Not a single problem resulting from the deadly methyl isocyanate (MiC) gas leak at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal on the intervening night of December 2 and 3, 1984 has been resolved despite the lapse of 29 years since the tragedy that caused 4000 immediate deaths occurred. Though victims began arriving in hospitals within an hour of the leak, doctors and police were clueless about the cause. The company tried to conceal the magnitude of the disaster the next morning until the rising death toll made denial impossible. In all, around 30,000 persons succumbed and about five lakh (including second and third generation survivors) were grievously injured with severe and persisting medical problems that have never been adequately redressed.
The Bhopal gas tragedy is the world’s worst industrial disaster (barring only Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011). MiC is an intermediary substance used to manufacture a pesticide, Sevin, which leaked from tank 610. About 40 metric tonnes of the deadly poison was released that fateful night.
The first and foremost issue pertaining to the tragedy is justice to the victims in terms of adequate compensation for the deaths and incapacitation caused and to support the survivors in a modicum of comfort for the rest of their natural lives. This involves reopening the shoddy $470 million package agreed to, by the Government, without consulting the survivors. As a result, most victims received less than $150 each for their injuries and suffering; families of the dead got as little as $5000 per victims; and allegations persist of funds siphoned off by corrupt officials, politicians and middlemen.
A second and related aspect is quality medical care, including free medication, for the survivors for the rest of their lives. Third, fixing culpability for the crime at the level of the Bhopal management and the parent US multinational for faulty design and gross negligence, and awarding commensurate punishment for the death and sufferings caused. There is the contentious issue of the extradition of then chairman Warren Anderson, which seems a remote possibility. And last but not the least, is the disposal of waste and cleaning up of the site which continues to pollute the air and underground water, constantly creating new victims.
Looking back, it is evident that from the beginning, the victims were relegated to second place as a novice Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, struggling with the fallout of the anti-Sikh riots following the assassination of Indira Gandhi and busy with campaigning for the January 1985 elections, buckled to American pressure to provide safe passage to Carbide chairman Warren Anderson wanted to come to India to personally assess the damage. Since this was not communicated to the then Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Arjun Singh, he had Anderson arrested on arrival in Bhopal on December 7, 1984. But a couple of telephone calls from New Delhi saw Anderson released and flown to Delhi in a State aircraft, and hustled safely to the US. Though he remains the chief accused in the criminal case pertaining to the tragedy, he never returned to India.
What has aggravated public resentment on the issue is the increased awareness about the sufferings of the gas victims and the misuse of the hospital created for them, coupled with shoddy attempts to blame then Union Home Minister PV Narasimha Rao for the release of Anderson. In his autobiography released in July 2012, Arjun Singh claimed that the then Union Home Secretary RD Pradhan, on instructions from Rao, called the State Chief Secretary Brahma Swaroop to secure Anderson’s release.
This has been perceived as a shoddy attempt to protect the reputation of Rajiv Gandhi and curry favour with Congress president Sonia Gandhi. The facts that have come into the public domain, as revealed by Gordon Streeb, then deputy chief of the US embassy’s mission in Delhi, in 2010, suggest that Anderson decided to visit the site to assess damage and prospects of controlling it, but wanted a guarantee of safe passage back home. Accordingly, then US President Ronald Reagan telephoned Rajiv Gandhi and secured the guarantee.
Streeb told the Indian media that his chief interlocutor was Foreign Secretary MK Rasgotra, who shamefully tried to deny the truth. When that was not possible, he appeared on television and said that though Rajiv Gandhi was also Foreign Minister at the time, he was busy with electioneering and so the ‘actual nod’ to release Anderson was obtained from Home Minister Narasimha Rao. This has been strongly refuted by the latter’s son, V Ranga Rao, who called the insinuations “unnecessary and unfair”. Meanwhile, the extradition issue hangs in a limbo, with the US Government taking no action on the Centre’s request in 2011.
The true dimensions of the tragedy can never be assessed, but the scandalous neglect of safety standards by the US multinational, despite several warnings from journalist Raj Keswani (Jansatta) deserves a deeper scrutiny. At least three accidents (a fire, two gas leaks) and the death of two factory workers occurred in the plant before the big tragedy. This fact must be known to the American management and the Congress-ruled State Government before the tragedy occurred.
Despite the magnitude of human suffering, India’s human rights’ conscious legal luminaries rushed to defend the offending company. In 1989, the Union Government with Supreme Court sanction quashed criminal proceedings against UCC and accepted a niggardly $470 million (Rs 705 cr) compensation. In June 2010, a desultory verdict sentenced a handful of persons who secured bail the same day. Worse, the cash-rich Bhopal Hospital built with profits from the sale of the plant in 1992, was found serving the city’s rich and famous, rather than the victims!
The then Chief Justice of India AM Ahmadi became life chairman of the hospital until controversy forced him to step down. In 1996, Ahmadi had presided over the bench which diluted the charges against Union Carbide executives by converting the CBI charge under the stringent provisions of 304-II (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) that provided for maximum imprisonment of 10 years, to Section 304 (a) (death due to negligence) with maximum imprisonment of just two years. He personally dismissed a petition seeking the review of this dilution of legal indemnity against Carbide, and tried to put blame on the government when the matter became public.
This saga of political, legal, and moral failures forced the victims to organise and fight for their rights. In Bhopal on Tuesday, December 3, the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Udyog Sangathan decided to file a petition in the Supreme Court for early hearing on payment of compensation to the victims, and to approach the National Green Tribunal for compensation for the environmental damage to Bhopal. It also demanded a CBI probe into the alleged corruption in relief and rehabilitation of the gas victims.
The survivors want reopening of the 1989 out-of-court settlement. The curative petition filed in the Supreme Court in December 2010 argues that the settlement was based on underestimated figures of the dead (just 5295) and injured (just 4944). It estimates the number of dead at over 35,000 and the seriously injured at over 150,000. This was supported by Amnesty International, which in a 2004 report held that the fatalities from the first few days of the disaster could easily be put at over 20,000. The petition is still hanging fire.
Meanwhile, the second and third generation survivors continue to suffer the effects of the toxic leak. Children mostly suffer cerebral palsy, speech and hearing impairments, epilepsy, heart diseases and so on. The medical aid dished out at government hospitals, according to the survivors, is mainly paracetamol and cough syrup, no matter what ailment they complain of!
That leaves the issue of cleaning up the site and disposing over 8000 tonnes of toxic waste still lying inside the factory premises, which India lacks the technology to detoxify. In 2001, the plant was bought by Dow Chemical Co. for $11.6 billion. The victims feel that as the successor firm, Dow should be involved in the criminal case and compensation issues. Dow’s stand is that is willing to bear some of the cost of cleaning the site, in return for freedom from legal liability for the disaster. Carbide escaped civil liability for the faulty plant design and gross negligence leading to the accident with its $470 million collusive settlement, but its criminal liability remains. Both Union Carbide and its directors refused to stand trial and have been declared absconders from the law, and the case is going nowhere.
The Union Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilisers has asked Dow to deposit Rs 1 billion ($25 million) as initial payment for the cost of decontamination of the site. But this issue is caught in legal wrangling over the fine print of the sale agreement between Carbide and Dow.
Niticentral.com, 4 December 2013