Bhopal: 25 years of poison by Indra Sinha (The Guardian (UK))
"Indra Sinha, who was Booker-nominated for his book on the Bhopal disaster, explains why the gas leak that killed 20,000 people 25 years ago—and continues to create health problems for countless more—is still a national scandal
"If safety was ignored inside the plant, Union Carbide had no plan at all for the surrounding densely packed neighbourhoods. As the situation worsened, factory staff, fearing for their own lives and those living nearby, put up posters warning of a terrible danger. Keswani wrote begging the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh to investigate the factory before Bhopal 'turns into Hitler's gas chamber.' His sensational style, perhaps, caused him to be ignored. His final article, 'We are all about to be annihilated,' appeared just weeks before the gas disaster.
"As night fell on 2 December 1984, none of the factory's safety systems was working. The vent gas scrubber lay in pieces. The flare tower was undersized. The siren stayed silent. Years later—too late for the thousands who would now die in unimaginably hideous ways—a prosecuting attorney would say that Union Carbide had demonstrated a 'depraved indifference to human life.'"
See also:
25 years of shame by Praful Bidwai (Frontline, Decemeber 05-18, 2009)
"Even as people were dying in Bhopal in the first week of December 1984, Indian diplomats were at pains to tell the world that the disaster would in no way affect India’s foreign investment policy.
"Twenty-five years on, their assurances have been largely fulfilled. Carbide has got off the civil liability hook with a paltry settlement of $470 million, an amount barely double its insurance cover—for what was the world’s most catastrophic industrial accident until Chernobyl happened in April 1986, and which remains the worst chemical industry accident in world history.
"Now, the government is keen to lay out the red carpet for UCC’s successor, Dow Chemical Co., and is doing its utmost to let Dow evade its responsibility to clean up the Bhopal plant site, which remains contaminated with hundreds of tonnes of toxic chemicals, which have poisoned water supplies. The captains of Indian industry, in collaboration with U.S. multinationals, are strenuously trying to bury the past and erase Bhopal’s memory—at the expense of the victims, and to attract foreign investment.
"Why, Minister of State for Environment Jairam Ramesh even turned up at the plant in September and jeered at the victims. He picked a fistful of waste and declared: 'See, I am alive!' There could have been no meaner and more obnoxious way of rubbing salt into the wounds of people who have suffered untold injuries from the gas leak and had to bear the further humiliation of having to drink water contaminated by the plant. Ramesh even insinuated that there was a dirty secret to the accident other than Carbide’s culpability —something he 'can’t even talk about.' Like UCC’s servitors in the media, he hinted that the disaster was caused by negligence on the part of its workers, or worse, sabotage by them."
And see anti-caste: CAPITALIST INDIFFERENCE TO HUMAN SUFFERING (July 7, 2008)
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