Reason why Bhopal will continue to die

Jyeshtha Shukla Trayodashi Kaliyug Varsha 5112

By: Meenakshi Rao

Let’s get this straight: Bhopal will continue to die a slow, disease-egged death for centuries and generations to come and none of the parties concerned — be it Warren Anderson, Dow Chemicals or the Indian Government — will be doing anything seriously to clear up the mess.

There are many reasons for this, the prime being the most basic fact: In our collective consciousness, Indian life is cheap and dispensable and that all but kills the need to rectify any wrong done on the common citizen.

Here are the stark facts:

Warren Anderson: The former CEO of Union Carbide is all of 89 and kicking. There is not even a remotest possibility of him ever being brought to an Indian prison for doing harm to humanity. He lives with his wife in a maze of riches on an off-limit property off New York.

He has done so with impunity since that dark night in December 1984 when, instead of being bundled into jail for ignoring a hazards report in his Bhopal unit that could have saved the above 15,000 dead and a lot many alive and suffering from the deadly MIC gas that leaked out of the factory, he was accorded the status of a virtual State guest by our cowering Central Government to be escorted out of the country in a private jet!

Whether you make the then CM Arjun Singh the fall guy to save the memory of late Rajiv Gandhi, or you ignore a CIA document that states that Congress Government of that time instructed the quick departure of this corporate criminal, fact is that our system not just allows, but also plots with impunity for everyone with clout to make money and get away. And we as a populace are by and large okay with that.

Anderson’s crime is that he ignored a 1982 safety audit report which had identified 30 major hazards at the UCIL plant at Bhopal. To add insult to injury, the UC has till date refused to disclose the exact composition of the poisonous MIC (saying it is a trade secret), thus preventing doctors from accurately treating the over one lakh people who are sick.

Life as a corporate criminal is cool, and according to one report, Anderson’s yearly golf club membership alone is 3-4 times the average compensation for a Bhopal survivor.

Dow Chemicals, the company which now owns UC: As we all know, the closed UCIL plant at Bhopal is deadly. The thousands of metric tones of toxic waste has seeped down to the water, soil and everything else around, crippling several generations of that area with diseases as deadly as cancer, genetic disorders, kidney failures, liver ailments and blindness, not to mention chest pollution, asthma and defective hearts.

A Greenpeace report of 1999 says levels of mercury are six million times higher than expected! For 26 years now, this killer consignment has been defiling the area as the “who will clear it” blame game plays musical chairs. So who will pay for this massive clean-up: Union Carbide? Dow Chemicals? The State Government? Or the Centre? None really — except for the dead and dying people of Bhopal.

To expect anything human and responsible from a company like Dow Chemicals, which should actually clear this mess, would be laughable. Here’s why: This is an over 100-year-old company which has flowered on deadly chemicals production, ignoring the suffering that it has bestowed on humanities all over the world. It lives comfortably on war profiteering, rendering lands infertile, providing deadly chemicals for bombs etc.

In World War I, Dow provided mustard gas and picric acid. For World War II, it supplied magnesium for bombs. The Napalm used by the US to burn the Vietnamese was a Dow innovation. The jelly-like chemical, sprayed on people burnt them to the bone. The Greenpeace site carries a telling comment by a Vietnam war veteran on Dow’s inhuman innovation: “We are pleased with those backroom boys at Dow.

The original product wasn’t so hot — if the gooks (Vietnamese) were quick they could scrape it off. So the boys started adding polystyrene — now it sticks like shit to a blanket.

But then if the gooks jumped under water it stopped burning, so they started adding Willie Peter (white phosphorus) so as to make it burn better. It’ll burn under water now. And just one drop is enough; it’ll keep on burning right down to the bone so they die anyway from phosphorus poisoning.”

Can one ever expect anything from a company which has such inhuman history embedded in its grave production line? Bhopal will be child’s play for them.

The Indian Government: With a Government like ours, foreign culprits would not ask for more. The Government of that day is the biggest culprit here. It protected the criminals like a loyal sentinel, like all else it tried to brush the bigness of the crime on the Indian population under the carpet, it did not seek quick and compelling justice, it never ever worked on getting an adequate compensation for its citizens from the US firm, in fact it colluded with the US Government in trying to camouflage the existence of this gravest of corporate crime and it is still at it trying to throw a blanket over the travesty.

Should you then not try it for treason or for crime against humanity? Think about it, even now, when nuclear energy is about to flow in through American windows, with grave inherent dangers lurking all over, it has done its best to limit and negate corporate responsibility in case of a nuclear disaster, merely to keep the US investors in good humour.

The Indian public: We are men of the moment. We do not sustain campaigns, forget easily and forgive without askance. If we do not care about ourselves, will anyone else? We have allowed Bhopal to die slowly, suffer and become a cripple of our system. So why go to Anderson, Dow Chemicals or any other foreign agent? First, look inwards.

Source: Daily Pioneer