It is the unlucky fate of many residents in Bhopal, India that they have become victims of two kinds of corporate disaster. The first is the death and destruction caused by the release of poisionous MIC gas from a Union Carbide plant in December 1984, and the second is the 17 years of injustice and ill treatment that survivors have endured since. A piece on the situation there now and the ongoing struggle for justice.

Some disasters erupt suddenly, their tragic and terrifying scale manifest in rapid death and destruction. Others emerge slowly in a seemingly routine manner where risks and suffering are accepted facts of business. It is the unlucky fate of many residents in Bhopal, India that they have become victims of both kinds of disaster.

The first disaster is well-known. 17 years ago, on the night of December 2-3 1984, a fertilizer plant operated by US-based Union Carbide released methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas that blanketed adjoining neighborhoods, immediately killing thousands and maiming tens of thousands more. The second disaster is less well known, although no less insidious: tens of thousands of gas victims and their offspring continue to suffer the lingering effects of the original tragedy due to inadequate or nonexistant medical treatment and financial compensation. This is compounded by new health problems resulting from the abandoned and untreated Union Carbide plant site. The soil and drinking water used by surrounding communities is heavily contaminated with heavy metals and carcinogenic chemicals such as benzene, mercury and chloroform, confirmed in reports by the Madhya Pradesh government and Greenpeace. The death toll from the 1984 disaster has crossed 20,000 and upwards of 120,000 others continue to suffer the lingering effects of the gas leak and remaining contamination.

People in communities around the plant site suffered the severest casualties from the original gas leak and many now continue to suffer because of Union Carbide's -
and after their February 2001 merger, Dow Chemical's - cowardly refusal to take responsibility for the contamination. They and their children suffer from skin and eye problems, stomach aches, anemia, respiratory problems, and vomiting from the combined effects of the gas leak and the lingering groundwater contamination. There are as yet uncertain effects on the central nervous system, and immune and reproductive systems of affected people, and higher than normal instances of tuberculosis and diabetes have been found in nearby colonies. For many victims, there is little money left from whatever meager settlement they received from the government for medicines, and the government work enterprises set up to provide income for victims offer inadequate compensation for basic needs. 17 years later, the residue of corporate violence is carried around in Bhopal survivors' bones, on their skin, in their organs. MIC is among the worst afflictions as it interrupts everything: seeing, breathing, eating are all disturbed because MIC penetrates the body's mucous membranes and lingers in almost every human activity. Many of the original victims continue to suffer the intangible effects of the disaster: mental anguish from the death and injury caused by the original disaster, but also from the daily struggle to live with dignity and peace. The body literally suffers while the victims continue to bear the indignity of government inertia and corporate malfeasance.

On the other hand, the perpetrators of the Bhopal disasters have effaced responsibility and accepted the benefits accruing from the Bhopal tragedy. Clever public relations, including the concoction of fantastical stories of sabotage and outright denials about the seriousness of the disaster, followed by evasion of guilt and displacement of blame has been a mainstay of Union Carbide's strategy throughout the last 17 years. Moreover, the company to this date has withheld crucial medical details about the contents of the leaked gas that could be used in providing treatment. Apparently, a corporation's right to proprietary secrets outweighs the human right to justice and health.

Dow's avoidance of responsibility is an explicit endorsement of the view that the costs of irresponsible corporate practice can be dispersed and externalized on victims and taxpayers. The Bhopal case also sets a bad precedent for future cases of corporate operations in the "third world", signaling to companies that their safety and pollution standards can be shoddy and substandard. Once their work is done and profits are made, they can leave things as is and someone else, preferably poor and non-white, will bear the risks and clean up the mess.

The government has inflicted its own injury on survivors by refusing to conduct meaningful long term research on the effects of the gas, and dragging its feet in providing compensation and medical redress. By delaying research and treatment, the government, and by extension Union Carbide displace causality and culpability for harm caused because some ailments are said to have uncertain or disputable origins. In the state's absurd logic, not knowing justifies not doing anything in a vicious and irresponsible loop.

As in every struggle, progressive steps in Bhopal are made through small victories, not large revolutions. Efforts continue in areas of legal redressal and health rehabilitation. Bhopal's Sambhavna Clinic is run entirely on volunteer energies and without the support of Union Carbide or the government, but has managed to be more effective than the hospitals and clinics run by them, still treating an average of 100 victims per day. Sambhavna workers have treated over 10,500 gas victims since its inception in 1996, working holistically to offer innovative and non-harmful treatment to victims through yoga, ayurveda, and other alternative therapies. It also conducts regular community education and research visits to affected communities, recently succeeding with other Bhopal groups in getting the government to build water tanks so that communities are not drawing contaminated water from the contaminated plant site.

40 ongoing legal cases are being fought in India on outstanding issues of personal injury, death, business loss, and environmental damage with the support of the Bhopal Gas Peedit Nirashrit Morcha, Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationary Karcmchari Sangh, and Bhopal Group for Information and Action. In a lawsuit against Union Carbide and Dow filed by survivors and activists in the United States, an appeals court recently admitted several environmental arguments that had been previously rejected by a lower court judge. Given that the Indian government has shown little interest in pursuing criminal and civil liabilities from those at Union Carbide, this new development offers new hope that those at Union Carbide and Dow who are responsible will be brought to justice. Bhopal victims and activists are also seeking the extradition of then-Union Carbide chairman Warren Anderson for knowingly taking large safety risks and fragrantly violating safety standards. Anderson has been charged with culpable homicide and grievous hurt and in 1992 an arrest warrant was issued by a Bhopal judge. Yet although the Government of India has previously declared its intention to follow through on this it has for lack of political will failed to bring him to trial for the past nine years despite an active Extradition Treaty between the US and India.

This year's Bhopal anniversary has witnessed the birth of a new international alliance comprised of environmental organizations such as Greenpeace, national social movements and local Bhopal survivor's organizations to voice to existing mobilizations for justice. The alliance is called Action against Corporate crime and Toxic terror: Bhopal (AaCcTt:Bhopal) and has been formed in response to the recently finalized merger of Union Carbide and Dow Chemical, which will further dilute the culpability of those responsible for the Bhopal tragedy. The clearest confirmation of this yet is Dow Chairman Frank Popoff's statement that "It's not in my power to take responsibility for an event 15 years ago and a product we never developed at a location we never operated." Presumably, he is less selective in his willingness to glean Union Carbide's more profitable elements into Dow's accounts. The AaCcTt:Bhopal alliance is demanding that Dow accept the continuing liability for medical care, economic and social rehabilitation and toxic contamination in surrounding soil and groundwater. As Rashida Bi, co-convenor of AaCcTt:Bhopal notes, "Dow Chemical has inherited the crimes of Union Carbide, the crime of killing 20 thousand children, women, and men, and exposing half a million people to the most toxic and long affecting chemicals in the world".

There are many things that Bhopal has come to signify in the past two decades: the perils of predatory corporate globalization in the "third world"; the horrors of our industrial chemical culture and the large risks we take to maintain consumer lives; government ineptitude and collusion with power instead of people, and more. Perhaps more importantly though, the denial of moral culpability by all sides has led to an enduring legacy of victims still suffering against an institutional order that in many cases has aggressively sought to erase their suffering and the memory of their existence from the courts, hospitals, and anywhere else justice and relief can be sought. The activists and victims who continue to seek medical redress and financial compensation from the company and government are engaged in a struggle against forgetting, against the selective memory of those in power. 17 years later, Bhopal's legacy demands to be remembered, and its ongoing trauma acknowledged.

For more information contact AaCcTt:Bhopal Convener, Satinath Sarangi
E-mail:justiceinbhopal@yahoo.co.in
B-2/302 Sheetal Nagar, Berasia Road, Bhopal 462 018
http://www.bhopal.org/