T.G. Jacob
The judgment of a Bhopal court completely exonerating the mass murderer Union Carbide from all responsibility for the 1984 murder of tens of thousands of people (the exact number of people killed is still unknown and will always remain unknown because Bhopal was a ghost city for a few days in the wake of the massacre and an unknown number of dead bodies were transported by a large number of trucks by the security forces to the nearby jungles and burned) and permanently maiming of several lakhs clearly announces who is calling the shots in this aspiring economic super power. Most astounding were the contradictory statements issued by those responsible about the exact identity of the poison gas immediately after the massive poison gas leak, and this severely handicapped the medical treatment. If there had been clarity on this count at least many thousands could have been saved from immediate death. The identity of the gas that leaked was known to the top management and its technocrats, but they chose to create confusion.
The complicity of the State and Central government was clear right from the beginning. The scientists in the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex body for science and technology research in the country, were given a one-line order in written form within twenty-four hours of the gas leak strictly prohibiting them from having any sort of discussion with anyone on what had happened in Bhopal. This is in spite of the fact that there is a regional centre of CSIR in Bhopal. It was certainly not difficult for the CSIR scientists to identify phosgene/MIC, but there was a moratorium on their involvement. The government made it very clear whose interests it is protecting. It was protecting the interests of the multinational corporation, Union Carbide. The chairman of the parent company was put under house arrest in the UCI guest house when he came to Bhopal, but was immediately released and taken by a State government airplane to the international airport in Delhi, from where he flew home never to be seen again. As far as responsibility goes he is the first culprit, and though Greenpeace activists located him in his luxury villa in the suburbs of New York and informed the CBI about his exact whereabouts, the Central government slept over it. The investigating agency was obviously obeying orders from its masters.
In the meanwhile UCI as well as the parent company transferred most of its shares and stocks to Dow Chemicals without any reference to the massive clean-up operations due to be done in India. The poison gas pumped in deadly toxins into the air, vegetation, earth, water (Bhopal has got two lakes) apart from the fact that the entire factory is toxic to the extreme. UCI and its successor knew very well that any cleaning up would involve enormous expenses. Now that the US government itself is saying that Bhopal is a closed chapter because of an illiterate court judgment there are even lesser chances of any proper cleaning up operation. In this context it is important to note that the toxic impact of the gas leak will last centuries and the number of people newly affected is not coming down but going up. Moreover, the coming generations are by no means immune from the effects of this toxicity. Mentally and physically deformed children are being born in Bhopal. Bhopal is like Hiroshima and Nagasaki in terms of the long run impact of the poison gas. The number of immediate deaths that occurred is also comparable.
It will be a gross oversimplification to hold the multinational as solely responsible for this enormous horror. The factory was very much part of the Green revolution package ecstatically embraced by the Central government at that time. Financed by the industrialized countries and aggressively promoted by the Indian government, this revolution sought to increase food production through the mechanization of agriculture, the construction of major dams for irrigation and power, and the introduction of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. As part of official policy for ‘special technology areas,’ the UCC was allowed to hold a majority 50.9 per cent ownership of Union Carbide India Limited, far exceeding the limit set by the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act at that time. In 1969 despite objections by conscientious officials, the Madhya Pradesh State government allowed Union Carbide to locate its inherently unsafe factory in the midst of populous settlements. The government was so overzealous that it even permitted untested pesticide technology developed by the Union Carbide. There were no safeguards worth the name and the company maximized its profits through implementing reckless cost cutting measures.
In exchange for a pro-Carbide official policy, the company rewarded officials and agencies who ensured its unregulated growth and expansion over the years. In the employment of senior managerial personnel preference was given to the sons of bureaucrats who mattered, and regular contributions were made by the company to the ruling party coffers. Small wonder then that the government agencies and officials responsible for monitoring and regulation chose to look at the other way, even as the situation progressed inexorably to a catastrophe waiting to happen. In the immediate aftermath of the catastrophe as well as in the subsequent years the Indian government stands accused of protecting the interests of the multinational against its own citizens.
Even the location of the factory itself tells us a lot. This huge hazardous enterprise, located in the most densely populated part of the city, is only less than a kilometer from the Bhopal central railway station. In fact, the busy station recorded a very large number of immediate deaths including the station master, a good number of sleeping porters, subordinate staff and waiting passengers. Eyewitnesses told this writer that convoys of covered trucks packed with corpses were taken away from the railway station. The location of the factory was totally unsuitable from every angle, but the UCC insisted on this location mainly because of the nearness of a big railway station and well developed roads, and the governments were keen to accommodate it.
It is not that the Bhopal gas leak was the responsibility of the so-called Indian management. The US-based multinational had controlling shareholdings in the Indian subsidiary, Union Carbide India Limited, and was squarely responsible for the design, operation and maintenance of the factory. UCC has a long history for causing death and injury in different parts of the world. For example, in 1981, 402 employees in Carbide’s Eveready battery factory in Indonesia were found suffering from kidney diseases due to mercury exposure. In the same year, the company was fined for spilling over 250,000 gallons of propylene oxide, a cancer-causing chemical, in the Kanawha River. In Bhopal, prior to the disaster, environmental safety concerns with relation to the Carbide factory raised by private citizens and the local press were silenced by the company using legal threats, and repressive managerial measures were employed against workers who raised occupational health concerns.
The immediate causes of the holocaust are related to the cost-cutting drive started by the UCC from its headquarters in Danbury, Connecticut, in 1980. The moves, directed at enhancing profits included reducing personnel, use of low quality construction materials, cutting down on vital safety measures and adopting hazardous operating procedures. Workers had to pay the cost of these economy measures with their lives, health and jobs. The senior officials of the corporation, privy to a ‘Business Confidential’ safety audit in May 1982 were well aware of 61 hazards, 30 of them major, and 11 in the dangerous phosgene/MIC units. It is incredible that on the night of the gas leak the refrigeration unit, which should have kept MIC at about 0 degrees centigrade, had been shut off by company officials to save on electricity bills. The entrance of water in the tank, full of MIC at ambient temperature, triggered an exothermic runaway reaction and consequently the release of the lethal gas mixture. The safety systems were non-functional and under repair. Lest the neighborhood community be ‘unduly alarmed’ the siren in the factory had been switched off! Poisonous clouds from the Carbide factory enveloped an arc over 20 sq km before the residents could run away from its deadly embrace.
In the first week of the catastrophe, individuals and organizations converged on the city and provided much-needed relief. The support extended by NGOs was short-lived and swiftly withdrawn in the face of government repression on all non-government activity in relation to the gas leak. Even such international organizations as WHO and UNICEF, which had the necessary resources to deal with the situation chose to stay away from relief and rehabilitation work, apparently on the ‘advice’ of the Indian government. The involvement of the Red Cross was cut short due to the withdrawal of funds by Union Carbide.
It is the complete absence of effective international laws, jurisdiction and executive structures for the regulation of MNCs that has allowed the company to get away with a massacre of unmatched proportions. The Indian government, which has opened the doors wide for MNCs for indiscriminate loot of the common wealth of the country and people, has exposed itself as only a facilitator for global capital. Confronted with the loss of capital inflows, if it insists on the punishment of arch criminals like Warren Anderson, it has chosen to hide its shame by appointing a cabinet sub-committee to ‘re-examine’ the whole issue. And who is heading this sub-committee? None other than Mr. Chidambaram, who is the most diehard apologist for global capital and who is determined to sell wholesale the wealth of the country to global capital, even if it takes the army and air force to kill one’s own people to facilitate it.
The US government is categorically asserting that with the recent court judgment Bhopal is a closed chapter. At the same time it is quite optimistic that this will not adversely impact on the Nuclear Liabilities Bill. American nuclear companies are in financial doldrums since quite some time and they can hope to avoid liquidation only if unwanted and unsafe reactors can be thrust on countries like India. They are fully aware that there will be a lot of risk involved when private nuclear companies come into the field and hence they want to stipulate the liability to ridiculously paltry compensation or even to no compensation. The whole game is to save these MNCs from bankruptcy. Serious accountability in this high risk-prone business will be as good as not having the game. Of course, they are not ready for it. The question is, are we ready to let this callous disregard for all life go on?