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In one of his bravest moments, the Union Law Minister Moili fired his salvo at the Supreme Court, reacting to the judgment delivered on 6th June 2010 on the Union Carbide gas tragedy in Bhopal. Mr. Moili has reportedly stated "The apex court has reduced the gravity of crime at Bhopal to a truck accident. Cases of mass destruction should have standard law. Mass destruction is not an accident, but a disaster."
Print media screamed in its headlines "After 25 years and 25000 deaths only 2 year jail term," commenting on the conviction of 8 executives of Union Carbide India for the greatest industrial disaster on the midnight of 2nd Dec- 1984.
Electronic media had its own take, how government did not act on time, and how government machineries were allowed to be used to facilitate the departure of Warren Anderson, the Chairman of Union Carbide in the U.S. How the then Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh played his suspected diabolic role in the escape of American boss of Union Carbide. That he was detained in the state guest house, arrested for the purpose of record, arranged bail right there and discharged on a surety of 25000 Rs by an officer of Union Carbide India, is a story only meant for cinema. But our Indian leaders even arranged his trip back home safely with a ‘promise’ from him that he will return when the Indian courts needed him. Who were fooling whom? How can a senior American executive with his own level of pulls would ever come to India responding to a legal notice? Unthinkable for any Indian of even minimum intelligence. Yes, the then political leadership of the country allowed him to leave, knowing full well that Mr. Warren Anderson shall never return. Crime of culpable homicide with monetary implications of a catastrophic human tragedy was too huge for him to risk his return to India. How can you enforce an Indian law in the U.S. courts that Warren Anderson is ‘an absconder’, is a fugitive?
Past midnight on 2nd Dec 1984, 40 tons of Methyl Isocyanate, the toxic gas, mixed with phosgene, another poison gas, escaped into the atmosphere of a sleeping city of Bhopal from the ‘state of the art’ plant of Union Carbide, the American multi-national. The suddenness of the accident took the whole city unawares. There was no place to run. It was a ruination of an unparalleled kind. An industrial holocaust, like of which was never known or witnessed anywhere in the world. Death, maimed and injured was unprecedented. This, supposedly, the greatest industrial disaster has killed anywhere between 20,000 and 30,000, the exact number of which could never be known. According to Dr Satpathy, a forensic expert attending on the victims, some 400 bodies were never claimed, whole families were wiped out and many of the dead were without any fixed address. Those maimed for life and injured could be in the region of half a million. Indeed it was the most murderous industrial disaster in the history.
Over 25 years down the line, how it happened and why it happened, may be of little relevance to people who lived through the tragedy and its aftermath.
Of course, every mishap, big or small, has multiple factors that influences it occurrence or recurrence. This one at Bhopal, according to study teams, was a result of a combination of human factors and a faultily designed safety system. So, whom to make accountable, for this huge loss of human life and the accompanying physical and psychological trauma to some five hundred thousand people of Bhopal, became the crux of the whole issue.
Looking back over the past 25+ years, what happened to victims and who were the culprits could as well be a study in wholesale callousness. It was a story of a nation, that failed its people-the system, the politicians, the bureaucracy, the judiciary, the media and of course the civil society, every one failed to bring about even a semblance of justice to those faceless multitudes of Bhopal.
"You have wiped away the marriage marks from our foreheads, emptied our laps of children, bathed us in poison – and we are sobbing, but death doesn’t come. Like a living walking corpse you have left us. At least tell us what our crime was, for which such a punishment has been given". This is Sajida Bano, whose husband Ashraf worked in the factory and was killed by the gas leak. Two years later, after acute respiratory suffering, the son too died.
This was one of the hundreds and thousands of agonising and unremitting story of pain.
For over 25 years, the population of Bhopal endured the unending suffering. Many have died in the intervening years-men, women and children-without any comforting moments or action from the government or the company. Why the value of human life, especially those of poor and marginalised, have become so cheap in India that hardly anybody, who is somebody, really cared until the court in Bhopal gave its judgment. This judgment by the Chief Judicial Magistrate, of 2 years imprisonment and 1 lakh fine, for the death of over 20,000 people and maiming some 500,000 awarded under IPC 304 – A (causing death by negligence) sent shock waves across the country. Media hype, especially the 24x7 electronic, went almost berserk. Yes, as Swapan Dasgupta wrote, that "the court judgment may have established that underneath the amazing success story, India is still an iniquitous Third World state that devalues human life".
The fourth estate, supposedly the watchdog on other three estates, namely the legislature, executive and judiciary, was really watching over issues looking for sensation only. Yes, our media did precious nothing in keeping the issue alive and fighting for the powerless poor people of Bhopal. Some of whom were former employees of the factory that killed their near and dear ones.
Yes, there was a sense of outrage all over, after hearing the judgment. It was compounded when more skeletons started falling from the government cupboards – both at Bhopal and New Delhi – vis – a – vis – Warren Anderson’s escape to freedom. Indeed any detention of the man, could have led to some kind of a diplomatic impasse between India and the U.S. However, doing precious nothing and then to actually facilitate the boss of Carbide to fly out of the country, almost as a state guest, despite there being a very strong case for at least a temporary detention and then work out some modality with U.S. government regarding any court cases that would follow, was to have lost the best opportunity of making the ‘PERPETRATORS PAY’. UCC could have laughed at our smugness.
Who is responsible for this most irresponsible act? is a question going in circles but still being pushed around as an untouchable. Most reports informed about the Churhat lottery hero Arjun Singh, the then Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh. But would he act alone, so decisively on an issue of such magnitude? Reports coming from different sources speak about, Warren Anderson having met the then Home Minister P V Narasimha Rao so also the then President Zail Singh. But Arun Nehru, a close confidant of late Rajeev Gandhi has reportedly told a TV channel that Warren Anderson’s meeting with P V N Rao and Sardar Zail Singh might have been fixed by the Foreign Ministry then headed by Prime Minister Rajeev Gandhi. Arun Nehru’s conjecture was that ‘since Anderson was ushered into the Indian capital from Bhopal, to meet Indian Home Minister and the Indian President, he couldn’t have been considered ‘persona non grata’ in the corridors of power and hence was not considered, criminal at all.’ So what kind of a logic one would apply? Under the circumstances, is it very difficult to surmise that decision to let go the Chief Executive Officer of Union Carbide Mr Warren Anderson was made at the highest level. With Arjun Singh having broken his silence that he has nothing to do with the escape of Anderson only confirms the role of higher-ups in Delhi. Could this be the then Prime Minister Rajeev Gandhi? Of course the present ruling party at the centre is in a great hurry to give the late Rajeev Gandhi a clean chit. And comes professional politician Pranab Mukherjee, the FM, giving the ludicrous ‘law and order angle’ as the reason for Anderson’s exit.
Opposition BJP, as usual, is trying to fish in the troubled water, and launched a broad-side against Rajeev Gandhi. But the incumbent Prime Minister Sardar Manmohan Singh is clearly worked up. The GOM that he proposed, to look into this whole issue of Bhopal tragedy, wants it to report back in 10 days flat. As it was rightly pointed out isn’t this ‘too little too late’?
In an attempt to find alibies, all were trying to wash their hands off. Americans said that it was the Indians who managed everything hence Indians and not Americans are responsible. But American Carbide (UCC) had 51% ownership of their Indian outfit (UCIL) and therefore had management control. Hence, nothing took place in India without the parent company’s concurrence. Thus there is no escape for the parent company to wash its hands off.
Although, it may not be entirely relevant now, to discuss about the lowered safety standard at UCIL’s Bhopal plant, the well documented fact is cost cutting led to the lowering of safety standards, so also there were far too many minor accidents for comfort. A post disaster investigative study undertaken by Industrial Crisis Institute Inc-New York, found out that Bhopal was not an isolated incident, and there were 28 major MIC leaks occurred in UCC’s West Virginia plant during the 5 years preceding Bhopal tragedy. And the most glaring thing about the whole issue was that there was no emergency plans for any crisis management in place for Indian subsidiary of UCC. Besides, Bhopal city health officials were not informed of the toxicity of the chemicals used in UCIL factory, and they were not told how to deal with the poisonous gas in an emergency making it impossible for doctors to give any antidote to victims. Of course, it also exposed the callousness of the whole Bhopal administration responsible for sanction without a set of do’s and don’ts and the safe up keep of this ‘state of the art’ UCIL plant.
There is so much to write about what happened during the last over 25 years since Dec 1984. CBI filed a case of culpable homicide in the Supreme Court. But the bench headed by the then Chief Justice Ahmedy, reduced it to death by negligence. How can anybody with an iota of sense of justice could reduce this horrendous human tragedy to mere negligence, is beyond comprehension. It was the lawyers of UCIL that won the day and lawyers of CBI simply failed to convince the apex court. Could it be that court had made up its mind since victims were all faceless poor Indians and CBI was merely going along?
Almost from beginning, even before the first anniversary of the disaster, in 1985, government both at centre and state did not measure up to the response needed in an accident of this magnitude. The victims expereinced neither speed, nor competence, nor compassion from those appointed to manage and help alleviate their condition. Authorities were not serious at all in handling the case of these victims since they were poor. Even in the nominal payment of Rs. 10,000/- per dead there was large scale corruption and not everybody got it. Due to the corruption even the promised spot cash relief of Rs. 1500/- for victims who’s income was less than Rs. 500/- was discontinued.
Acting as the sole representative of Bhopal victims, Govt. of India filed a case against UCC in the U.S. courts for compensation and damages for an estimated $3 billion. This process needed the quantification of the claim, by collecting details from victims who are living and the relatives of the dead, who could also be victims. After 26 years, it is a sad admission that neither the state government nor the central government even tried seriously to complete the collection of this information. So how can anybody assess the total amount that has to be claimed? This is governments in India for you.
In May 1986, U.S. court ruled that India, not the U.S., was the appropriate forum for the Bhopal compensation litigation, but asked UCC to pay an interim compensation of US $10 million. Having agreed to pay the amount, it was only in Nov. 1987, they routed this money to Indian Red Cross through American Red Cross, since no terms of reference for distribution could be agreed with the Indian government. Victims couldn’t get any benefit of this amount since Indian Red Cross did not have any plan in place to distribute the compensation.
After having disagreed with the order of Bhopal Distt. Court for Rs. 350 crores compensation and then Rs. 250 crores by Madhya Pradesh High Court, in 1989 Feb, UCIL agreed with the Supreme Court directive to pay U.S. $470 million as "full and final settlement" of all claims. Thus for all intents and purposes, the original claim of U.S. $3 billion went out of the window. This caused huge disappointment for the victims’ groups.
In the meanwhile the company had retrenched all its staff and closed their operations in India. A watchman was left to watch over what was left of the UCIL, which by now had become derelict with creepers growing all over, like an abandoned factory. And the tragedy for the suffering victims continued. Refusing to remain mute spectators, they organised themselves to protest and to demand compensation. The Rome based Permanent People Tribunal on Industrial and Environmental Hazards & Human Rights, reported that the basic human rights of victims were grossly violated by the Union Carbide and the government of Madhya Pradesh and at New Delhi.
Writing in his much acclaimed book "It was Five Past Midnight at Bhopal" Dominique Lapier writes "What does the future holds out for those helpless victims with their respiratory problems, persistent coughs, visual difficulties, juvenile cataracts, anorexia, recurrent fevers, weakness, depression, TB, carcinogenic symptoms? The survivors are still suffering from the after effects of the tragedy. The angry graffiti ‘HANG WARREN ANDERSON’ although was no consolation, is a painful reminder that no court- Indian or U.S.- has ever tried and punished those responsible for the tragedy, who for reasons of economy had shut off all the safety system in this ‘state of the art’ dangerous plant."
Anderson didn’t keep his promise of reporting to Indian courts, despite summons. That was only to be expected. He remained fugitive from the Indian laws. In 1999, UCC, the parent company, was sold to Dow Chemicals for US $ 9.30 billion. But, the money paid as compensation, U.S. $ 470 dollar, was stuck in a limbo which remained in the special account created by the Supreme Court. Officially some 548519 survivors were identified with Rs. 65000/- for death and about Rs. 30,000/- for seriously injured. However the irony was the certification of death and other claim documentation became nightmarish for the survivors of the tragedy with those ‘merchants of death’ in Bhopal demanding Rs: 1500/- for every set of papers.
Suddenly the judgment of the Bhopal Distt Court early in June 2010, brought the Bhopal tragedy on to the centre stage. And every body, who is somebody, wants to have a say that justice was miscarried. But how did all these ladies and gentlemen sleep over it for over a quarter of a century is the story of India that ‘WE ALWAYS ACT WHEN IT IS LATE.’ Anyway it is better late than never. The GoM led by Home Minister has almost recommended the moon to the affected people. They were, until the other day, talking only in thousands. Chidambaram recommended Rs 10 lakhs for death and Rs. 5 lakhs for seriously injured. Hope, from recommendations, it gets translated into quick actions to address one of the most painful suffering of free India.
At least that would send out the signal to the world at large, that India indeed is a performing democracy, not just the ‘Functioning Anarchy’ as branded by John Kenneth Galbraith, a former U.S. Ambassador to India.