Note
Bhopal Revisited
A Correspondent
More than 28 years after the leak of 40 tonnes of lethal Methyl Isocyanate gas from American multinational Union Carbide's pesticide factory in Bhopal, the disaster continues to kill and maim people in the city. The current toll is well over 25, 000 and counting and an estimated 150 thousand continue to battle chronic illnesses caused by toxic exposure.
Additionally a population of over 50 thousand has suffered chronic exposure to a cocktail of cancer and birth defect. They continue to live with chemicals and heavy metals known to cause damage to the liver, kidneys, lungs and the brain due to the leaching of recklessly dumped hazardous wastes from the Union Carbide factory.
An ongoing study by the Sambhavna Trust, an NGO providing free medical care and medical research facilities to the people affected by Union Carbide's poisons,, suggests that congenital malformations are much higher among the children born to parents who have suffered acute exposure to toxic gases or chronic exposure to contaminated ground water. Two teams of doctors from Kolkata who volunteered to examine these children were aghast at the damage caused among the next generation of survivors.
An overwhelming majority of the people victimized by Union Carbide are people who earned their livelihood through hard physical labour. The damage caused to their health due to toxic exposure has meant significant income loss for them. As per official figures 94 % of those injured by the gas disaster have received only Rs 25,000/- as compensation. Those injured by chronic exposure to the poisons in the ground water have received no compensation at all.
The second largest chemical corporation in the world, American Dow Chemical Company took over Union Carbide in February 2001. After taking over Killer Carbide, Dow Chemical announced that it was not responsible for either cleaning up the hazardous waste buried in and around the abandoned factory or for paying compensation to the people killed or maimed due to toxic contamination. Of course Dow Chemical's stand is against the laws of India and USA which stipulate that a company that takes over the assets of another company also takes over its liabilities.
A group of 17 Bhopali plaintiffs are fighting a case for compensation for the environmental contamination and health damage due to hazardous waste in the US Federal court since 1999. Despite repeated requests, the Indian government refuses to support their case in the US court. There are documents to show that industrialist Ratan Tata, Planning Commission Vice Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and central ministers P Chidambaram and Kamal Nath have written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to let Dow Chemical walk away from its Bhopal liabilities.
Meanwhile, the noose around Dow Chemical is tightening. In 2004 the Bhopal Group for Information and Action, a Bhopal based campaign organization, moved an application in the Bhopal district court pleading for summons to be issued against Dow Chemical for sheltering Union Carbide that is absconding from Indian courts since 1992. In response to this application in January 2005, the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Bhopal issued summons against Dow Chemical and asked it to appear before the court and answer why it was not producing Union Carbide to answer charges of culpable homicide in the criminal case on the disaster. A number of judges in the state high court put a stay on the summons but in October last year the stay was vacated and now Dow Chemical can be summoned to the Bhopal court. However, it is clear that unless sufficient pressure is built up, the Government of India will not summon the political will to make Dow Chemical appear before the Bhopal court.
Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 44, May 12-18, 2013
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