 10:41pm
indra

I intend tomorrow to visit some of my friends who attend the Temple in Neasden (London) and ask for their support. They have many members - I hope they will support their own people and make representation to the British govt.

Leni

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Clip | Link arun1
Jun 12 08, 10:47pm
In what way is the American company criminally liable for the freak accident?

They have paid $2.3b , a huge sum and if the Indian govt has not distributed the funds to the victims after 25 years whose fault is it ?

Third world countries will never make any progress unless they learn to accept responsbility for their actions and stop always blaming the west.

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Clip | Link afancdogge
Jun 12 08, 10:51pm
Indra

I have sent an email to the temple authorities asking for their support

Leni

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Clip | Link Bamboo13
Jun 13 08, 01:01am
The tragedy of Bhopal is very sad. Why the racist spin? which helps no one, and diverts attention from the Indian government which is responsible for every thing that happened after the accident.

U.C. made an offer which was accepted, and all that has occurred since is indifference and corruption of the Government.

By focussing on U.C. you allow the government to avoid scrutiny. while opting for the populous option. When are we in India going to take responsibility for ourselves, and stop blaming others, we are pathetic.

The idea of hunger strikes has also become meaningless. How many of our politicians involve themselves in rolling hunger strikes or indefinite strikes that last a few hours, pathetic.

Why does Bhopal not elect politicians that will resolve the issue? Answer that

question, and you will find the key. The answer may be, most Indians do not care enough to make a difference, and that is the case across a multitude of problems.

On a personal note, you appear obese, why not use this opportunity to shed weight

For those not familiar with India bureaucracy, too many officials demand bribes to move files from one desk to another, not for any gain, that will be additional, but just to submit a form, that the government itself has demanded. The police often require an "inducement" to pursue an inquiry.

Indians have accepted corrupt government, but not the consequences of it, and are still unwilling to be responsible.

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Clip | Link ticklebrick
Jun 13 08, 01:12am

arun1

Jun 12 08, 10:47pm (about 2 hours ago)

In what way is the American company criminally liable for the freak accident?

In what way indeed?

I suppose we'll never precisely find out until the day the craven, criminally fugitive mass poisoners deign to turn up in court and defend themselves against the charges of culpable homicide and criminal negligence that still hang, suspended in space and time for 17 years, in the court room of the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Bhopal.

You see Dow wants the rights of a person in law but it doesn't want to act like any person ever known to God or man before the law.

If you or I are summoned to court over a criminal matter, we either attend sharpish or we take our chances and go on the lam, making like Carlos the Jackal and assuming a whole new identity somewhere else. We'd hardly hang around in the same jurisdiction, doing the same things and expecting not to be caught. Carbide wasn't so brazen. It sold all its assets and ran. Ok, there was some sneaky patents business done through third parties, but nothing anyone would notice.

Dow is a whole other kind of beast altogether. It gets the Carlos the Jackal thing: though Carbide shareholders got 25% of Dow's stock during the takeover, making the deal in law a de facto merger and triggering the unfortunate fact of 'successor liability' - and though Dow executives make up every single official on Carbide's board - it still insists that Carbide is some wholly other sort of outfit, unrelated to its grand, philanthropic, responsibly caring self. The Indian Law Ministry, despite its best intentions to the Indian cabinet, has reluctantly seen through that flimsy disguise. But it doesn't stop Dow, chest puffed out, Carbide products under one arm, striding straight back to the scene of its - alleged as we're having difficulty getting to the bottom of it - crimes. And expecting to be greeted like some great and noble memsaab bearing alms.

Freak accident you say? Those damned impertinent natives keep sticking to this line about an accident-in-waiting being no accident. They've built a whole criminal case around it, apparently.

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Clip | Link ticklebrick
Jun 13 08, 01:38am

Bamboo13

Jun 13 08, 01:01am (12 minutes ago)

Ah, the old feckless, shiftless, corruptible Indians schtick. And the frankly somewhat dim notion that only one party across the false, dualistic divide can be at all culpable.

Must try harder.

Meantime, consider that Dow was recently caught red-handed bribing Indian bureaucrats to obtain registration of a pesticide, Dursban, thought so hazardous it is banned from domestic use in the US but is, according to Dow, "perfectly safe" for Indians. Must be their strong constitutions: not namby pambied, you see.

Now please make a polite bow to Stephen Gaghan, circa 2005:

"Corruption? Corruption ain't nothing more than government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulation. That's Milton Friedman. He got a goddam Nobel Prize. We have laws against it precisely so we can get away with it. Corruption is our protection. Corruption is what keeps us safe and warm. Corruption is why you and I are here in the white-hot center of things instead of fighting each other for scraps of meat out there in the streets. Corruption is how we win. If we had to pay every individual Saudi the true value of their mineral rights, it would be America with 50% unemployment. Imagine this country with 50% of its good, industrious people out of work: you'd have Christian fundamentalists chopping off hands and feet in Central Park, public stonings of adulterers, and everything else would be run by the military."

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Clip | Link singtothebreeze
Jun 13 08, 01:46am
Namaskar Indra Sinha

Twenty four years ago - and STILL no justice... Unbelievable.

This from your website:

'That Night - December 3, 1984'

Shortly after midnight poison gas leaked from a factory in Bhopal, India, owned by Union Carbide Corporation. There was no warning, none of the plant's safety systems were working. In the city people were sleeping. They woke in darkness to the sound of screams with the gases burning their eyes, noses and mouths. They began retching and coughing up froth streaked with blood. Whole neighbourhoods fled in panic, some were trampled, others convulsed and fell dead. People lost control of their bowels and bladders as they ran. Within hours thousands of dead bodies lay in the streets.

-- Good luck Indra - you are a courageous human being!

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Clip | Link agentorange420
Jun 13 08, 08:20am
my support goes out for your cause. the after effects of Bhopal are much like the effects that agent orange victims are suffering fro a third generation in vietnam, yet another Dow Chemicals cunning legal side step. why is america allowed to get away with poisoning parts of the world where they would are are fined for at home?

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Clip | Link elscollonsdelgos
Jun 13 08, 08:45am
The Chemistry of Socially Responsible Marketing

CSRM - The Chemistry of Socially Ruthless Manipulation

I support you. Thousands of people are still waiting for justice

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Clip | Link edwardrice
Jun 13 08, 01:05pm
Union Carbide - ##"We don't feel this is our responsibility".##

Maximize profits for the shareholders. Until the laws are changed to make corporations *responsible* then there is nothing to stop something like this happening again.

Thoughts are with you Indra.

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Clip | Link Indra
Jun 13 08, 06:03pm
Thanks, everyone for your support. It would be terrific if you could go to the Bhopal.net website and either sign on for a day or two of fasting, or send a fax to the Indian PM, the latter takes only a few seconds.

http://www.bhopal.net/2008hungerstrike.html

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Clip | Link springpondbver
Jun 13 08, 06:49pm
How to kill pests without killing yourself or the earth......

There are about 50 to 60 million insect species on earth - we have named only about 1 million and there are only about 1 thousand pest species - already over 50% of these thousand pests are already resistant to our volatile, dangerous, synthetic pesticide POISONS. We accidentally lose about 25,000 to 100,000 species of insects, plants and animals every year due to "man's footprint". But, after poisoning the entire world and contaminating every living thing for over 60 years with these dangerous and ineffective pesticide POISONS we have not even controlled much less eliminated even one pest species and every year we use/misuse more and more pesticide POISONS to try to "keep up"! Even with all of this expensive and unnecessary pollution - we lose more and more crops and lives to these thousand pests every year.

We are losing the war against these thousand pests mainly because we insist on using only synthetic pesticide POISONS and fertilizers There has been a severe "knowledge drought" - a worldwide decline in agricultural R&D, especially in production research and safe, more effective pest control since the advent of synthetic pesticide POISONS and fertilizers. Today we are like lemmings running to the sea insisting that is the "right way". The greatest challenge facing humanity this century is the necessity for us to double our global food production with less land, less water, less nutrients, less science, frequent droughts, more and more contamination and ever-increasing pest damage.

National Poison Prevention Week, March 18-24,2007 was created to highlight the dangers of poisoning and how to prevent it. One study shows that about 70,000 children in the USA were involved in common household pesticide-related (acute) poisonings or exposures in 2004. At least two peer-reviewed studies have described associations between autism rates and pesticides (D'Amelio et al 2005; Roberts EM et al 2007 in EHP). It is estimated that 300,000 farm workers suffer acute pesticide poisoning each year just in the United States - No one is checking chronic contamination.

In order to try to help "stem the tide", I have just finished re-writing my IPM encyclopedia entitled: THE BEST CONTROL II, that contains over 2,800 safe and far more effective alternatives to pesticide POISONS. This latest copyrighted work is about 1,800 pages in length and is now being updated at my new website at http://www.thebestcontrol2.com .

This new website at http://www.thebestcontrol2.com has been basically updated; all we have left to update is Chapter 39 and to renumber the pages. All of these copyrighted items are free for you to read and/or download. There is simply no need to POISON yourself or your family or to have any pest problems.

Stephen L. Tvedten

2530 Hayes Street

Marne, Michigan 49435

1-616-677-1261

When a man who is honestly mistaken hears the truth, he will either quit being mistaken or cease to be honest.

From a Government without a heart

Bhopal dharna diary, May 29, 2008

This morning, we got half of what we came here for.

Prithviraj Chavan, representing the Prime Minister's Office, came to the dharna sthal and read a statement conveying the Government's in-principle agreement to our demand for the Empowered Commission. This is a huge first step. The Commission would ensure the execution of rehabilitation schemes for gas survivors and victims of water contamination. But the devil is in the details, and the PM's statement was starkly devoid of detail. Chavan did specifically mention that medical research into long-term effects of Carbide's poisons will resume forthwith, and that water would be delivered by November. (They can drink poisoned water till then.)

Coming from a Government without a heart, even this announcement gave cause for celebration to Bhopalis. The meeting of all these demands is important, it allows the survivors to continue to... well... survive.

It has been a long road, a tough stay. A lot of people have died waiting for some of these demands to be fulfilled; a lot of people have seen their health, and that of their children, irreversibly damaged; and a lot of people have suffered severe symptoms of the exposure for 24+ years. 600,000 people in all. Going by figures estimated by the Centre for Rehabilitation Studies, Government of Madhya Pradesh, just in the last three months that the Bhopalis have been on padayatra and dharna about 90 gas-affected persons are likely to have succumbed to the long-term effects of the poisons.

These sobering realities notwithstanding, for the living and the fighting, we're glad to receive some acknowledgement that the Prime Minister is listening to us. As Rashida Bi said, "Unki aakh to khuli, kaan tak aawaaz toh aayi (he has finally opened his eyes, our voices have reached his ears)." Our friend Piyush -- who was arrested for juxtaposing the PM's face on to the bodies of the three see-no-evil, hear-no-evil monkeys -- would be glad to know that his appeal has had some effect. The Prime Minister is now able to see and hear. His feelings for fellow-humans -- particularly, those that are poor -- are still lacking. How else would you explain an offer by the PM that does not even guarantee that the mothers can give clean drinking water to their babies when they return to Bhopal? The Prime Minister has said the Bhopalis would have to wait until November 2008 to get clean water.

Reflecting on the PM's statement later in the day, the euphoria wore off and some of the old cynicism crept back in. What exactly have we won? An assurance from a PM (who has once broken his word) that we have the right to live? Elation followed by an empty sense of betrayal is now a familiar pattern for Bhopal. That is not to say we haven't learned from this cycle – each time we win an agreement with more teeth, more guarantees. Cynicism, for people like the Bhopalis who refuse to give up, only means better preparation, better follow-up and a realisation that every assurance squeezed out of a spineless politician only signals the beginning of another long struggle to help the politician live up to his word. And this time too, follow up is critical – going by our experiences, every little detail has to be examined, every deadline has to be enforced. In a way, the padyatra and dharna, were simply prologue to the struggle ahead.

And as for the other thing - the giant elephant weighing us all down – namely, legal action against Dow and Union Carbide. Our Hon'ble Prime Minister -- God bless his lost spine -- and the entire cabinet have been unable to muster the courage to take action against Dow Chemical. They are afraid of the Americans. Will Georgie bomb us for daring to pursue legal action against an American company? Not a word has been said about deregistering the three pesticides that Dow registered illegally by bribing officials. Nothing on revoking the approval given to Reliance to purchase Union Carbide's Unipol technology. And nothing said on whether the Government will -- even half-heartedly -- pursue the extradition of Warren Anderson and Union Carbide's representative. Strangely, all three things are not merely being required by the Bhopalis. They are also required by law.

Since 1992, when the Chief Judicial Magistrate proclaimed Carbide and Anderson absconders, the Government of India has specific instructions from the Court to produce Carbide's representative and ol' man Anderson in court to face trial. But successive Governments have decided that it is safer to ignore the Court than it is to piss off the United States of America. In the case of the bribery scandal involving the illegal registration of three pesticides, Dow has gotten away with murder, literally. Barring a little negative publicity, nothing concrete has materialised. Every time the Bhopalis shout for deregistering the pesticides, the Government will issue a well-heeled statement that investigations are on, or that the next painful, deliberate step is being conceived, and then will be considered, and then, perhaps, acted upon. Meanwhile, thanks to Dr. Singh’s spinal difficulties, Dow Chemical continues to profit from the sales of these three pesticides, including one (Dursban) that robs the childhood of our children.

The Bhopalis are unwavering in their commitment to see all their demands met. Our health, our bodies need to be looked after, but the outrage that has been the callousness of Union Carbide, and now Dow, has to be righted. Mr. Prime Minister, we have 600,000 Bhopalis and countless supporters, here and worldwide, demanding that one company, just one company, be pulled up for its wrongdoings. We don't understand the hesitation at punishing Dow for poisoning our communities, we cannot begin to comprehend why they are being allowed to introduce even more poisons into the country, and we shudder at the only possible reason for it: that you value its dollars more than our lives, more than righting the wrongs that were done to us. And it’s not just about us: it’s about No More Bhopals, its about sending a strong message to the world, to polluting industries everywhere, that India is open for business, but no business that compromises the environment or human rights will be tolerated.

Arundhati Roy speaks out on Bhopal

Public statement

May 23rd, 2008

The lessons of Bhopal do not lie in our past but in our future. By refusing to meet the people of Bhopal who have suffered for decades after the Union Carbide/Dow Chemicals gas leak Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who is at the forefront of the Corporatization of India's Economic Policies, is sending out a clear message to the Corporate World: In India you are free to poison, rob and kill our people. The Government will protect you. You will never be brought to book.

Saare jahan se Nchha

Nityanand Jayaraman, Hindustan Times, May 22, 2008

For those passing by 7 Race Course Road on Wednesday, a wet day in the national capital, a strange scene may have greeted them outside the Prime Minister’s residence. People had chained themselves to the railings of the perimeter gate of the PM’s residence and before too long, were hauled into police vans by the dozen. Who were these people? And why were they there on such an unnaturally cool summer day with freshness in the air? These people were survivors and victims of the Bhopal Gas ‘tragedy’ protesting against the cacophonous silence on their two-point charter they have demanded from the man who lives inside the premises they were gathered outside.

These people had walked 800 kilometres from Bhopal to reach New Delhi in late March and are still on dharna at Jantar Mantar. But more than the distance, it is the matter of time — nearly quarter of a century — that has worn them down, that has made them tired. Their charter asks for two things: one, that a special commission be set up to rehabilitate families of gas tragedy survivors and those affected by the contaminated water in Bhopal; two, that the Government of India pursue legal action against Union Carbide and Dow Chemical. Just in case the government gets too nervous, compensation doesn’t even figure in the list of demands of these people.

A special commission, they say, is the only mechanism that can ensure the implementation of assurances of successive PMs that rehabilitation will be done. The fact that the plight of the survivors has gone from bad to worse over the last 24 years is proof enough that previous attempts to coordinate rehabilitation measures — through a Group of Ministers on Bhopal and, since 2006, by a Coordination Committee — have failed.

Legal action against Dow and Union Carbide is necessary not just for closure for those bereaved and hurt by the gas and poisoned groundwater. Survivors say that is the only way to ensure that future ‘Bhopals’ are not repeated elsewhere. But what has the government done to hold the guilty accountable? Nothing. Union Carbide and its former chairperson Warren Anderson, both of whom face charges of culpable homicide and grievous assault, are absconding from Indian courts since 1992. No fresh attempts have been made by the government to enforce their appearance in court.

Unrelated to the gas disaster, but arising from the routine operation of a poorly maintained chemical factory, Union Carbide has also created environmental liabilities for itself — involving the clean-up of toxic wastes and contaminated groundwater, and compensating people hurt by the consumption of the poisoned water. By virtue of its acquisition of Union Carbide in 2001, Dow Chemical has inherited Carbide’s civil liabilities — of clean-up and compensation for water-affected people. Also, in acquiring Union Carbide, Dow was well aware that it was inheriting an absconder. While Dow cannot be held responsible for the original crime of causing the disaster, it is guilty of harbouring an absconder — an offence under Section 212 of the Indian Penal Code.

In April 2006, when the survivors and victims of Bhopal met Manmohan Singh after a 35-day walk, 15-day sit-in and a six-day hungerstrike, the PM promised to explore all options within law to hold Carbide and Dow accountable. Barely a few months later, the Union Commerce Ministry approved collaboration between Reliance and Dow for the transfer of Union Carbide-owned and patented technology. A 900,000-tonne per year polypropylene plant being built by Reliance in its Jamnagar Special Economic Zone will use Carbide’s Unipol PP technology, catalysts and process software. This is illegal. Union Carbide’s assets in India are subject to confiscation as per the 1992 order of the Bhopal magistrate. In 2005, Indian Oil was forced to scrap a deal with Dow involving the Carbide-owned ‘METEOR’ technology. Dow had falsely claimed that the technology to be licensed was its own and not Carbide’s in order to avoid questions about the latter’s absconder status.

Why would the Government of India go out on a limb to help Dow Chemical? A note forwarded by Planning Commission Deputy Chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has the answer. The approval, the note says, “was greatly appreciated [by Dow] as a signal that Dow was not blacklisted as an investor”.

Dow’s jitters began when the Ministry of Chemical filed an application in the Madhya Pradesh High Court demanding Rs 100 crore from Dow as an advance to cover costs of environmental remediation at Carbide’s Bhopal site. In 2005, Dow began a lobbying operation that roped in the support of a veritable list of influential people in the Government. Indian Ambassador to the US Ronen Sen, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, Commerce Minister Kamal Nath, Ratan Tata and the then Cabinet Secretary B.K. Chaturvedi were soon singing Dow’s tune — that any overtures to hold Dow liable for Bhopal-related issues will scare away Dow’s promised $1 billion investment in India and also discourage other American investors. Once again, issues of investment are clouding issues of justice.

Dow’s crimes in India do not arise only from its association with Union Carbide. In February 2007, US financial regulator, the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) fined Dow $325,000. The reason: Dow had paid Rs 80 lakh as a bribe to Indian agriculture ministry officials to expedite registration of three pesticides — Dursban, Nurelle and Pride. Talking to faculty members in IIT-Bombay, Dow India CEO and old Carbide hand Ramesh Ramachandran blamed the bribery scandal on its employees. Dow, he said, took pro-active action against the errant officials. But what he did not mention was that Dow had approved this expenditure in its submission to the SEC. Even worse, the illegally registered products are still being sold freely in India.

In 2000, Dursban was withdrawn from all home and garden products in the US. Announcing this, US Environmental Protection Agency chief Carol Browner declared that this action came after “completing the most extensive scientific review of the potential hazards from a pesticide ever conducted. This action, the result of an agreement with the manufacturers, will significantly minimise potential health risks from exposure to Dursban, also called chlorpyriphos, for all Americans, especially children.”

Responding to a question about the bribery in Parliament, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar said in May 2007 that a CBI probe was underway. The probe is concluded. But the report is gathering dust. In the meantime, the illegally registered pesticides are poisoning our children, and those guilty are roaming free.

In demanding that the Dow-Reliance deal is revoked, and that the illegal registration for the pesticides be withdrawn, the people from Bhopal you may have seen outside the Prime Minister’s house on Wednesday are fighting for a cause much larger than their own.

Nityanand Jayaraman is a Chennai-based independent journalist and researcher.

A heartless PM?

Mail Today, May 22, 2008

IT is quite disturbing to note that the country's Prime Minister has no time to meet a group of innocent women and children suffering due to the toxic legacy of the worst ever industrial disaster in modern history. That too when this group of hapless people walked all the way from Bhopal to the national capital — just to remind the PM that he has not delivered on what he had promised them two years back. It leaves one wondering if this government has any concern left for ordinary people — the aam admi by whom it otherwise swears.

The PM's consistent refusal to meet these people, leave alone accede to their demands, has hardened the belief that he is hell bent on doing business with Dow Chemicals and does not want to displease the chemicals giant by giving an appointment to people who want Dow to take on the liability (as well as the assets which it seeks) of Union
Carbide, since it owns Carbide now. What is at stake is the promised investment of $1billion.

Why is Dr Singh keen on this investment from acompany which was penalised in America last year for having bribed Indian agriculture officials for expediting registration of three toxic pesticides in this country? Why did he not take aclear stand when the file was sent to him with the Law Ministry's opinion that Dow's investment can't be immune to its liability? Why has he not taken any action to set up an Empowered Commission on Bhopal, as recommended by the head of his own Group of Ministers on Bhopal? Why is his office stonewalling RTI applications relating to Bhopal? Is the pleasure of an American chemical giant more important to the PM than the wails of kids still being born with congenital deformities in Bhopal? Mr Prime Minister, please do some introspection as you enter your last year in office.

`Second Bhopal disaster is govt-Created`

Sreelatha Menon, Business Standard, May 18, 2008

Q&A: Satinath Sarangi

Satinath Sarangi of the Bhopal Group for Information and Action tells SREELATHA MENON that activists made a mistake by delaying raising the issue of removal of the 8,000 tonnes of toxic waste from Union Carbide's Bhopal plant.

Where were you when the 1984 disaster in Bhopal took place and what brought you to work there among the survivors?

I am from Orissa. I had done my engineering in metallurgy from Banaras Hindu University and was pursuing my PhD when the disaster took place. I heard of it on radio and decided I will do some relief work. I reached there the next day and could not leave after that. I felt I was needed there.

Who were the others who were providing relief?

There were many people trying to help. They found nothing was being done and so they decided to organise the survivors. I joined them in the Jehrile Gas Kand Sangarsh Morcha. It had three leaders and none of them was a gas victim or survivor. There was someone from the Left. He joined the Congress and then the BJP. There was a lawyer. He made it big due to Bhopal. Then there was Anil Sadgopal. No one is there in the picture now. I and some people from a trade union of Union Carbide formed the Jan Swasthya Kendra as health was the main concern then. People were not getting treatment and their bodies were getting swollen. Bhopal Group for Information and Action was formed after that as we got involved in legal action.

Did you get funds for these activities from international agencies?

We approached the International Labour Organisation, we went to New York to speak to the United Nations, to UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees) and the International Court of Justice.They all said it would have been easier if it was a natural calamity. Finally, we formed the Sambhavna Trust with individual donations like book royalties of Dominique Lapierre and annual advertisements in The Guardian. These two sources have provided us enough money to run the organisation and to treat 160 people daily since 1991.

What did you do for a living in Bhopal?

Initially, my friends used to send me money. There was Arvind Rajgopal, now a professor in New York University, who was with me and used to help me with money. I used to write for feature agencies. I also worked as a daily-wage worker in a straw board mill near the Bhopal bus stand till they sacked me a year later as there were cases against me.

What cases?

Our organisation started a clinic in June 1989 with a trade union of Carbide workers. We were giving injections that were antidotes to the chemicals. We kept records of the healthy effects of this medicine. But after 21 days, goons and police took away the records of 1,300 patients. We were put in jail for 18 days on charges we were conspiring against government officials. Many scientific studies were done at that time by the government and they all concluded there were no lasting health effects of the chemicals. We came across a study by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research on damage to plant life. It was meant only for official use. The government raided our clinic and charged us under the Official Secrets Act for possessing those papers.

The Vardarajan committee report on the disaster talked about toxic waste in 1985. How come neither the government nor the activists picked up on that till Union Carbide left the country and got merged with Dow Chemicals?

The report was bad and I doubt if the committee ever visited the premises. There is also no mention of the 8,000 tonnes of chemicals that are lying buried in the plant premises. It did mention toxic waste. But that was not part of the terms of reference of the panel.

So Carbide kept quiet about the chemicals lying there?

We have records of Union Carbide's 1981 telexes sent to the headquarters in the US that say the solar evaporation ponds are leaking. The government knew in 1982 that cattle were dying of toxic exposure. The latter was settled by a lawyer who later became Bhopal gas relief minister, Babul Lal Goud (sic).

Did you try to probe into the waste left there?

The first time we said waste should be removed was in 1990. We had done a study on water and soil contamination and the result was presented before the government and the Union Carbide AGM in 1990. Scientific agencies were trying to prove there was no damage. The chairman of the state pollution control board, VK Jain, who was later jailed on corruption charges, told me almost every day I met him that there was no contamination of water. He would say abhi to koi mara nahi hai. A Congress minister went to the site with media and drank a glass of water from there. He threw up in two minutes. This was the drama being played before 1998.

But there was no hue and cry about the toxic waste till recently?

Only after the 2004 Supreme Court order that the toxic waste has to be removed as it was contaminating the water there did we get the government to accept there was a problem.

So you blame the government for the second disaster, of continued damage caused by the chemicals left behind by the company.

The second Bhopal disaster is a creation of the government itself. In 1989, Union Carbide gathered evidence that ground water had 100 per cent fish mortality. Then they sponsored a research by NEERI, which gave a report that the factory was contaminated within the four walls but water was drinkable within the 10-km radius. We have internal correspondence between NEERI and Union Carbide advisors where the latter suggests: Let us not say water is potable, let us say it is of good quality.

But the Vardarajan committee report should have prompted some action, legal at least, on removal of toxic waste in the 80s.

Yes, it was a mistake on our part. We should have agitated much earlier. There were reports of contamination. The first report was from the public health engineering department of the Madhya Pradesh government in 1991 that water from 13 locations was dangerously polluted. But it did not mention the waste lying there.

Is the waste visible?

It is visible like a hill. But for several years, no one could go there as Carbide had posted sentries. I used to steal into the premises for samples of soil. The truth is Union Carbide just slipped away.

Twenty-four years after

Indra Sinha, Indian Express editorial, May 9, 2008

Damaged children are still being born in Bhopal. So who’s responsible?

Indra Sinha

Recently, the UK’s Guardian newspaper published a shot of what looked like a golf bag containing a pair of clubs. These were in fact the shrivelled, twisted legs of 14-year-old Adil, one of hundreds of children born malformed or brain-damaged to families living near the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal.

The same factory in December 1984 leaked poison gas, killing thousands in the most hideous and disgusting ways. Adil’s mother was caught in the gas but survived. I am lucky, she’d say, but a new terror was already on the way.

People didn’t know that their drinking wells were being poisoned by chemicals leaking from the factory. The water began to smell and taste foul. Held up to the light it appeared full of oily globules which sank to form a tawny layer. The goo was a cocktail of lethal poisons, but at the time no one knew this. Except Union Carbide.

A 1989 secret Carbide memo records proof that it knew soil and water in its factory were badly poisoned by chemicals whose effects included skin and eye damage, cataracts, diarrhoea, vomiting, abdominal pain, liver and kidney damage, convulsions, brain damage, anaemia, birth defects and cancers.

Despite the obvious danger to nearby communities, Carbide’s bosses issued no warning. Many families were already ill from its poison gas leak. Carbide watched in silence, and allowed them to be poisoned a second time. In the debate about who is responsible for clean-up we should never forget this inhuman and criminal act of negligence.

By 1993, Adil’s mother was married, pregnant with Adil, and Carbide’s silence had lasted four years. When environmentalists, alarmed by soaring rates of cancer, birth-defects and early deaths near the plant, expressed fears that chemicals might be poisoning the water supply, Carbide denounced them as mischief-makers.

In 1999 Greenpeace tested soil and water in 14 areas near the factory. They found mercury levels 6,000,000 times higher than normal and more than 30 chemicals in the water — many proven to cause birth defects and cancers. A 2001 study found lead, mercury and the factory’s signature poisons in the breast milk of nursing mothers. In some communities 95 per cent of women are anaemic. During Carbide’s ten years of silence, hundreds of children were born with terrible injuries. If you are willing to risk being seriously upset, you can see their pictures on www.bhopal.org.

Union Carbide’s final act of contempt was to leave Bhopal without cleaning its factory. Twenty-four years after the gas disaster, chemicals spill from rotting sacks and drums. People still have to drink poisoned water. Damaged children are still being born.

Union Carbide (US), majority shareholder in the factory, disclaims responsibility for the ongoing poisoning. For 16 years it has also refused to appear in the Bhopal court where it is faces serious criminal charges relating to the gas disaster. Carbide is now 100 per cent owned by Dow Chemical, which set aside $2.3 billion to meet Carbide’s US asbestos liabilities, but refuses to accept Carbide’s Indian liabilities. Dow’s managers sit on Carbide’s board, but Dow pretends it has no power to produce its wholly-owned subsidiary in court.

Dow spokesmen disingenuously add that all Carbide’s liabilities in India were covered by the 1989 settlement. Untrue. The water poisoning was never part of that settlement.

Now Dow would like to expand its business in India. It has found allies in heartless and irresponsible politicians who have done nothing to clean the factory or provide clean water but who seek ways to free Dow of its Bhopal liabilities.

Promises made to the Bhopali survivors two years ago by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh have been dishonoured. A Supreme Court order dated 2004 to provide clean water has been ignored. The Bhopalis recently walked 800 kilometres to meet Manmohan Singh. For more than a month he and his law minister have not found time to meet them.

Those poisoned in Bhopal continue to sicken and die, without help, without compassion, without justice.

Sinha is author of ‘Animal’s People’

The ultimate constitutional and human rights obscenity

Prof Upendra Baxi

April 23, 2008

The Bhopal -violated and long- suffering humanity justly continue to claim their human rights, to voice their saga of suffering, contending the cruel and predatory ways of Indian governance. They do a great service in reminding us that Indian governance cannot continue as if internationally and constitutionally proclaimed human rights never existed!

Not merely was Union Carbide Corporation unconscionably let off the hook by a constitutionally unjustified Supreme Court of India settlement order which shrivelled to nothingness (the GOL estimate of US$3.3 billion to a paltry US$ 470 award); very little has been done to actually ameliorate the extraordinary suffering of the Bhopal –violated Indian citizens.

As if this implosion of chemical-Holocaust suffering were not enough, what now occurs are some terminal forms of profoundly neo-liberal, unconstitutional governance.

Now even a self-proclaimed progressive UPA government proceeds to fashion ways in which Dow Chemical may owe no legal, constitutional, or corporate social responsibility to the Bhopal -violated humanity, even when it may best continue to maximise its profit and power. What this means is the ultimate constitutional and human rights obscenity, a form which now favours human rights impunity for successor global corporations, which may not even owe a tattle of social responsibility for the perpetuation of inhuman wrongs.

It is never too late for the Government of India to follow the path of constitutional justice for the Bhopal -violated. Rather then telling them that they have no rights, the time has surely come to tell global corporations that they owe greater human rights responsibilities than ever before.

I support the Bill and the plan of action.

Dr .Upendra Baxi
Professor of Law
University of Warwick

It is bad science to keep information back

Satinath Sarangi, the Hindu, April 22, 2008

In addition to knowing about and treating their poison-ravaged bodies, the people in Bhopal need research to know what lies in store for the children born to gas-affected and contamination-affected parents.

Right to knowledge: A Bhopal gas tragedy survivor sitting in protest in New Delhi.

India is considered to be the third largest scientific humanpower, yet some of the most basic information on the Bhopal disaster remains unavailable even after 23 years. While government scientific agencies remain oblivious to this, the victims continue to struggle for such knowledge. Sitting in Jantar Mantar after an 800-kilometre walk are 50 victims of the Union Carbide gas disaster demanding that the Prime Minister who set up the Knowledge Commission set up an empowered commission on Bhopal for medical research and health monitoring.

In 1985, some among the women padyatris had marched to the local government hospital, holding bottles of urine. They demanded that doctors examine their bodies to see if they should carry on or terminate their pregnancies. They expected the doctors to test the amount of thiocyanate in their urine for an evaluation of the toxins circulating in their bodies. They wanted them to administer sodium thiosulphate injection so that they could excrete some of the toxins they had involuntarily inhaled on that terrible night. They were worried that they might give birth to children with defects. The women were denied medical tests and advice, and police chased them away with sticks. Ironically, this happened in March 1985 when medical researchers from the Indian Council of Medical Research were carrying on a double blind clinical trial to test the efficacy of sodium thiosulphate as a detoxificant for the gas exposed.

Teratogenic effect

While the fears of the women regarding the teratogenic effect of Union Carbide’s gases were realised soon after, the results of the clinical trial by the ICMR took 22 years to be published. Its conclusion — sodium thiosulphate administered intravenously could indeed cause the body to excrete the poisons circulating in the blood stream. ICMR’s data indicates that over 23,000 people have died so far as a consequence of the disaster.

Without doubt if ICMR’s results on sodium thiosulphate trial were made known in 1985, just the simple administration of this inexpensive drug could have saved many people.

Rest of the history of ICMR’s involvement in Bhopal is no less scandalous. Twenty two of the 24 research projects carried out by ICMR between 1985 and 1994 remain unpublished. For years after the disaster, for reasons that remain unexplained, there was an official ban on publication of medical research on Bhopal. The ban was lifted in 1996 but ICMR is yet to share its findings with doctors in Bhopal let alone the 100,000 Bhopal people who were part of the studies.

While ICMR is keeping its Bhopal research findings boxed up, Union Carbide continues to withhold unpublished research on the health effects of Methyl Isocyanate, the poison gas. Over the last two decades several requests made to the highest officials of Union Carbide to disclose the findings of the research it carried out for several years at the Carnegie-Mellon Institute at the University of Pittsburgh have been denied. Just last month, the issue came up in the discussion of the faculty of IIT Bombay with officials of Dow Chemical, Union Carbide’s current owner. The officials declared unfamiliarity with the research, promised to try and obtain the findings but would not commit to a time line.

Union Carbide has not been as successful in suppressing information with regard to the environmental health consequences of its disposal of hazardous waste from the pesticide factory. Internal documents of the corporation obtained through the New York district court include bioassay reports of 100 per cent fish mortality in samples of ground water from in and around the factory at five to 10 times dilution.

Through persistent efforts under the Right to Information Act, one of the Bhopal padyatris recently obtained copies of quarterly monitoring reports of ground water quality from the State Pollution Control Board. These reports show that chemicals known to cause damage to brain, lungs, liver and kidneys and give rise to cancers and birth defects are present in high concentrations in the water of the local community hand pumps. Sadly, the ICMR has not found it fit to initiate research on the health impact of the contamination of ground water that continues to be routinely used by 25, 000 people.

Reason for agitation

The big reason why the victims of Bhopal continue to agitate for generation and publication of health information against its deliberate denial by the Indian government and the number one chemical corporation of the world is that such information is essential for their health and lives. In the absence of research, providing temporary symptomatic relief has been the mainstay of medical care ever since the morning of the disaster. The indiscriminate prescription of steroids, antibiotics and psychotropic drugs is compounding the damage caused by the gas exposure.

Despite spending over Rs. 300 crore from the public exchequer and establishing more hospital beds per 1,000 population in Bhopal than in the U.S. or Europe, the failure of the government’s system of healthcare to offer sustained relief has led to a proliferating business for private doctors and nursing homes. In the severely affected areas, most of the meagre compensation has gone to private doctors, nearly 70 per cent of who are not even professionally qualified. Yet they constitute the majority of the medical care providers.

In addition to knowing about and treating their poison-ravaged bodies, the people in Bhopal need research to know what lies in store for the children born to gas-affected and contamination-affected parents. While the Bhopalis have been clamouring for this information for 23 years, the ICMR has not exactly covered itself in glory in this respect. From 1988 to 1991, ICMR’s research team in Bhopal reported that children of gas-exposed parents had delayed physical and mental development and lower values for anthropometric parameters such as height and mid-arm circumference compared to children born to unexposed parents. Despite the positive and significant findings regarding teratogenic effect of the toxic exposure, and desperate requests from the Principal Investigator that the study be continued till the children attain puberty, it was wound up abruptly in June 1991 following directions from the ICMR headquarters.

The specially empowered commission for long-term research and rehabilitation that the Bhopal padyatris are asking for is long overdue. Let us hope that the government finally summons the political will to stop the medical disaster in Bhopal by setting up such a commission.

(The writer is a member of Bhopal Group for Information and Action, and founder-trustee of Sambhavana Trust Clinic offering free treatment to gas victims and their children.)

]]> Bhopal gas victims

The Hindu needs to be complimented for highlighting the issue of the Bhopal gas victims (article “It is bad science to keep information back,” April 22). It is a very serious matter, and indeed a matter of shame, that even after 23 years of the tragedy, the affected people are fighting even for information. I have been watching with dismay the travails of the people who marched from Bhopal to Delhi and continue to camp at the Jantar Mantar just to catch the attention of the world while the 24x7 media are busy with other issues.

The Sambhavana Trust and the Bhopal Group for Information and Action need all the help to force the government to set up an empowered commission on Bhopal for medical research. I appeal to the media to do more to highlight the cause of these people, who are slowly being pushed into the zone of collective forgetfulness for which our countrymen are famous.

K.S. Vasudevan,

Chennai

The article highlights one of the most worrying trends in today’s corporate dominated world — “corporate epidemiology.” It has been well established the world over that corporate money and muscle power have subverted science to serve their interests. In India too, there have been numerous examples of corporate bullying of scientists who are doing research on issues directly impacting on the lives of common people. When scientists do go ahead and publish their findings, they are slapped with defamation and criminal suits. This trend needs to be urgently responded to for the good of the country.

Rakhal Gaitonde,

Kancheepuram

Abandoned to their fate

Indra Sinha, The Guardian, April 9th, 2008

Victims of the Bhopal disaster are still campaigning for justice. Their suffering is emblematic of the struggle faced by huge numbers of Indians

Wahid Khan, 72, blinded by the gas which spread over Bhopal from a pesticide plant owned by an Indian subsidiary of Union Carbide Corporation on December 2 1984. Photo: Corbis

At the end of January I was dining with an old friend, now one of India's top policemen. Intelligence, counter-terrorism, external threats, internal security, he'd done it all. He knew of my work with the Bhopal gas survivors, whom I'd accused successive Indian governments of betraying.

"Betrayal? Isn't that rather a strong word?"

"Well, what would you call selling out the Bhopalis for a pittance? Canning all medical studies into the effects of the gas? Letting Union Carbide leave Bhopal without cleaning its factory? Turning a blind eye while toxic waste leaks and poisons the local water supply? Ignoring a supreme court of India order to provide clean water? Beating up women and children who dared to ask why nothing had been done? Doing business with Dow Chemical while its wholly-owned subsidiary Carbide refuses to appear in court to face criminal charges? Conspiring to get Dow off the Bhopal hook in return for $1bn? All this while people are still sick, while hundreds of children are being born deformed? What part of this cannot be called betrayal?"

As we spoke, my Bhopali friends were preparing to walk 500 miles to Delhi for the second time in three years. After the last march they had sat for a fortnight on hunger strike before the government deigned to talk to them. The politicians had made plenty of promises but kept none, so the Bhopalis were about to walk again.

"Indra, Indra," replied my friend, when I was finally done. "Don't tell me you are really so naive. Politics isn't about social justice. It is about power."

It didn't used to be. Not entirely. Long marches and hunger strikes were the weapons of Mahatma Gandhi. His portraits still hang in Indian embassies, where his politics are nowadays an embarrassment.

Modern India is everything Gandhi loathed: a society of ephemera that worships money, cheap celebrity and expensive foreign goods. The poor have been abandoned, their memory obliterated by a deluge of commercials for share issues and cars. It is "anti-progress" (and thus unpatriotic) to mention the thousands driven from their homes by huge dams, the 150,000 farmers who have committed suicide over the last decade, the 100,000 members of ethnic communities forcibly displaced by mining and steel corporations in a savage unreported war in the forests of central India. These poor have no share in India's new wealth, no voice and no powerful friends. When they get in the way of progress they can expect to be jailed, tortured, gang-raped or murdered. They are the victims of what Arundhati Roy has called "the most successful secessionist struggle ever waged in independent India - the secession of the middle and upper classes from the rest of the country."

Politicians may grit their teeth when Roy speaks (in Gujarat they organised a wholesale burning of The God of Small Things) but for the moment she and other prominent dissenters are protected by their fame. For how much longer? In the central Indian war zone, filing a news story could land you in jail. Or worse. A police phone call was intercepted. "If any journalists come to report," the district's senior officer was heard to say, "get them killed."

In my novel, Animal's People, a character asks: "When grief and pain turn to anger, when our rage is as useless as our tears, when those in power become blind, deaf and dumb in our presence, and the world's forgotten us, what then should we do? Must we put away anger, choke back our bitterness, and be patient, in the hope that justice will one day win? We have already been waiting 20 years. And when the government that is supposed to protect us manipulates the law against us, of what use then is the law? Must we still obey it, while our opponents twist it to whatever they please? It's no longer anger but despair that whispers, if the law is useless, does it matter if we go outside it? What else is left?"

This article was amended on Thursday April 10 at 11.30am
]]> madcapmagician
Comment No. 1260009
April 9 18:37
GBR Its good work you are doing, mate!

I was caught up in that tragedy

http://piquancy.blogspot.com/2004/07/for-every-glance-behind-us-we-have-to.html

and here's my commentary on the hospital that the gas money helped to build

http://piquancy.blogspot.com/2004/07/land-of-hope-if-not-glory.html

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ashwattama
Comment No. 1260012
April 9 18:38
USA I agree on most counts. The yuppy class of India has completely disengaged from the rest of the country. If you live in South Mumbai or in a happening suburb of Delhi or Bangalore, it is possible to live your entire life without knowing how the other 95% lives. I know several educated Indians who fervently believe that the trickle-down theory is working in full force ("villagers are trading commodities on the CBOT, THIS is progress!")

P. Sainath (Everybody Loves a Good Drought) should be made mandatory reading for every yuppy in India.

The only mercy is, these 5% jokers (includes my entire family, by the way) don't ever bother to vote. They are politically irrelevant and should be completely ignored.

Your friend was right - politics is not about social justice, but about power. And it always was - and not just in India. Social justice comes from social consciousness and awareness, and from denial of power to those who have failed to make good their promises. Even today, wherever the 'real' Indians have displayed political awareness and been intelligent about their electoral choices, you can see pockets of real social and human development progress.

In a democracy, you get the government you deserve. If you keep re-electing the same lot, presumably you have nothing to complain about. Dont blame the yuppy wimps, or even the corrupt politicians. Create a strong peoples movement that will sweep away this miniscule minority.

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CountBernadotte
Comment No. 1260058
April 9 19:04
GBR @ Indra Sinha

What the hell..?

After 24 years...

Is there any justice in this world AT ALL?

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DomesticatedYeti
Comment No. 1260061
April 9 19:07
GBR ....

No matter matter how jaded I feel about the world, the Bhopal disaster never loses its capacity make me so very angry.

....

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Stumpysheep
Comment No. 1260091
April 9 19:24
GBR Many thanks for this article Indra, we cannot be allowed to forget this atrocity.

Of course unless the Indian government foots the bill (like that'll ever happen) the survivors will never receive any compensation because the company responsible, Union Carbide, was stripped of its assets by its parent company, Dow Chemical, before this went to the US courts, and under US law at the time (I think this has now changed) the lawyers could not seek damages from a parent company.

Capitalism at its ugliest.

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RogerINtheUSA
Comment No. 1260120
April 9 19:38
USA CountBernadotte posted

Comment No. 1260058

April 9 19:04
GBR

@ Indra Sinha

What the hell..?

After 24 years...

Is there any justice in this world AT ALL?

Hi CountBernadotte

Remember - this is a Guardian article. In reality, Union Carbide paid $470 million in compensation to the Indian government in 1989.

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pakeezah
Comment No. 1260129
April 9 19:42
GBR It is shameful how successive Governments in India have failed to address the plight of those affected by the Bhopal disaster. There are numerous reasons for this. Firstly, the overwhelming majority of those affected are poor and India has always failed its poor. Secondly, the interests of large US owned companies are being protected. Thirdly, politicians look after number one. Corruption is rife and power is misused.

The wealthy dont give a toss about those less well off and the situation is getting worse with a widening gap between the haves and the have nots. All this talk about India fast becoming one of the world's leading economies fails to acknowledge that this is a country where your caste at birth still determines your future.

Thank you for this article.

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Stumpysheep
Comment No. 1260136
April 9 19:45
GBR Here's the wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_Disaster

Roger - Note that the $470 million figure is referenced as 'citation needed', or go and ask the victims if they've seen a cent of it.

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madcapmagician
Comment No. 1260148
April 9 19:54
GBR Stumpy

they have, check out the 2nd link which I posted. the Bhopal memorial hospital was constructed out of those funds.

and let us not just blame capitalism, let us also blame the local venal corrupt politicians....

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DomesticatedYeti
Comment No. 1260160
April 9 20:06
GBR ....

RogerINtheUSA -

And you think that represents justice! If this disaster had occurred in a US city, do you honestly believe the final compensation settlement would have been $470 million? And do you think there would have been no criminal prosecutions?

....

Stumplysheep -

A few years ago I read a report in the Independent that said a total compensation figure of $470 million had been settled with Union Carbide, but for what at the time was going on a decade and a half after the settlement the thing had got caught up in legal wrangles and corruption, and the final sum that the victims would get had still not been decided. The victims were receiving $5 a month until a final settlement was reached. I don't know what's happened in the intervening years, but the report said that the final amount was expected to be less than $400 per person, from which monthly stipends already paid would be deducted. According to RogerINtheUSA, this is justice.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/after-18-years-bhopal-still-waits-for-justice-641302.html

....

madcapmagician -

Of course, capitalism and local venal corrupt politicians don't go hand in hand.

....

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mintaka
Comment No. 1260162
April 9 20:07
GBR It is true that Union Carbide paid $470 million. What Roger omits to mention is that this figure is peanuts. There were thousands killed and about a hundred thousand severely affected. If the same thing had happened in the US, compensation would have been in the tens of billions. (For comparison, Exxon paid $2 billion after the Exxon Valdez oil spill affected fishing grounds and thereby the livelihoods of local fishermen.) Even allowing for lower medical costs in India, the compensation paid was a travesty. Union Carbide fought very hard to have the case heard in India rather than the US, so that it could take advantage of the comparatively undeveloped framework of tort law in India.

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funwithwhips
Comment No. 1260191
April 9 20:26
GBR the union carbide debacle just shows what happens with the globalised economy. A large Western corporation skimping on safety, allowing literally hundreds of thousands of people to die (and they are STILL dying today), destroying large areas of land with poluting chemicals and then getting away with it completely.

The problem is definately compounded by the fact that the indian government are a bunch of spinless self serving bastards who crumble at the sign of a fight with another country. Lets face it, the poor are treated awfully in teh country while the middle classes lord it up and look at the case of the gas pipeline from Iran, the US said dont do and the indians tip their hat and say "yes Sahib".

Its absolutely disgusting and an embarresment personally that India has become what it is, a country run by cowards and corporate yes men.

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JessicaAshdown
Comment No. 1260234
April 9 20:56
USA You're doing great work by shedding light on this issue and I thank you for that. I think I will look for your book Animal's People. I recognized your name and couldn't place it but I remembered that several years ago read your book The Death of Mr. Love.

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JessicaAshdown
Comment No. 1260241
April 9 21:02
USA DomesticatedYeti - Thanks for your reply to RogerintheUSA. Some people...

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goldengate
Comment No. 1260276
April 9 21:21
USA Unfortunately the US Judiciary, wrongfully denied the Union Carbide culpability and the case being too old; and the Indian Governments own corruption rendered the cause of the victims untenable, making them expendable. Just another case of malignant narcissists, chronic scape goaters, uncorrectable grab baggers sacrificing others with coercion, reckless abandon and impunity to promote their own outward/hypocrite self image of good and perfection. The crooked timber of humanity getting more crooked with no recourse.

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Vulpus
Comment No. 1260298
April 9 21:36
GBR My heart goes out to the people of Bhopal who still suffer to this day, not only to the familes who lost loved ones, but also the children with birth deformities, and the people who still live in the contaminated area.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/548521.stm

Apparently some years ago after considerable diplomatic pressure there was a warrant out for the arrest of the CEO of Union Carbide, Warren Anderson. The FBI however said they could not find him, then surprise surprise, there he was, filmed by investigative journalists, sleeves rolled up mowing the lawn.

And look how far India has fallen too.

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SquirrelNutZipper
Comment No. 1260392
April 9 22:44
GBR I still see the full-page ads in magazines and newspapers here in the UK, deploring the fact that the world's attention has 'moved on' from Bhopal.

As with a previous poster, whilst there are a few topics that make my blood boil, Bhopal sinks me into full-blown despair over the human race. My anger is only tempered by my resignation that, considering how the world actually works (rather than how it should work), there isn't a chance in h*ll that anything else will be done for the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of victims of Union Carbide's total inhumanity.

[This comment, and subsequent comments that refer to it, have been edited - moderator]

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CountBernadotte
Comment No. 1260466
April 9 23:36
GBR @ RogerInTheUSA

Man - who are you trying to defend..?

Cynical isn't the word.

You - are a heartless idiot. Full stop.

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CountBernadotte
Comment No. 1260491
April 9 23:56
GBR @ Indra Sinha

Please keep up this work.

Continue TO PUSH for these people.

--------------

Good Luck.

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afancdogge
Comment No. 1260557
April 10 1:18
GBR Indra

If you can bring this injustice back into the centre of discussion there may be some hope of a resolution - in so far as monetary compensation can in any way redress the balance. The people need money in order to live, they need support and need to feel they have not been forgotten The difficulty is, as in many other instances of grave and obvious injustice, that those who feel anger and digust at the behaviour of the powerful are helpless. WHO is going to apply effective pressure on the Indian Gvt. or touch the consciences of the selfish 5%?

As for the caste system in India - it may no longer "exist" officially but it certainly lives on in the minds of those who consider themselves "superior".
----------------------
Count.
I have noticed from other threads that you and I share a similar worldview. Do you also feel helpless and inadequate?

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RogerINtheUSA
Comment No. 1260567
April 10 1:34
USA DomesticatedYeti posted

Comment No. 1260160

April 9 20:06
GBR

....

RogerINtheUSA -

And you think that represents justice! If this disaster had occurred in a US city, do you honestly believe the final compensation settlement would have been $470 million? And do you think there would have been no criminal prosecutions?

....

Stumplysheep -

A few years ago I read a report in the Independent that said a total compensation figure of $470 million had been settled with Union Carbide, but for what at the time was going on a decade and a half after the settlement the thing had got caught up in legal wrangles and corruption, and the final sum that the victims would get had still not been decided. The victims were receiving $5 a month until a final settlement was reached. I don't know what's happened in the intervening years, but the report said that the final amount was expected to be less than $400 per person, from which monthly stipends already paid would be deducted. According to RogerINtheUSA, this is justice.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/after-18-years-bhopal-still-waits-for-justice-641302.html

hi DomesticatedYeti

No, it was not enough. My point was that the Guardian gave the impression that there had been no compensation by UC at all. There was compensation, but the Indian politicians did not distribute it to the victims.

I certainly wasn't defending UC, but pointing out the deception in the Guardian article.

Documents later turned up showing that UC had cut corners. They had not installed safety equipment that could have prevented this.

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Somu
Comment No. 1260574
April 10 1:41
USA
Indian Government at its tragic worst. Its unfair on one section of people to bore the brunt of these mindless development and red-carpeting dangerous Chemical companies like DOW.

DOW is notoriously known for its anti-human research.

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Somu
Comment No. 1260576
April 10 1:41
USA
Indian Government at its tragic worst. Its unfair on one section of people to bore the brunt of these mindless development and red-carpeting of dangerous Chemical companies like DOW.

DOW is notoriously known for its anti-human research.

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RogerINtheUSA
Comment No. 1260626
April 10 3:25
USA Comment edited - moderator]

hi SquirrelNutZipper

There was not enough compensation. It was paid in 1989 and then held up, not by UC, but by the Indian government. I'm not trying to defend Union Carbide, just point out the deceptiveness of the Guardian article.

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GuyFawkesIsInnocent
Comment No. 1260628
April 10 3:30
USA Good work Indra.

Bhopal was much more than a crime. As you point out, it was a "betrayal", and the victims have never been properly compensated.

madcapmagician is also correct in blaming the Indian authorities. I recall that India once had a vibrant and independent press. The last gasp seems to have been when the offices of the "Hindu" were raided in 2003....

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Bamboo13
Comment No. 1260643
April 10 4:08
IND The indifference of Indians is not new. Indians don't care one thought about the victims of U.C. Bhopal. They don't care for the 100,000 slaughtered on the roads each year, unless of course they are friends or family. Then they care a lot.

The world is about to experience this very ugly side of Indian life. As China and India strut the world, with massive buying power from their bloated populations, they are about to grab the worlds resources.

Without blame, it is the demand from these 2 super powers that is causing prices to surge, and the poor to feel squeezed. National Pride is seen as standing up for India in the shallowest way, not creating opportunities for all it's citizens.

India has not evolved in a balanced way, and conditioning creates a blindness in society that widens the gap between the elites and the disadvantaged.

It is unfortunate that both India and China that now have so much influence failed to evolve a sustainable way to live, and now intend to create the world in their own image.

It should be noted that India and China don't give a shit about Burma, Africa, human rights, and the reality that many Indians experience by a corrupt, indifferent bureaucracy, with now be experienced by the world

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Indra
Comment No. 1260814
April 10 8:54
FRA Thank you, those who appreciated the article. 600 words is not enough to begin to unravel the complexities of what has happened in Bhopal.

Someone has commented that Union Carbide paid $470 million to the Indian government. Yes, it did. A sum so derisive that news of the settlement caused Carbide's share price to jump for joy.

Thousands died in the gas, to this day more than a hundred thousand remain seriously ill. 568,000 people were injured, according to the official figures. Carbide's pittance had to be shared between them all.

The Indian government sat on half the money. Most people received payments of around $330 - meant to compensate for a lifetime of suffering. Over the years it works out at roughly the price of one cup of tea per day.

By contrast, as the Times of India pointed out, Alaskan sea otters affected by the Exxon Valdez wreck were airlifted fresh lobster at a daily cost of $500 per otter.

Union Carbide and the Indian politicians were equally guilty of wreaking this terrible havoc on the Bhopali people. They continue jointly to be guilty of perpetuating it.

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colonelhackney
Comment No. 1261506
April 10 13:19
GBR Personally I believe that compensation based on US legal principles should be paid to the victims of Union Carbide.

As a matter of interest does anyone know what happened to the victims of Chernobyl and whether they were offered any compensation?

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edwardrice
Comment No. 1261528
April 10 13:25
GBR There's a good piece by Greg Palast about Exxon Valdez.

http://www.gregpalast.com/exxon-suxx-mccain-duxx/

btw Indra, great article.

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RogerINtheUSA
Comment No. 1261669
April 10 14:00
USA colonelhackney posted

Comment No. 1261506

April 10 13:19
GBR

Personally I believe that compensation based on US legal principles should be paid to the victims of Union Carbide.

hi colonelhackney

UC should have paid far, far more. But UC was not the sole owner of the plant - 47 percent was owned by Indians - and one wonders whether the laws of the majority owner's nation should apply in these cases. Should workers injured in Jaguar and Land Rover factories henceforth be compensated by Indian courts? Should Chelsea football related lawsuits be handled by Russian courts?

colonelhackney posted

As a matter of interest does anyone know what happened to the victims of Chernobyl and whether they were offered any compensation?

hi
colonelhackney

a quick internet search shows that there are dispute over the death toll and how much compensation has been paid. Apparently it wasn't paid in cash but has been substantial

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jk47
Comment No. 1261698
April 10 14:08
GBR Funny how in a week when we have seen the results of the condemnation of China's human rights record, we get a article scratching the surface of India's. The treatment of lower castes, like the Dalits, is appalling. While I am no fan of how the Chinese treat the Tibetans, do they make them clean up their shit with their bare hands? Do they resign them to a life of poverty and destitution on the basis of the colour of their skin? One thinks that if the Olympics were being held in India, there wouldn't be the furore that we have now. Why is this so? Western perception is trained by Western thought, India cannot be a cesspool of human rights abuses and a two tier society because we have created them in our image! Democracy and the rule of law mean nothing if not enforced and respected. India is merely prostituting itself to the west, selling it's soul for a few rupees, while China at least looks after it's own people and industry by demanding all foreign companies doing business in China take on a local partner. India is the founding father of modern science, mathematics, astronomy, religion, language and civilisation itself, it is sad to see it in the state it is in today. After 1000 years of colonial rule (by Islam and Britain), India has lost its way and lost its soul.

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callcopse
Comment No. 1261827
April 10 14:41
GBR Hi Roger U,

To be fair I think the tone of the article seems much angrier with the Indian government than UC. I think it is somewhat accepted as an unpleasant fact of life that it is a little naive to expect a corporation to do other than what it is obliged to do, as they are trying to make money.

Still, Dow could have behaved better just for PR and because that may have helped make money.

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Bochi
Comment No. 1261923
April 10 15:08
GBR Well said Indra! I know you will never give up on this cause.

While the issue of compensation and the Indian Government's outstanding ability to ignore the most basic duties a democracy owes to its citizens is important, there is also the matter of preventing future Bhopal disasters.

Warren Anderson, CEO of Union Carbide at the time, who insisted on installing all the necessary safety measures at an identical plant in the USA but not at Bhopal, is wanted in India for culpable homicide. He's living in the exclusive "Hamptons" estate on Long Island in New York.

Whether the compensation is 470m or 4.7bn or 47bn, it's just another risk assessment procedure in the boardroom. You work out the downside, you note the brown skins, and you make your decision.

The only way to stop this stuff from happening is to lock up the people who make those assessments. Perhaps Greenpeace, having tracked the bastard down to his New York lair, could fly some of the Bhopal survivors and a few Indian journalists and cameramen to the Hamptons for a tiger hunt?

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JennM
Comment No. 1261937
April 10 15:12
FRA As the Beatles sang "There's going to be a revolution, yeah yeah I know..."

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marksa
Comment No. 1262095
April 10 15:56
GBR well its somewhat pointless going about the failings of the Indian government. The society is extreme libetarian because the government is non existent. Mind you there are a lot more resources available now, so some of the issues (like clean drinking water) should be addressed.

Upper class Hindus like the writer bemoaning the crass commercialism of today should be treated with scepticism. They are as disengaged as anybody else in reality. Efficient governance does not happen overnight.

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AfricanSnowman
Comment No. 1262472
April 10 17:40
GBR Would it nt have been truly great if the scam that is discussed in this report had actually happened :

"The 20th anniversary of the Bhopal gas tragedy was a day of embarrassment for Dow chemicals and the major news media around the world when the BBC fell victim to a hoax from a man claiming to be a Dow spokesperson who claimed full responsibility for the tragedy and announcing a multibillion dollar compensation package. We play the interview and speak with "Jude Finiseterra," a member of the Yes Men, which played the hoax. [includes rush transcript]
"

For more go to : http://www.democracynow.org/2004/12/6/yes_men_hoax_on_bbc_reminds

Not surprisingly, the company's share price fell significantly when the announcement was made thereby re-inforcing the truism that what is good for us poor folks is not good for them rich ones.

I have felt for some time now that the greatest threats to world peace come not directly from nuclear war, biological/chemical warfare or terrorism but from the exploitative and heartless nature of so-called "globalisation" which will provide the catalyst for these events.

Slavery represented the first audacious steps in the sordid "globalisation" project and we can see similar considerations that applied then to what happened in Bhopal. Here I quote from Richard Ennal's very illumanting book on the subject ("From Salvery to Citizenship")

"The British played a leading role in the slave trade, but it was conducted offshore, in the notorious "Middle Passage." Ships left Liverpool and Bristol for west Africa, full of British manufactured goods,.... In between, safely out of sight, they carried slaves from West Africa to North America. Few slaves were brought to England. A comfortable fictional account can be presented of slaves singing and dancing on the Atlantic crossing, and of their happy lives with new masters. Many of those who owned plantations in the West Indies never visited. They enjoyed an income from their investments, and had no wish to know the sordid details of how the profit was obtained.

International outsourcing is made easier by virtue of being conducted away from the glare of publicity. Leading companies, for whom corporate social responsibility is an important marketing tool, tend to see corporate social responsibility as primarily an issue for the local market, and for the home investors. It is rarely applied in global terms. The British had yet to join the European debate, in which corporate social responsibility includes obligations by employers to their employees and former employees "

(and to the societies in which they operate)

AND

"Finance directors are concerned to analyse hard data, and are resistant two arguments based on soft factors such as health and learning. It is notoriously difficult today to make the business case for investing in people, even when the rhetoric declares that people are the most important resource. We have no agreed ways of value in human capital, or of measuring the impact of investments in the health and learning of the workforce. Thus any such expenditure tends to be seen as the cost to be cut in the short term, rather than an investment in the longer term."

Here is an article that discusses in detail the events that lead to the disaster and to the chincanaries both before and after.

http://www.democracynow.org/2004/12/2/bhopal_disaster_20_years_later_a

Breifly, cost cutting in the face of unfavourable business conditions was behind it all.

So, every time you hear business leaders and politicians talk of the need to "remain competive" be very carefull - your life could be the next one to be offered to this sacred cow.

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easterman
Comment No. 1262856
April 10 21:07
IRL Small drop in a seedy pond but fair play to 'FC United of Manchester' (FCUM) for adopting Bhopal as its charity .
Big contrast to the greedy old yank milking the Big United franchise or the squabbling septics down the east lancs . What is it about Yanks and wandering around the globe pissing people off.

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SquirrelNutZipper
Comment No. 1262908
April 10 21:43
GBR Apologies, Moderators. I did get a bit OTT with RogerINtheUSA there. But then another poster or two also commented on the heartlessness of his posting that provoked my response.

How has it come to pass that Bhopal isn't as shameful an event in human history as so many others? How is it that the wildlife from the Exxon Valdez disaster were compensated in such ugly contrast to the human beings affected so badly by Union Carbide's unholy disaster?

The outpourings of emotion and money relating to the Boxing Day tsunami a few years back stands in stark contrast to the world's continuing apathetic response to Bhopal. Why is that? Because a tsunami is seen as an 'Act of God' but Union Carbide is a mega-corporation stuffed with human beings ... and we, as a people, are more forgiving of humanly dastardliness than the unknowable force of nature?

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bruceybaby
Comment No. 1262991
April 10 22:53
GBR This makes me cry.

I walked through the villages of India for 2 years, and, after a bad accident in the Himalayas, lived in a cave for a year among the `gaddi` people, for whom I have utmost respect, such beautiful people continuing self-sufficiency as it had been done for thousands of years.

That was in ca. 1984.

I returned 20 years later to find the `gaddi` people absent, and their farmhouses largely rented by Israelis who had total disrespect for the local people.

How can such a beautiful culture disappear so quickly?

I despair.

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marph70
Comment No. 1263028
April 10 23:21
GBR Indra
great piece the campaign must continue to expose the multinational and their ugly policy towards the third world.

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CountBernadotte
Comment No. 1263042
April 10 23:27
GBR @ afancdogge

Thanks.

This song articulates the impotent rage that I feel!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWdh7ERLb3E&feature=related

"As I walk through,
This wicked world,
Searchin' for light in the darkness of insanity.
I ask myself
Is all hope lost?
Is there only pain and hatred, and misery?

And each time I feel like this inside,
There's one thing I wanna know:
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?

And as I walked on
Through troubled times
My spirit gets so downhearted sometimes
So where are the strong
And who are the trusted?
And where is the harmony?
Sweet harmony.

'Cause each time I feel it slippin' away, just makes me wanna cry.
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?"

[Nick Lowe / Elvis Costello]

-------------------

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Indra
Comment No. 1263073
April 10 23:52
FRA I must correct a few misapprehensions.

Marksa says:
Upper class Hindus like the writer bemoaning the crass commercialism of today should be treated with scepticism. They are as disengaged as anybody else in reality.

My reply:
I am neither upper class, nor a Hindu. Nor am I disengaged, at least from the Bhopalis, with whom I have worked for 15 years, raising money in the UK to fund a free clinic in Bhopal for the victims of the gas and water poisoning.

I have a lot of close friends in the squalid bastis of Bhopal. Their courage and good humour in the face of unimaginable suffering were the inspiration for my novel Animal's People. Anyone interested in finding out more about the clinic and its work can visit http://www.bhopal.org. Some of the fundraising appeals I have written (and published in the Guardian since 1994) can be found at http://www.indrasinha.com/bhopalappeals.html - anyone interested in discovering some truths about Dow Chemical please visit http://www.bhopal.net/masks.html

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CountBernadotte
Comment No. 1263155
April 11 0:44
GBR @ Indra Sinha

Thanks for the links.

Everyone who visits this thread should AT LEAST take a look at this website:

http://www.bhopal.org.

----------------

And thank you for putting this 'issue' back into focus.

----------------

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CountBernadotte
Comment No. 1263160
April 11 0:50
GBR Dear Editor/Moderator

Any chance of removing the above 'off-topic' items?

[leslove Comment No. 1263108 CHN]

Thanks!!!

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marph70
Comment No. 1263177
April 11 1:11
GBR any where else this type of carnage happened? And what is the latest twist on the compensation? Nowadays hardly you find groups to campaign for such causes. It's the game of media's vicious circle. Bhopal, Tibet or Burma. If it wasn't for Olympics Tibet would have never reached today's headline.

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afancdogge
Comment No. 1263215
April 11 2:03
GBR marph

Your comment re. media strikes a chord. The people who are interested in supporting victims of injustice have to go in search of info. The internet helps in the search and articles like this bring issues to the attention of some. It is noticeable, sadly, that threads such as these attract few comments.

Generally media agenda seem to be tied in with international finance; occasionally "lip service" is paid, on a revolving basis to issues such as Bhopal. I agree that the current media interest in Tibet is quite simply allied to the Olympic torch fiasco. We need an "in your face" policy from popular media outlets, forcing an awareness among the majority of those living in the developed world of the bases of their prosperity; a prosperity built on foundations of human misery. It is not popular to say this.

It is not popular because if justice were to be implemented world wide consumer goods would rocket in price. We would all have to have a little less in order to give a little more to those who have nothing. Not a popular campaigning slogan.

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Indra
Comment No. 1263232
April 11 2:22
FRA RogerINtheUSA says:
UC was not the sole owner of the plant - 47 percent was owned by Indians - and one wonders whether the laws of the majority owner's nation should apply in these cases. Should workers injured in Jaguar and Land Rover factories henceforth be compensated by Indian courts? Should Chelsea football related lawsuits be handled by Russian courts?

My reply:
Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) of Danbury, Connecticut, owned 50.9% of the Bhopal plant. It was UCC's publicly stated policy to maintain direct control over its overseas subsidiaries via majority shareholdings.

The Jaguar-Chelsea analogy is misleading. Neither's owners have imported to the UK ultra-hazardous proprietory technology requiring constant access to foreign experts for its safe use. Union Carbide Corporation's Indian subsidiary had absolutely no experience of working with methyl-isocyanate (MIC), and was wholly dependent upon the US parent for its expertise, know-how and guidance.

Issues of technical and managerial control were critical in determining liability for the disaster. The Indian government argued that only in an American court could clear and convincing evidence be extracted from the parent company via the discovery process.

The legal battle began in the Lower Manhattan District Court. UCC asked that the case be transferred to India. The court agreed, on condition that UCC agreed to abide by the decisions of Indian courts. But when US executives were summoned to answer criminal charges in a Bhopal court they refused, saying that Indian courts had no jurisdiction over them.

Not a single UCC executive has ever had to appear in court to account for events that led to the massacre in Bhopal: if I could underline this fact and print it in blood red letters I would, because it is so outrageous. Outside the witness box, bound by no oath, Carbide's executives could regard the deaths of thousands of Bhopalis as a PR problem.

Four days after the disaster, UCC Vice President Jackson Browning assured The Guardian that the Bhopal plant had been built by Americans and enjoyed the same high technology as the 'sister plant' in Institute, West Virginia. But Carbide documents obtained via discovery revealed that US engineers planning the Bhopal plant were worried about using different and 'unproven technology', especially in the fatal MIC unit. UCC decided it was an acceptable 'business risk' and underspent on safety systems. Institute had a computerised operating system. Bhopal's "unproven technology" was in the hands of workers who spoke little but Hindi, but were given safety and process manuals written in American English.

In 1981 a leak of phosgene killed a worker. A 1982 safety audit conducted by UCC's own experts identified 61 hazards, 30 of them major, 11 in the ultra-dangerous MIC/phosgene units. Poorly trained personnel, rapid turnover, leaking valves, shoddy gauges and inadequate water spray protection were all identified as representing 'a higher potential for a serious incident or more serious consequences if an incident should occur.'

This report prompted UCC to strengthen safety measures at Institute, but in Bhopal nothing was done. The plant was losing money. Carbide planned to dismantle it and sell it to an operator in Indonesia or Brazil.

In October 1982 a chemical leak hospitalised large numbers of people living near the factory. Even this warning was ignored. Instead of spending on controls, safety systems and maintenance to avert a greater disaster, UCC did the opposite. The US executive management team instructed Indian managers to implement a drastic cost-cutting strategy, which they called an 'Operations Improvement Programme'.

An accountant with no chemical engineering experience was brought in to run the Indian factory. 350 staff were laid off. The safety staff was halved, training time cut from six months to two weeks. Supervisors were taken off critical shifts, maintenance work was reduced. New parts were no longer used in repairs, old defective ones were re-used. Broken pipes and valves were not replaced.

In early 1984 Carbide managers were boasting of having saved $1.25 million. By this time the Bhopal plant was wildly in breach of the UCC's own safety policies. Instead of rectifying the defects, the company chose to rewrite its operating manual.

MIC is 500 more times toxic than hydrogen cyanide and so volatile that it can even react with itself. UCC's 1978 operating manual specified that to minimise the risk of a runaway reaction the MIC storage tank should be kept at 0˚C. The rewritten 1984 manual allowed the refrigeration unit to be switched off to save the cost of freon gas.

At midnight on December 3rd 1984 a runaway reaction caused the locomotive-sized tank to belch 27 tons of MIC over a sleeping city. The refrigeration had been off for three months.

For what sort of money would it be worth risking the lives of a whole Indian city?

Union Carbide did it for $37.68 per day.

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Bamboo13
Comment No. 1263327
April 11 6:18
IND The Chief justice of India has stated that 20% of supreme court judges are corrupt. There are 10s of millions of cases that are pending. Any VIP who thinks they may be in the shit, applies for "Anticipatory bail.

Lawyers representing Union Carbide, would have assessed the situation, and advised accordingly. Only a fool would leave themselves at the mercy of an Indian court where witnesses turn hostile, and justice is not usually dispensed.

Jessica Lal was murdered in a posh Chandigargh bar by the son of a powerful politician. There were many witnesses, and no doubt about who the shooter was. All the witnesses turned hostile, and he was acquitted. It was only the outrage of the public that allowed the verdict to be appealed, and he was eventually sentenced to life.
The legal system failed as it often does in India, and it was vox pop that allowed the conviction.

A lesson for India is that with ever more world involvement, it's judicial system is unacceptable, and lawyers will advise their clients to avoid it like the plague. The rule of law is not applied in India, and frivolous cases can be time consuming and costly. Ask Richard Gere or the Hinduja Brothers if they would risk all for their day in an Indian court. As always it is the weakest who suffer, and this time it is the Bhopal Victims.

Seeing through divisive thinking is always the best way to get a multi angular viewpoint, and Union Carbide did what most other companies would have.

The victims of Bhopal were sold out by Indians.