The Bhopal Blame Game

Firstly in trying to run a google search for the official death toll of the Bhopal Gas tragedy,I'm seriously appalled at the search results that are displayed. The first site is Wikipedia! now I was expecting a Government of India website to show up. Now I take an average of all the different "official " death tolls I find and reach the figure 15,000(even the initial death toll of 3000 is not accurate).Let me also add the suffix "and still counting". Going by this figure, the death toll is equal to the population of Anguilla, which is an overseas British territory in the Caribbean. Anguilla accounts to about 0.0002% of the world population. Now the lesson we all need to learn from the recent Bhopal judgement is that, Corporate Negligence which has wiped out 0.0002% of the world population is a petty crime in India!

Let's take a look at the criminal profile of Union Carbide : our irresponsible Corporate friend, Union Carbide had started it's killing spree way back in 1932. It is the Hawk's nest tunnel disaster in West Virginia, USA. 476 workmen died due to silicosis during the mining of silica as a part of the hydroelectric project of Union Carbide, because they were not provided safety protective masks. A fact to be taken note of is that, most of the workers were African Americans. Also, the incident remains a tragic story till this day but has never made it to any court of law. Do you sense some similarity between this and the Bhopal scene? The relatively recent murder of 15,000 Indians surprisingly made it to the trial court. Now I can only see that the White Company's reckless Behaviour is partly due to it's racial prejudice.

Coming to the Indian Judiciary. It was too busy for the past 26 years, speculating about trifles like the Richard Gere and Shilpa Shetty's Kissing stunts and the like. Bhopal case figured no where in their agenda! when the whole nation is protesting against the pathetic verdict given by the Chief Judicial magistrate, the court decides to blame it on the inadequacy of section 304A of the IPC. Now the question arises as to why our legislators didn't provide for the short comings of the aged old section304A. We have to wait and see what excuse they have for us or whom they have to blame.

In this nearly 100 page long judgement, nowhere can we find the name : Warren Anderson.
Mr.Anderson, the CEO of the Union Carbide (at the time of the disaster), which owned Union Carbide India limited was allowed to flee the country in 1984. He is alleged to have sanctioned the cost cutting measures which compromised the safety of the entire gas plant. The reason stated by our respectful Finance minister for letting him leave the country is that, the 1984 MP and central Governments feared a deterioration of law and order situation in the country. What stopped India from extraditing the key person of Union carbide later? Our supposedly good International relations with the United states has rendered no help whatsoever in this process. We have changed nothing by merely declaring him to be a "fugitive".

I might sound very skeptic but I'm pretty sure nothing substantial will come out of an appeal to the High court. Our legislature, executive, judiciary have failed us. We have defeated the first goal of the longest constitution of the world. We can now conveniently remove the word "justice" from our preamble.Some where down the line the question arises as to what we, the citizens of India were doing all these years? we boast of being the largest democracy in the world but we haven't been able to provide for the legitimate demands of the Bhopal victims. Are we indifferent to these atrocities because we can't change the corrupt political system or is it because we are not the victims? whatever be the reason, it's high time we changed our attitude. The only way I see through which we can make our Government act is mass protest. Prayers will not work on the blind and insensitive Indian Administration. If we do not act now, it won't be too late before we faced another Bhopal.