The Bhopal stench

We have got so used to the stench that we live with it not realising how foul it smells. The trivial Bhopal verdict is a grim reminder of this truth. The title I gave to Raajkumar Keswani’s essay on the Bhopal gas tragedy, in a book I later edited, was ‘An Auschwitz in Bhopal.’

 Keswani, then a small-time journalist in Bhopal, was among the first to alert the nation to the looming tragedy of the ill-maintained Union Carbide pesticide plant that showed signs of becoming a gas chamber. That was in 1982 and 1983 after the first gas leaks and fatalities, when the company cut down maintenance on this loss- making plant that it was negotiating to sell to one or other of its  associates in Brazil or Indonesia. The warnings were ignored. 

Twenty-six years and more than a generation later, a judicial magistrate in Bhopal has pronounced a maximum sentence of two years imprisonment under the revised offence charged in 1996: negligence rather than culpable homicide not amounting to murder.
 Bhopal was no ‘accident.’ If at all, with prior warnings, it was an accident waiting to happen. Nine Indian officials have been found guilty. The UCC Chairman, Warren Anderson was arrested in December 1984, bailed out and officially assisted to flee the country as he could not be charged with vicarious liability.

The Bhopal plant was later sold to Dow Chemicals with no liability even to clean up the still toxic plant site. The watchword both in India and the US was promoting investment, not justice. 

An estimated 20,000 to 25,000 have died as a result of the gas leak in Bhopal. Approximately half a million more suffer the agonies of continuing ailments, deformities and continuing genetic deformities. Medical research on the effects of the lethal methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas and its long term treatment have been faulty. People continue to suffer and remain exposed to unknown risks.

 The $ 470 m compensation awarded was clearly meager and its disbursement delayed. Confusion, incompetence, cover-up and procedural delays all played their part in dealing with the greatest industrial disaster the world has ever seen.  

The US was quick to cover its back and its response was quite different from that to the soon-to-follow Exxon Valdez oil spill off the coast of Alaska or, currently, to the BP blow out while deep-drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Without minimising either event and its ecological implications, the two combined do not add up to anything like the magnitude of the human tragedy in Bhopal and its continuing effects. In both cases, the US response to corporate liability has been very different to that in Bhopal, despite admitted differences in these cases.
 
A most unsavoury blame game and loud name calling has started in India with the usual absurdities like demands for a joint parliamentary inquiry being touted to score political points. To what end? Such antics will only delay action to mend the systemic failures that Bhopal and other events have exposed, expedite justice and bring closure.

A 26-year trial is an absolute travesty. The law, often antiquated in letter and intent, has time and again been shown to be an ass. The administration and investigatory agencies can be bent and lack the independence expected of them as democratic bulwarks.  Compensation norms have not been standardised and vary from case to case, agency to agency and state to state. 

There is also a clear class bias in all of this. The well heeled are treated differently and sometimes get away with murder. Take the string of recent cases of drunken driving and its toll of humble victims. A two-year prison term after years of traumatic delay is poor solace to families who lose their breadwinners and loved ones.

Exemplary punishment
The permissible punishment should be exemplary, especially when the culprits go missing, prevaricate, and delay justice. Parents and guardians should not be immune so that the spoilt-brat syndrome is checked. Similarly rape and run or rape and murder criminals should be punished not only for the crime, if found guilty, but for their conduct after the event such as when BMWs become trucks.

It is understandable that many are demanding a fresh look at the Civil Nuclear Liability Bill so as to ensure that criminal negligence cannot be disassociated from accountability. Accidents may happen and the corporate owner or equipment supplier should not be burdened with crushing liabilities unless criminal negligence is proven.
Insistence on anything more onerous than that could turn away suppliers and investors to the detriment of the greater common good. The right balance must be struck between total liability and no liability irrespective of circumstances.