Post on 14-May-2023
The 1984 Bhopal accident: Consequence of life-price difference in two low life-value countries
Sagar Dhara1
The causes for Bhopal gas leak from the Union Carbide plant in 1984 can be traced to low product sales that made the company disinvest in safety and environmental systems. Events that panned out after the accident—government apathy, poor health and economic rehabilitation effort, no spill cleanup, Carbide’s doublespeak and liability dodging—tantamount to denial of care and justice for the accident victims and are a consequence of lowvalue of life in India and the US, and difference in price of life in the two countries. To achieve the same standard of social justice for all humans, we need to fight for a uniform highvalue of life, as a fundamental human right, throughout the world.
I am ashamed of myself
I am ashamed of myself. The 1984 Bhopal accident, the biggest industrial disaster the world ever saw till date, turned my life around completely. And I benefited from that turn. But I was able todo nothing for the accident victims; or very much about reducing risk that hazardous substances pose.
The immediate aftermath of the tragedy
Soon after the accident, I quit my consulting job; stopped working part-time with trade unions; and studied risk analysis and disaster mitigation. I joined the voluntary effort that grappled with 1 The author belongs to the most rapacious predator tribe that ever stalked the earth-humans, and to a net destructive discipline—engineering, that has to take more than a fair share of the responsibility for the Bhopal accident. If you still wish to contact the author, pleasewrite to him at sagdhara@gmail.com
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understanding the many dimensions of the injury caused by the accidentand with providing relief for the victims. Three years later, I started consulting in risk mitigation and disaster preparedness, and also attempted to advise unions in this subject, though I daresay, their interest was limited because they were always hard pressed to tackle more immediate wage and victimization issues.
More importantly, I began to understand the large space that risk mitigation—from hunger, illness, loneliness, alienation—occupied in our daily lives. Learning this new subject was very satisfying. But a deep sense of vacuum persisted. I had benefited from my involvementwith the Bhopal accident, but I had failed to help the accident victims, or play even a small role in reducing risk due to the proliferation of hazardous substances in India.
It is now 25 years since the Bhopal accident took place on that fateful winter night of 2 Dec 1984. Recounting the Bhopal story as Iknow it I hope will help me come to terms with some of my sense of shame for not having been able to do anything for the Bhopal victims.
Before the accident
Prior to the 1980s, Union Carbide made Sevin, a carbamate group pesticide, with importing chemicals and formulating them into the product at their Chembur plant in Mumbai. Sevin sold well so in the late-1970s, Carbide2 decided to build a plant to make Sevin in India.
2 In this article, Carbide is used as a common term for Union Carbide Corporation (UCC), the US parent company and Union Carbide India Ltd (UCIL), the Indian subsidiary. Where differentiation is required, they are referred to as UCC and UCIL.
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Carbide’s Bhopal plant MIC plant
Carbide used the out-dated industrial location theory to decide where to locate the plant. The theory states that all other costs being equal transport cost minimization should become the rationale for plant location. Bhopal was chosen to locate the plant as it was close to large tracts of cotton and paddy fields in Madhya Pradesh (MP) and Maharashtra, where Sevin sold well.
The genesis of the Bhopal disaster lay not so much in faulty plant design or operations, but in the many human errors—both of omission and commission—that occurred before and after the accident. Some of the important ones were:
Plant site: Once the plant location was fixed at Bhopal, the plantsite was chosen on the edge of
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Bhopal city, close to the heavily populated slums Chola Khenchi andJP Nagar and Bhopal’s main railway station and bus stand that have lot of people right around the clock. Bhopal’s proximity helped Carbide recruit skilled engineers and workers who invariably preferto live in a city.
In the 1980s, the risk that hazardous plants posed was not a publicissue. In response to newspaper articles that likened the Carbide plant to a ticking time bomb, an MP Minister stated, “The Carbide plant is not some small pebble that can be picked up and put elsewhere.”
Typical slum housing in Bhopal’s slums
Product choice—profits and plant safety hit: By the time the Bhopal plant was built, synthetic pyrethroids, the next generation pesticides, were already pushing the carbamate group pesticides outof the Indian market. The Carbide plant that went into production in the early 1980s never produced more than 50% of its installed product capacity.
When a product does not make profit, the first systems to get hit are those considered dispensable, ie, environmental and safety. The refrigeration system that kept the methyl isocynate (MIC, the highly toxic gas that leaked) at a low-reactive temperature of 5oC was switched off because it was winter, and MIC was stored at a more-reactive temperature averaging 17oC. The pilot flare on the flare tower that is always kept lit to burn off leaked MIC, was putoff to save some LPG gas. Both safety systems were turned off to save Rs 1,000 a day, an economy measure that may not have been taken if the plant were making profits. Just before the accident,
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the vent gas scrubber, a device that can neutralize leaking MIC washooked offline from the system. One of the two alarms in the planthad stopped working, and to save a bit of money, was never replaced.
Regulatory authorities, neither then nor now, consider impact of losses on safety and environmental management while considering consent for operations of a facility.
Ironically, a little before the accident occurred, Carbide had decided that it would be more profitable to dismantle the Bhopal plant and set it up in Indonesia that they felt had a growing carbamate market.
Process choice—cheaper and riskier: Bhopal’s Carbide plant was designed to make MIC, store it, and then use it later to make Sevin. The reaction process is:
CO + Cl2 = COCl2 (phosgene)COCl2 + Monomethyl amine (MMA) = CH3NCO (MIC)CH3NCO + Naphthol = Carbaryl (Sevin)
Other manufacturers built plants to make the same product, but thateliminated the risk-prone MIC storage step by making and using MIC immediately in-situ. The US Senate’s Waxman report notes that Carbide chose the former route for making MIC against the advice ofIndian engineers, as plant construction cost of the former process was cheaper.
Safety standards diluted: Chauhan, a plant operator in Carbide’s Bhopal plant at the time of the accident, indicts his management for gradually diluting safety standards after the plant went online. Minor leaks of highly toxic carbon tetrachloride, alpha naphthol, phosgene and MIC began to be tolerated as being normal. Mercury and alpha naphthol venting into the atmosphere was done on a large scale as it was more expensive to recover these chemicals than to vent them.
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When the plant was spanking new, process parameters were read everyhour. Subsequently, this became was altered to once in two hours, and some time before the accident, this was again revised to takingjust one reading at the end of each shift. Process deviation wouldnow not be detected except at the shift-end. And this is exactly what happened at the time of the MIC leak. The 10.30 pm shift-end instrument readings done at 10.12 pm indicated that everything was normal. The MIC leak commenced an hour into the next shift, when no fresh readings were available to indicate that something was amiss.
Diluting administrative control systems in safety led to a series of accidents before the big one in December 1984 (see box) in Bhopal plant. Warning signs that were never heeded.
In 1981, a worker was splashed with phosgene. He ripped off his mask in panic, inhaling a large amount of phosgene gas - he died 72 hours later.
In January 1982, 24 workers exposed to phosgene were hospitalized. None of the workers had been ordered to wear protective masks.
In February 1982, an MIC leak affected 18 workers. In August 1982, an engineer came into contact with liquid MIC,
resulting in burns over 30 percent of his body. In October 1982, there was a leak of MIC, methylcarbaryl
chloride, chloroform and hydrochloric acid. In attempting to stop the leak, the MIC supervisor suffered intensive chemical burns and two other workers were severely exposed to the gases.
During 1983 and 1984, leaks of the following substances regularlytook place in the MIC plant: MIC, chlorine, monomethylamine, phosgene, and carbon tetrachloride, sometimes in combination.
Reports issued by scientists within the Union Carbide Corporationmonths before the Dec.2 incident warned of the possibility of an accident almost identical to that which occurred in Bhopal. The reports were ignored and never reached senior staff.
Union Carbide was warned by American experts who visited the plant after 1981 of the potential of a "runaway reaction” in the MIC storage tank; local Indian authorities warned the company of
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problems on several occasions from 1979 onwards. Again, these warnings were not heeded.
Manpower quality deterioration: When the Carbide plant was setup, plant operators recruited had a science degree or an engineering diploma. They were put through long training periods. As plant profits declined, many of the best employees left the company. By 1982, 30% of the plant operators did not have requisite training levels. By 1984, this figure jumped to 70%.
When the plant was new, each shift had a maintenance and instruments supervisor. By November 1984, a month before the accident, these supervisors were available only during the general shift, and night shifts had only two maintenance fitters.
Poor information dissemination: Except for some senior Carbide managers, others knew little about the highly toxic properties of MIC. People living in JP Nagar and Chola Khenchi were under the impression that the Carbide plant made harmless fertilizers. Even plant workers were unaware of the toxic properties of the chemicalsthey were handling and the high risk their plant posed. The law prior to 1986 did not require material safety data sheets to be prepared or submitted to regulatory authorities; hence this was never done by Carbide.
The accident
Carbide’s MIC Plant supervisor ordered water washing of some clogged pipelines in the plant, but as no water was available immediately, thewashing was begun in the next shift at 10 pm on 2 Dec 1984 night. Slip blinds were not inserted to isolate the pipelines being washed, astandard practice for lines carrying hazardous substances. The supervisor believed that the closed valves at the end of the pipelineswere secure. His faith was belied, the consequences of which were tragic and enormous. Wash water seeped through one of the closed valves and got into MIC Tank 610, triggering a runaway reaction that ruptured the tank and leaked 42 tons of MIC into the atmosphere at 11.30 pm. A toxic gas cloud formed and drifted slowly with the wind towards JP Nagar, Chola Khenchi slums and areas further south. Being
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heavier than air, the cloud hugged the ground, and the low wind speedskept the gas concentrations high.
Bhopal site map
MIC ground level concentrations
The loud alarm was sounded at 00.50 am, but was turned off after 10 minutes, to be sounded again only after an hour. In a trice, Bhopal’sunsuspecting population was hit in the stealth of the night by a killer gas. Most of them ran with the wind and remained in the gas cloud. The more they ran; injury to their lungs was greater as MIC isa highly corrosive substance that causes edema in the lungs. The first batch of the gassed reached Hamidia Hospital, a government hospital located close to the affected area, with symptoms of visual impairment and blindness, respiratory distress, frothing at the mouth and vomiting. Soon the numbers of those arriving at the hospital turned into a torrent; many were brought dead or dying.
The official immediate death toll was 2,259. Journalists who estimated the death toll from the number of shrouds (for Muslims) madeimmediately after the accident; put the immediate death toll at 7,500-10,000. Government of India now admits that the cumulative number of deaths due to the gas exposure is 20,000. Those exposed with some health effects is now estimated at 5 lakhs3 persons. Over 2,000 animal carcasses were disposed.
3 Lakh is an Indian term equal to 105
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The dead immediately after the accident
Of the many heroic tales of that night and the horrific week to follow, the one that is worth re-telling is the supreme sacrifice madeby the Bhopal railway station master. As the toxic gas cloud spread, he realized the danger, and ordered trains at Bhopal station to move out and stopped others from coming in at the station’s outer signal; saving hundreds of people from sure death and injury. The station master died soon after due to high gas concentration exposure.
Presence of mind and better training of the plant supervisor could have reduced the MIC leak. After discovering the source of the leak, it would have been possible to pump some of the MIC from the leaking Tank 610 into the half empty tanks 611 and 619.
On 16 December, a fortnight after the accident, the Indian Government launched Operation Faith to empty tanks 611 and 619. Fearing another MIC spill, over half of Bhopal’s population (~5 lakhs) evacuated the city spontaneously.
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Emptying the remaining MIC tanks Spontaneous evacuation of Bhopal
After the accident
If a swath were to be cut through the layers of confusing facts surrounding the accident, four issues stand out for what needed to have been done, but remained as grossly unfinished tasks: restoring people’s health, rehabilitating people, conducting a site cleanup and fixing the responsibility and culpability for causing the accident.
Restoring people’s health: The foremost task immediately after the disaster was to restore people’s shattered health to the nearest to normal that was possible. No system anywhere in the world could have coped with the deluge of the dying and injured that poured into Hamidia Hospital from early morning on 3 December. For the next few weeks, Bhopal’s medical fraternity heroically battled to save the dying and provide succor for the injured, and with no help from Carbide. Instead of providing information that was useful in dealing with the medical emergency, Carbide made statements that were worthless, contradictory and solely motivated to protect itself from liability (details of this are provided later in this article). In the absence of proper toxemic information from Carbide and elsewhere, gas affected victims are treated symptomatically even to this day.
The primary health impacts were on the respiratory, ocular and reproductive systems, genetic and immune functions, and psychological effects (see box4).
4 Adapted from a presentation made by Dhara, R, The Bhopal Disaster
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Health effects Early findings Later findings
Respiratory Dyspnea, chest pain, pneumonitis, Pulmonary fibrosis, persistent cough
respiratory distress, pulmonary edema & dyspnea, chronic bronchitis
Ocular Intense lacrimation, eye redness, photo- Persistenteye watering, corneal
phobia, chemosis, corneal ulcers opacities, chronic conjunctivitis,
tear secretion deficiencies, cataracts
Reproductive Increased pregnancy loss (43% of pregnancies did not lead to birth), increased
infant mortality (14% of infants died within 30 days ofbirth compared to 3% in preceding 2 years—Varma, 1987),increased rate of spontaneous abortions, alteration of menstrual cycle (MFC, 1986)
Genetic, immune Genetic functions—increased chromosomal aberrations, increased sister
functions chromatid exchanges, cell cycle delay (Deo, 1987, Saxena, 1988); Immune functions—decreased T cells populations & phygocytic activity, decreased response to T&B cell mitogens, transient MIC specific antibodies(Karol & Kamat, 1987)
Psychological Post-traumatic stress—anxiety, sleeplessness, restlessness, sleep disorders
effects associated with event recall, pathological grief, emotional reaction to physical problems, and exacerbation of pre-existing problems
To treat the gas victims satisfactorily, three specific medical programmes were required:
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Developing a proper medical perspective: To develop an effective line of treatment, it is essential to know what the exposure was. With Carbide revealing almost nothing about the constituents of the leak, but hinting at possible cyanide exposure, it was left to the Varadarajan Committee to figure that out. They detected 12 chemicals in the exploded Tank 610, but not cyanides. MIC is known to produce 3% hydrogen cyanide at 200oC and 20% at 400oC.
Unable to deny the lethal effects of MIC as they were so patentlyvisible, Carbide built-up an explanation for the health effects. This came to be known as the Exclusive Pulmonary Pathology Theory (EPPT), which stated that: The emissions were constituted by MIC only, which is rapidly rendered harmless when it comes into contact with water in the body, eg, eyes, lungs. MIC does not enter the bloodstream so cannot cause systemic poisoning. At high concentrations, it causes injury at the point of contact, eg, eyes, and also death or chronic suffering. The multi-systemic injury reported by victims can be explained by secondaryeffects of hypoxia (oxygen deficiency in body) resulting from irreparable damage to lungs. There is no need for detoxification. Symptomatic treatment is adequate.
Dr Heeresh Chandra, Director, Medico Legal Institute, Bhopal, observed in the autopsies he conducted that: the colour of venousblood and of various organs was cherry red; early setting of rigor mortis; coagulated blood in veins and cerebral edema—all telltale marks of cyanide poisoning. Later, he even detected cyanide in victims’ blood. In a Double Blind Control Trial (DBCT) that the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) conducted, they found that gas exposed victims excreted 2-3 timeshigher amounts of thiocyanate in urine, and on administration of sodium thiosulphate (NaTS), it increased 8-10 fold. Cyanide is neutralized by NaTS to form the relatively harmless thiocyanate. In the absence of literature on chronic persistence of cyanide after a single exposure, ICMR scientists came up with the EnlargedCyanogen Pool Theory (ECPT) to explain the persistence of cyanide-like compounds in the human body.
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Based on its findings, ICMR recommended mass detoxification with NaTS. However, this line of treatment did not find favour with the medical establishment, and was not followed, even though it was well known that NaTS had no side effects. A golden opportunity was thus lost to mass detoxify the gas victims.
Continuous medical monitoring of the victims and their offsprings: This needed to be done for two reasons—a) To assess whether health effects continued to exist on date, b) To facilitate medical treatment ofthe victims.
Some initial effort was made to fulfill the first objective. TheMedical monitoring of the gas victims was started by ICMR in 1985. An internal report concluded that: there was sustained andincreased morbidity, respiratory illness and high spontaneous abortion rates in the exposed population in 1989-90 as compared to the unexposed population. The monitoring was shut down six years after it began. The reports were not made public till 2003. In 1985, the Medico Friends Circle made a survey of healtheffects in the affected areas. In 1993, the International Commission on Bhopal, attempted to understand the health status. Since longitudinal studies were not done, the worth of these studies was limited to knowing the health status of the exposed population at the time when these studies were done.
The second objective was never fulfilled. Systematic documentation of the health status of each victim was virtually non-existent. The health care delivery system in Bhopal was not geared for this. If any of the victims had retained their medical papers, they were the only record of their health status.
Gearing the health care delivery system to offer the best available treatment at the victims’ doorstep: Health care of the victims can be said to be patchy at best. Government focused on providing hospital-based services, and did increase bed strength for inpatients. However,what was required was health care at the victims’ doorstep. On the Supreme Court’s directive, Carbide funded a 350 bed hospital with eight outreach centres. Non governmental organizations
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(NGOs) set up a clinic in the affected area soon after the accident, and another one later.
In the absence of a detoxification programme, the gas victims’ treatment was symptomatic rather than systemic. And when their suffering was not mitigated by the treatment offered by any of the health care delivery systems, they switched from hospitals to private doctors, counted their tablets not in numbers but by weight, lost money but did not regain their health. Their health continues to remain shattered even to this day.
Economic rehabilitation: One aspect of living in dignity is to be able to earn one’s livelihood. Most of the Bhopal gas victims faced a double jeopardy. To begin with, a vast majority of them come from an economically depressed class. Then the gas exposure ravaged their bodies and minds. Most of the exposed could never work as they could earlier, and felt fatigued even after a bit of work. Home makers could no longer stay at home or look after children, and many of those who worked in jobs lost them to fitter persons. Children’s school performance suffered.
Food, ration cards and an ex-gratia payment of Rs 1,500 per family were distributed immediately after the accident. However compensation claimants had to be medically assessed before they gotany money; and this took an inordinately long time and some expense, delaying payments.
Little was done to rehabilitate the gas victims economically. An assessment of impairment of the ability to work or available jobs was not done. Thirty three of the 50 planned worksheds were openedimmediately after the accident, but were shutdown by 1992. In 1986, the MP Government built 152 out of a planned 200 worksheds ina special industrial area meant for gas victims. By 2000, only 16 of these worksheds were working partially. Of the estimated 50,000persons who needed jobs, less than 100 gas victims found them undervarious government schemes.
Little can be done to ease the burden of housework unless better housing, water and sanitation facilities are provided. About 2,500
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flats were built in the Widow’s colony outside Bhopal. But water did not reach the upper stories and there were no buses and schoolsavailable for a very long time.
Gas exposed children required special attention like an individually-tailored learning pace, and community support programmes that give them a sense of security. Government can do little here except provide infrastructure. But even this was lacking.
Site cleanup: The Carbide plant shut down after the accident, but continued to carry large inventories of toxic chemicals—naphthol, naphthalene, Sevin, mercury, chromium and other heavy metals, organochlorines, hexachloroethane, etc. Over time, these chemicals have leached into the soil and groundwater around the Carbide plant. Even in 1982, tubewells around the plant had to be abandoned for this reason. In 1989, Carbide’s laboratory tested soil and water samples from inside the plant and surroundings and found them to be toxic to fish.
A recent study done by Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) confirms that soil and groundwater around the Carbide plant are excessively contaminated. All eleven groundwater samples collectedfrom colonies around the plant were found to be contaminated with chlorinate hydrocarbons. Based on this, CSE believes that immediately after the accident the issue was of acute toxicity, butnow it has got converted into a chronic toxicity problem.
There is a dire need to cleanup the contaminated soil and water around the plant site.
Fixing responsibility for the accident: In the last 25 years, court battles have taken just about every twist and turn. Four months after the accident, the Bhopal Gas leak Act was passed allowing the Government of India to act as the legal representativefor victims. Civil cases were filed in Indian and US courts for seeking remedy in torts against Carbide. In the US, all cases wereconsolidated in Judge John F Keenan’s court in the Southern District Court of New York, who delayed ruling on where the case
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should be heard—in the US or in India, in the hope that the partiesmay compromise. After months of negotiations, Carbide offered $ 350 million, a sum equal to what Carbide’s insurers were willing topay, which the Indian Government rejected. In May 1986, Keenan finally threw the case out of his court on grounds that most of theevidence and witnesses were in India, and this was affirmed by a USCourt of Appeals in January 1987. In 1993, the US Supreme Court refused to hear appeals against the lower court orders, effectivelyshutting the door to the victims seeking damages in the US. Other petitions still pending in US courts seeking damages for personal injury, medical monitoring, and cleanup of contamination have yielded no result till date. Carbide wanted precise this, ie, for US courts not to hear the case, as Indian Courts take longer to decide cases and award significantly lower compensation amounts.
Soon after us Appeals Court passed its order, the scene of legal action was back in India. In mid-1987, Judge M W Deo, presiding over a Bhopal Court, revived the settlement proposal as he felt that quick relief would serve the victims’ interest best. It was rumoured that Carbide had nearly doubled its initial offer of $ 350million, only to be rejected by the Indian Government. In December1987, Deo passed an interim order directing Carbide’s parent company, Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) to deposit Rs 350 crores5 ($ 270 million) as interim relief with the court to make payments to victims and meet medical and rehabilitation costs, without prejudice to admission of Carbide’s liability.
UCC appealed to the MP High Court stating that it had lost faith inDeo’s impartiality as he had pre-judged the case by awarding “damages” when their liability was yet to be established, and therefore exceeded his jurisdiction. The MP High Court upheld UCC’s case against Deo’s order, yet ordered Carbide to pay Rs 250 crores ($ 193 million) not as interim relief but as interim payment. The MP High Court explained this apparent paradox by arguing that UCC’s liability was already established and that the corporate veil between UCC and its Indian subsidiary Union Carbide India Ltd (UCIL) was lifted and that UCC’s direct complicity in theaffair was established beyond doubt.
5 crore is an Indian term and is equal to 107
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In 1988, the Supreme Court of India stepped in and asked Carbide and the Government of India to come to a settlement, which they didin 1989 for $ 470 million, which was the equivalent of the insurance amount plus accrued interest, a sum that was 15% of the $3 billion that the Indian Government had originally asked for. Forthe next one year, the Supreme Court heard appeals against the agreement, but upheld the figure. However, it set aside the quashing of the criminal proceedings against Carbide officials thatwas part of the original settlement between the two parties.
In 2007, of the 10 lakh cases were registered and decided, 574,304 persons were award a total compensation of Rs 1,547 crores. The average amount awarded for personal injury, including interim relief was Rs 25,000 ($ 830), and for death Rs 62,000 ($ 2,060). Because the compensation amounts were small, Rs 1,000 crores would have been left over after all claims were settled.
These amounts compare rather unfavourably with compensation amountsobtained in the US. Ten years ago, W R Grace, a US company, paid an average settlement of a million dollars to each of eight leukemia patients because it had dumped trichloroethylene into drinking water of Woburn, a small town near Boston, ie, 500 times more than what was paid to the Bhopal victims (even if PPP prices are used, US compensation payments would be 100 times the Bhopal ones). Each of the 10,000 asbestosis-related deaths reported annually in the US is also settled for similar amounts. In 10 years, this amount would have increased to more than $ 1 million.
Four days after the accident, Warren Anderson, Carbide’s Chairman, was arrested in Bhopal for culpable homicide and other charges, andreleased immediately on bail. Anderson retired in 1986 and went into “hiding” in New York State. Journalists and Greenpeace activists have visited him and found him living in luxury, but the long arm of the Indian and US laws have not been able to “find” himin the last 25 years.
In 2002, the Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) attempted to dilute the charges against Anderson, but the Bhopal magistrate
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declined to allow this. In 2003, the Ministry of External Affairs reluctantly requested the US Government to extradite Anderson to India to face charges, which the US Government refused to do on minor technical grounds.
In July 2009, the Bhopal Court has again ordered the CBI to produceAnderson. Given the reluctance of both governments to comply with this order, it is highly unlikely that Anderson, now 88 years old, will ever set foot on Indian soil again.
Though Carbide is primarily culpable for the accident, the MP Factories Inspectorate must also be rapped on its knuckles for not ensuring that the Bhopal plant was being operated safely.
In 1994, UCC sold its Indian subsidiary UCIL to Eveready Industries India Ltd, and in 2001, Dow Chemical Company bought UCC. Attempts to make Dow accept liability for the Bhopal accident has failed. Dow maintains that it has bought UCC minus its Bhopal liabilities.
Lessons from the Bhopal accident
Manmade major hazards are sudden, large, uncontrolled release of energy and/or substances (eg, gas leaks, explosions) that cause massive impact on life and the environment. They cause disasters whenthey hit unprotected (vulnerable) populations in their pathway.
Progression of vulnerability
1Underlyingcauses
2 Dynamic pressures 3 Unsafe conditions Disaster Hazard
Poverty
Limited access to resources
Lack of local institutions, education,training, skills, freedom of speech
Environmental degradation
Fragile physical conditions—dangerous locations/ buildings/ infrastructure
Fragile local economy—livelihoods at risk, low income levels
=Hazard +Vulnerabi
lity
Hazardous materials release
Cyclones Earthquakes Floods War Drought, etc
Disaster = Hazard + Vulnerability
The Bhopal accident had all the potential ingredients for the making of a disaster. The population living close to the Carbide plant was poor and had no knowledge of MIC and its hazardous properties. The
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Bhopal disaster has a parallel in a natural disaster that happened 15 years later in Orissa. People living in the path of the super cyclonethat hit Ersama in Orissa on 29 October 1999 were poor and were not informed of the imminent danger they faced, even though the National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA) warned the Orissa Government of the stormtrack more than 3 days before the cyclone made landfall. The Orissa Government did not evacuate people in the storm track; the result—50,000 deaths.
Progression of the Ersama super cyclone seen in NRSA satellitepictures
Five standard methods are used to mitigate impacts of manmade hazards.
The first removes the hazard altogether, ie, in the Bhopal case, not using MIC or using it in-situ. The second removes people from the hazard’s pathway, ie, locate the Carbide plant away from human population. The third encloses the hazard, which was done inadequately in the Carbide plant as the refrigeration system was switched off and therefore containing the MIC in the tank was compromised. The fourth encloses people, which is not a method available for bystander populations around hazardous facilities. Thismethod is available for workers going into confined spaces containing hazardous gases wearing protective gear or having people living in cyclone-prone areas use cyclone shelters when a cyclone is about to
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make landfall. Toxic spills happen without warning and provide bystander populations no time to take shelter. The fifth puts distance between the hazard and people so that the hazard is weakened by the time it reaches people. Typically, this implies evacuation of vulnerable populations; which was not done in Bhopal (off-site response plans were not even prepared by Carbide).
Remove hazard
Remove humans
Enclose hazard
Enclose people
Increase pathway dist(by evacuating people)
Pathway
Five ways of mitigating hazard impacts
Knowledge of these methods is as old as the hills. Yet, Carbide failed to use all four available methods, to save a bit of money, but to the massive detriment of Bhopal’s population.
Even when risk mitigation systems are in place, an information failure—its unavailability or non-use when required—can play a major role in converting the presence of a hazard into a disaster. Loss of integrity of any of the following information elements can cause an information failure—information generation, transmission, interpretation, access, and use. Each information element that fails tends to increase injury and loss of life.
The flow of events in the Bhopal disaster indicates multiple-element information failure of information generation, transmission and access.
Information generation: Information required for risk minimization—event prediction and off-site emergency plan (EP)—to tackle a MIC leak were never generated.
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Event prediction helps identify various events that pose a risk, and risk magnitudes and vulnerable populations of each event. Exceptfor press articles that warned of a possible MIC leak, other assessments were absent.
An off-site emergency plan provides information on what to do in an emergency. An off-site EP was neither asked for by regulators nor prepared by Carbide.
Information transmission and access: Information that could have saved hundreds of lives was not provided by Carbide to regulating agencies and public. This information pertained to the properties of the hazardous substance it was handling, warning public of an MIC spill, and risk mitigation action that was required to be takento save lives.
The hazardous properties of Bhopal’s killer gas, MIC were known to Carbide, but were not asked for by regulating agencies, nor voluntarily provided by Union Carbide either to regulating agencies or to public. Had this information been made available,there would have been greater pressure on Carbide to take steps to minimize risk to people in the event of a leak.
A public warning of an impending disaster gives people a fighting chance to get out of harm’s way quickly. To be effective, a warning must come in time and reach everyone at risk. This just did not happen after the MIC gas leak started. The first public alarm was sounded briefly (20 minutes) more than an hour after MIC started leaking. It was heard by Carbide workers but not by the bystander population. It was then switched off, and sounded again one and half hours later, by which time it is too late.
Information on risk mitigation action, if provided can help save a lot of lives in an emergency. Carbide’s bystander population was completely unaware of the consequences of an MIC leak, or what they should do if a warning for one is sounded. Hundreds of lives could have been saved if people living around the Carbide plant knew that if they were ever caught in a MIC cloud they should not run to avoid over-exerting their lungs, but walk as
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quickly as possible in a crosswind direction (the fastest way to get out of a toxic cloud) covering their mouths and noses with a wet towel (MIC is soluble in water). Barring Carbide workers, others lacked this information. In panic people tried to put distance from the leak source, ie, the Carbide plant. But this was also downwind, so they remained in the gas cloud instead of getting out of it. And they did not cover use a wet towel. Carbide employees at the plant ran crosswind and upwind (a choicethey alone had). Consequently, not a single Carbide worker died on the night of the leak.
Bhopal victims re-victimized by MNC interest
Being global multi-nationals corporations (MNCs), Carbide and Dow usedtheir enormous economic and political clout to re-victimize the Bhopalgas victims, and with great arrogance, first by injuring them, then bydenying them justice.
Blackwashing vital information: Carbide did not provide any worthwhile toxicological or medical information that may have helped treat the patients. Forty-five minutes after the accident, the Bhopalplant’s Works manager, J Mukund, insisted that, “The gas leak can’t befrom our plant. Our technology just can’t go wrong.” One day after the accident, Carbide’s medical officer, Dr Loya, told the Hamidia Hospital doctors that the gas was not poisonous, and a little later Mukund told Navbharat Times that “MIC is only an irritant gas and not a deadly poison.” Two days after the accident, Dr Bipin Awashia, Medical Director of Carbide, USA, sent a telex message to Hamidia Hospital titled, Treatment of MIC pulmonary complications, prescribing the useof amyl nitrate if cyanide poising is suspected, else the use of sodium nitrite and sodium thiosulphate, which could also be used as a prophylactic. However, on arrival in Bhopal he reversed his stand on the use of sodium thiosulphate.
The truth is Carbide was well aware from its sponsored research at Carnegie Melon university in 1963 that “MIC appears to be the most toxic member of the isocyanate family” and the operation manual of theBhopal plant’s MIC unit, issued in 1978, warns that “MIC is fatal evenin small doses.”
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Corporate interests above victims’: Carbide’s true colours came to the fore in the post-accident court battles. While accepting moral responsibility for the accident, Carbide systematically protected its corporate interests by denying the victims:
Accountability for who was responsible for the accident and why it occurred by stalling court proceedings, and using diversionary tactics by alleging that sabotage by a disgruntled worker was the cause of the accident.
Justice: By delaying relief and finally settling for a sum that was inexcess of 500 times less than they would have had to settle in the US.
Allowing culpability to be fixed: By dodging the law to escape criminal liability and paying punitive damages.
Coloured victims blamed: Immediately after the Bhopal accident, Carbide started blaming the victims for their injuries. A doctor sentby Carbide in February 1986 reported in a New York Medical College newswire that, “Some (gas victims) have TB. Some have malnutrition. The claims include a considerable number of fraudulent ones” and “MIC killed children because of their immature lungs, the elderly because of their diminished lung capacity, and those who ran because their lungs expanded too rapidly. The survivors included those who stood still and covered their faces with handkerchiefs” (sic, Was this life saving information provided by Carbide?
The Bhopal disaster was not the first time that Carbide blamed the victims. In 1933, in trials that followed discovery that hundreds of Afro-American workmen were dying of silicosis in Carbide-owned silica mines in West Virginia, Carbide alleged that the workmen were suffering from TB and not silicosis. UCC comment on one Afro-Americanworker’s testimony was, “After working only 26 days in one of the shafts, this negro is now enjoying notoriety, travel without cost to himself, and the pleasure of making an impression on white people probably for the first time. The negros don’t know how to care for themselves. They got sick and died from pneumonia and too much alcohol and poker (sic, who taught them poker? Where in medical literature is poker termed fatal?).
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Use many corporate avatars to coverup liability: UCC, a US company, owned over 50% of UCIL, its Indian subsidiary. Company records clearly indicate that UCC had absolute control over UCIL, hence is strictly liable for the latter actions. Yet, Carbide used this difference to wriggle out of every tight spot it found itself in.
In the Yunus Farhat case, UCC argued that Indian courts had no jurisdiction over it and therefore no suit was maintainable against itin India. In Judge Keenan’s court, UCC argued that the US was an inconvenient forum for the trial and that Indian courts were competentto try this case. In the MP High Court, UCC argued that Deo’s court was without jurisdiction. In short, Carbide was basically saying thatit was beyond the law and that it was a law unto itself.
Carbide hired high-priced PR specialists, lawyers and “medical experts” to coverup its negligence and misdeeds. The sabotage theory deflected its negligence and culpability in contributing to the accident. The Exclusive Pulmonary Pathology Theory helped in coveringup its failure to share vital toxicological and medical information
Dow has consistently held that it bought UCC’s assets and not its liabilities, hence has declined liability for the injury caused to thepeople of Bhopal or for contaminating its environment.
One happy family? Carbide Chairman Warren Anderson had no children, but considered the one lakh employees in 700 Carbide facilities in 38 countries as his children, and constantly reminded them that they wereall part of one big happy Carbide family. Yet, counsel for UCC arguedin one of the first cases to be filed after the accident in Bhopal accident that the Indian company had nothing to do with the US company. The stricken child was distanced and abandoned even before the victims could blink.
Humanitarian loss of confidence: In April 1987, when Bhopal Judge Deocalled upon UCC to provide substantial interim relief to the victims, UCC, with an eye on public relations, hailed the judge’s initiative as“sincere, constructive and humanitarian.” But ten months later, when the judge ordered an interim relief of Rs 350 crores, Carbide
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denounced Deo in the MP High Court for “material irregularity” and stated that they had lost confidence in the judge (sic: for being sincere, constructive and humanitarian!).
Delay and dodge: Carbide waged a war of attrition and employed delay tactics to beat down the compensation amount and arrive at an early out-of-court settlement with the injured victims, knowing that they needed money desperately for survival and treatment. Carbide even withheld interim relief, thus blackmailing the victims. The final settlement was 15% of what was asked for, and came five years after the accident.
Adding insult to injury: Carbide first injured the bystander population. Then it added insult to injury by making the victims prove that UCIL is a subsidiary of UCC. After this issue was settled,UCC raised technical issues like court jurisdiction, court authority to try the case, etc. All this to escape payment and criminal liability. Three years after the accident, UCC diluted shareholders’ equity to less than half of what it was at time of the accident to reduce shareholders’ exposure to impending adverse impact on shares. Finally, in the criminal cases, Anderson “failed” to show up in the Bhopal Court for 25 years, and the Indian and US law agencies did not “find” him despite the whole world knowing where he is.
Carbide was able to do all these things because of the clout it had with the US and Indian governments. The latter not wanting to rock friendly relations with the US and future US investments in India, andthe former not wanting to give up one of its respected citizens to courts in a Third World country.
Major hazard management in India after the Bhopal accident In a meeting held in Bombay on the first anniversary of the Bhopal tragedy, the Chief Inspector of Factories of Maharashtra admitted thathis department realized the disaster potential of hazardous chemicals only after Bhopal. Till then, they had concerned themselves largely with physical hazards and did not have a chemical engineer in the inspectorate. The press began to give industrial safety greater coverage. New laws were enacted and old ones re-vamped. In 1986, The
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Factories Act was amended and the Environmental Protection Act was enacted. In 1989, the Hazardous Chemicals Rules were promulgated. Yet, hazardous facilities remained notoriously unsafe.
In 1988, at the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) refinery in Mathura, naphtha vapourized from railway tanker cars kept open after filling. The marketing team inspected the filled tankers and certified the filled amount more than an hour after filling was done. The leaking naphtha formed a large flammable vapour cloud that went undetected. Meanwhile, an IOC jeep chased a contractor’s vehicle into the filling area to warn them that they had entered a restricted area. Both vehicles stopped briefly and started their vehicles again. A huge unconfined vapour cloud explosion occurred immediately after, killing all seven persons in both vehicles. The ignition source for the vapour cloud was a flame from the IOC jeep tailpipe as it had no flamearrester.
Had the incident happened 15 minutes earlier or later, more than 50 workmen who were away from that area on a scheduled tea break would have perished. The explosion would not have happened if the marketingteam had done its job immediately after the tanker cars were filled, or if there were flammable vapour detectors, or if the IOC jeep had a flame arrester. Ironically, the contractor vehicle had one. It took this incident for the Ministry of Petroleum to mandate that all vehicles entering a refinery must have flame arresters.
In September 1997, 400 tons of LPG leaked while it was being pumped from a tanker ship into Horton spheres in the Hindustan Petroleum Ltd’s Visakhapatnam refinery. The vapour hit a hot surface 100 metersaway from the leak point, ignited, flashed back and exploded, killing 60 workmen.
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Plant layout map of the Visakhapatnam refinery before the explosion showing proximity of office buildingto LPG explosion site
and Horton sphere of the sort that leaked in HP’s Visakhapatnam refinery
Had the same incident happened on a Monday morning at 9.30 am instead of on a Sunday at 6.30 am, ten times that number of employees would have died. The main office block that was flattened by the explosion has hundreds of employees in it during normal work hours. Fortuitously, early on a Sunday morning it was empty. The office block, security block, canteen and bank, all smoking areas till the accident occurred, were within 150 meters from the explosion site. Indian refineries banned smoking within their premise after this incident.
On 29 October 1987, just before dawn, a gasoline tanker truck met withan accident on the Pune-Bengaluru highway close to Kawathe village in Satara district. The entire village, including women and children, went with whatever vessel they had at home to collect dripping gasoline from the stricken tanker. Knowing the danger of leaking gasoline, the tanker driver sent his assistant to Satara to fetch the
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police and attempted to keep the villagers away from the accident scene, in vain. By the time the police arrived five hours later, 37 persons including 7 children were incinerated in an explosion. Someone lit a beedi … BOOM. The Kawathe incident merited less than two column-inches in the newspapers. In the same week, a tanker truckaccident in the UK that had killed seven persons made newspaper headlines.
Since the Bhopal accident, many Kawathes have occurred—Bidar, Tanjavur, Lucknow, some of them killing as many as 100 persons. Yet, little has been done to reduce these types of disasters.
Environmental engineering consultants sometimes add to unsafe conditions because of their ignorance. An environmental impact assessment (EIA) for a power plant in East Godavari district computed hazard ranges for a boiling liquid expanding vapour explosion on a non-pressurized tank—an event that can happen only on pressurized tanks and never on non-pressurized ones. The EIA study for a large ammonia tank in Murmagao port did not consider the consequence of ammonia spills from scores of ammonia tanker trucks plying 12 kilometers daily from Margao port to the Zuari Fertilizer plant right through the centre of Vasco city. Likewise, a risk study done by a public sector consultant, for the Goa-Hyderabad gas pipeline through the Western Ghat forest did not consider the possibility of a pipelineleak and consequent fire in the forest, particularly where the pipeline runs close to a national highway in the forest.
Regulatory agencies have done any better. When I was a member of the Consent for Operations (CFO) Committee of the AP Pollution Control Board in the late-1990s, the committee mandated all hazardous facilities to put up public information boards at their main gate withinformation on their facility consent conditions and a map of the maximum vulnerable zone in the event of a catastrophic accident. Almost all facilities put up boards that stated their company safety and environment policy, but had no consent conditions or vulnerable zone map. The Board was too weak-kneed to force the companies to comply. An odd facility, though, did comply.
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HP public information board stating its safety policy Vulnerable zone map outside IOC’s Kondapalli tank farm
US response after the Bhopal accident was immediate. By March 1985, New Jersey state had already in place a public right-to-know act in place (known as the Bhopal Act), that mandates hazardous facilities toshare information regarding the hazard.
Training manpower in major hazard control has been slow, and there is still a long way to go. When the officers at the IOC tank farm were asked to demonstrate emergency evacuation of personnel injured in a fire accident, they fumbled, did not know how to do cardio-pulmonary resuscitation and took too much time to get a stretcher. When a LPG tanker truck driver at the Charlapalli tank farm was asked to show hisTREM card, he failed to produce one from his vehicle, where it is meant to be kept.
Hazardous storages still exist in many heavily populated areas, eg, a 10,000 T ammonia tank and 3,000 T LPG tanks in Visakhapatnam city. Once in a while one of these tanks fail, causing enormous losses, as happened recently at Jaipur when a tank farm caught fire and caused a loss of Rs 1,000 crores. Mercifully, the death toll was under 10.
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However, if there is catastrophic leak of ammonia or LPG from the Visakhapatnam tanks, it could wipe out half that city.
100% m ortality area under catastrophic accident conditions if dike fails-3.3 km
Vulnerable zone (u to IDLH conc) under catastrophic accident conditions if dike fails-20 km
M odeled footprint for a 10,000 T am monia leak in Visakhapatnam city
100% mortality zone for a UVCE or BLEVE-1 kmPartial damage to buildings for a UVCE or BLEVE-3.5 km
Vulnerable zones for loss of containment from ammonia and LPG inVisakhapatnam
The National Disaster Management Agency was set up 20 years after the Bhopal accident. They are still figuring out their intervention programme for various types of events, and have yet to train personneland acquire equipment.
Price and value of life
People say that life is cheap in India. That is true. The average price paid per person killed due to the Bhopal accident was Rs 62,000 ($2,060). The average sum paid for each fatal injury under the Workmen’s Compensation Act was Rs 12,000 in the late 1970s, and Rs 50,000 in the early 1990s. Government of India has recently announced a raise in compensation to workmen who die in shopfloor accidents to Rs 1.2 lakhs. It still keeps the price of life (life-price) very low in India as compared to most other parts of the world.
Giving human life a price is like equating it to potatoes. A human life then becomes a commodity that can be bought for a sum of money that is determined by market forces. The price of a rich person is obviously much more than that of a poor person. If a rich person is kidnapped, the ransom amount is in crores of rupees. If a poor personis kidnapped, the best price that is a few thousand rupees in the bonded labour or flesh trade market. As one wag put it, had the
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Bhopal accident affected the rich of Arera Colony, heaven and earth would have been moved to provide relief for the injured and bring Carbide to justice.
Value of life (life-value) is entirely different from life-price and is not quantified in monetary terms. Life-value is the extent to which a society nurtures the life of every individual in that society,without exception and without regard to colour, race, gender, class, caste, sexual orientation, language, religious beliefs, and such otherdifferences. High life-value societies invest in people because they are humans and attempt to minimize all risks they face—from disease, human violence, pestilence, natural and man-made hazards, hunger, etc.Such investment is in the form of high quality health care, education,human welfare, environment and social justice.
A high life-price society may also provide these services, but as commodities. The price paid will determine the quality of the service. For example, the same high quality medical services are available to all for virtually no price. In the US, those with medical insurance can afford to go to the best hospitals and those without have to worry about what will happen to them in old age.
There is a marked difference in the manner in which various societies have evolved. A high life-price does not automatically imply a high value of life and vice versa. There are high life-price and life-value societies, eg, Sweden; high life-price and low life-value societies, eg, USA; low life-price and high life-value societies, eg, Cuba; and low life-price and low life-value societies, eg, India.
Low Value of life High
USA Sweden
India Cuba
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A low life-value society will be more prone to allow violence to be perpetuated, both by its state and its polity, against vulnerable people both within and outside that society.
Sweden and Cuba that are high value-of-life countries, even though thelatter is a low price-of-life one, have high Social Justice and Human Rights records than the US, India and a host of other countries that are low value-of-life countries.
The Bhopal accident: Consequence of life-price difference in two low life-value countries
In India, violence against minorities and the poor has been accepted almost as a way of life—20,000 persons died till date in the 1984 Bhopal accident; 4,000 Sikhs killed in the 1984 riots after Indira Gandhi’s assassination; 1,000 persons killed after the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition; 2,000 persons killed in the Gujarat riots after theGodhra train burning; 200,000 Indians (mostly the poor) die every yeardue to air pollution. Widespread hunger and malnutrition, female feticide, farmer suicides, very high road and shoplfoor mortality and injury rates, etc, are other examples of how little life is valued in India.
Little if ever is done to compensate the families of the dead and injured. And if compensation is ever given, the amount is very small,which makes India a low price-of-life society as well.
The US too is a low life-value society. This is evident in the mannerin which it treats non-Caucasian minorities and aliens. Carbide attitude towards Afro-American workmen who asked for compensation for contracting silicosis in the company’s mines is a classic example of this. Likewise, their gun culture, treatment of Iraqi and Afghani citizens, torture of Guantanamo Bay prisoners, support to dictators inLatin America, toppling of democratically elected governments that areinconvenient to the US, are examples of this.
The US is however a high life–price society, and this particularly true for the haves. High compensation amounts are paid to victims of wrongful death, eg, in industrial and road accidents and injuries.
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The US and India are both low life-value countries. But the US is a high life-price country whereas India is not. This has implications for the location of hazardous industry owned by MNCs. They find it convenient to locate their high-risk facilities in India and other lowlife-price countries.
Carbide spent less in building its Bhopal plant as India did not insist on Carbide spending more money on building a plant that would dispense with storing MIC. Nor did India spend money on having good Factories Inspectorates and Pollution Control Boards that could regulate Carbide properly. The US did not care what happened outside its territories, as long as it did not affect them very much. In the event of accidental death the potential liability was low for Carbide in India.
It was a win-win situation for Carbide. They were responsible for thedeaths of 20,000 hapless Bhopalis and got away by alleging sabotage, without a shred a proof. Carbide continuously indulged in double-speak and liability dodging with great arrogance as it imbues values from a low life-value though high life-price society. And India accepted this turn of events as it is a low life-value and low life-price society.
India should be ashamed
The Bhopal accident victims are truly orphans. And the process of orphaning them has had the fallout of society disowning industrial accident victims in India for the next 50 years. India should be ashamed of itself. It did very little for the Bhopal victims, and much less for those at risk from such accidents. Barringfor one visit that Rajiv Gandhi made to Bhopal soon after the accident, the Indian and Madhya Pradesh State governments showed little interest for the accident victims. Barring for one left party,all other political parties—left, centre, right, parliamentary, non-parliamentary—passed perfunctory resolutions about the Bhopal accident, but did little beyond that. Likewise the half-life of interest in the Bhopal accident amongst academia, press, scientists,
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the medical fraternity, professionals, trade unions, non-government (NGO) and human rights organizations, social workers, feminist groups—in India and outside—has been very short.
The Bhopal victims self-help organization, Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Udyog Sangathan (BGPMUS), has done yeomen service for its members by being a consistent fighter for helping them through their daily struggles—medical help, compensation; with no money and little outsidehelp. Another Indian NGO, provides the outside world with informationand runs an ayurvedic clinic. The Bhopal victims would have benefitedmuch more had the latter been a team-player and cooperated with BGPMUSand others willing to contribute time and effort for the victims’ benefit (see www.openthemagazine.com/ article/voices/bhopal-the-other-story for details).
Conclusions
In the past, I would conclude articles such as this one with grand summing-up statements and clever recommendations, none of which were ever heeded despite many saying that the recommendations are just whatthe doctor ordered. I will refrain from making such recommendations in this article, and conclude by saying:
The environment belongs to the people. Hazardous facilities invariably locate next to the original residents of an area at a laterdate. People should demand that proposed hazardous facilities should cause zero risk to their lives—health, environment and livelihoods, and they should have the means to verify this to their satisfaction and mandate the hazardous facility, through the local self-government,to furnish a bank guarantee equal to the capital cost of the facility which could be cashed if the zero risk clause is violated.
The best way to move towards a society that minimizes risk for all is by striving for a uniform high value of life, as a fundamental human right, throughout the world. Human rights organization must recognizethis and fight for it. And if they fail to do so, civil society organizations should take it on themselves to do so. A discussion on this requires more space; hence will be put off for another paper.
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I continue to be haunted by the sight of the stillborn baby girl, absolutely red in colour that I saw in December 1986, exactly two years after the accident, when I was at the Carbide plant site measuring meteorological parameters required for modeling the gas leak. That baby was a child of the Bhopal accident. I dedicate this article to that child and the many hundreds like her who died before seeing the light of day, and to their parents who hoped to nurture life; but got death instead, for no fault of theirs.
Postscript
High life-value societies have two attributes. The first is to minimize injury (mental and physical) and death whether caused by strife or conflict in society or by the state. The second is to nurture life and ensure social justice for all citizens.
To minimize injury and death, high-life value societies tend to followthe more compassionate restorative justice that encourages offenders to take responsibility for their actions and make restoration for damage caused and dialogue with the victim. Low life-value societies follow retributive justice that seeks to make the punishment “proportional” to the crime.
For example, societies that have been attempting to increase the valueof life of their citizens have abolished capital punishment. More than two thirds of the world’s nations (139), including most Latin American and European countries, have abolished the death sentence in law or in practice, but the balance (58), including India and the US retain it. In 2008, state ordered executions in the US were 37, the fifth highest by any country in the world. Only one person has been executed in India since 1996, and 29 mercy petitions are pending before the President. Though these numbers are low, there is a dispute about the number of executions prior to 1996. The official figure is 54, but the People’s Union for Civil Liberties puts it at over a thousand. A moot question to ask is “Has capital punishment helped in reducing crimes involving loss of life?” The answer is no.
Sometimes, attempts to increase life-value can unintended do just the opposite. An example of this is the anti-dowry IPC Section 498A in
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India. Dowry is a social evil and must be ended. The section uses retributive justice to make cruelty to a woman (if she commits suicide, is gravely injured or whose life is in danger or is harassed by unlawful demand for property) a cognizable and non-compoundable (complainant cannot be withdraw complaint) crime with a reverse burdenof proof (husband and named relatives are presumed guilty until proveninnocent), which violates Articles 9 and 11 of UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights that state that arbitrary arrests and detention shall not be made and that a person shall be presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in a public trial following due process.
Instead of curbing dowry, Section 498A has become a money extortion tool in the hands of unscrupulous upper-caste and class women and the police and have been responsible for the arbitrary arrest of nearly 1.5 lakh innocent men and women (relatives of the husband) in the last5 years, with cases lasting 3-7 years, and conviction rates being only2%. Supreme Court Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan has remarked that Section 498A is grossly misused, and Supreme Court Justices Arjit Pasayat and H K Sema have held that misuse of the section is legal terrorism. Even President Pratibha Patil has warned against the misuse of the section to wreak petty vengeance and settle scores. Section 498A has turned a basic risk mitigation rule, ie, while attempting to reduce risk for one set of people, another set should not be put to any additional risk, onto its head.
Ironically, the UN (through WHO) supported Carbide soon after the Bhopal accident happened, and later bit its tongue as the injury magnitude unfolded. The UN (through Unifem) has supported the use of retributive justice to battle domestic violence without regard to the magnitude of collateral damage it may cause. It is time for the UN tointrospect whether such support is in keeping with its principles.
As for nurturing life and engendering social justice for all, we may shout from the rooftop that ahimsa and compassion are part of our cultural legacy, but the truth is that we are moving in the opposite direction. We have to first reverse this trend, then travel a long long way before we can start calling ourselves an egalitarian and humane society that values life highly.
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