Sunil Jain: The great Bhopal whitewash

Even after 25 years, Union Carbide refuses to accept responsibility or show any remorse

Worthies such as Ratan Tata who have been lobbying the government to go easy on Union Carbide Corporation (http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/files/5_27.pdf) would do well to read Carbide’s useful FAQs on the 25th anniversary of the Bhopal gas tragedy, which claimed over 10,000 lives. Worse, over 5 lakh humans, including those born after the disaster, are still suffering the consequences of the gas leak. Even now, Carbide refuses to accept any kind of responsibility or show any remorse, other than: “The 1984 gas leak in Bhopal was a terrible tragedy that understandably continues to evoke strong emotions even 25 years later.”

Carbide’s official position (http://www.bhopal.com/faq.htm) is that the water which got into the methylisocyanate tank and caused the leak was a result of sabotage, and “the Indian authorities are well aware of the identity of the employee and the nature of the evidence against him. Indian authorities refused to pursue this individual because they, as litigants, were not interested in proving that anyone other than Union Carbide was to blame for the tragedy.” It gets better: “You may be interested to note that the CBI subjected the UCIL employee who found the local pressure indicator was missing on the morning after the incident (a key factor in Carbide’s sabotage theory) to six days of interrogation to get him to change his story. That effort was unsuccessful.”

Carbide’s behaviour, however repugnant, is not really surprising since the government has gone out of its way to bail it out. After asking for $3.3 billion, the government accepted just $470 million and, while casualties were fixed at low levels, no attempt was made to ensure future generations of victims were taken care of. The Centre for Science and Environment’s (CSE’s) test reports found, at a site 3 km from the factory, that the water had 110 times the permissible amount of carbaryl, 40 times the permissible lindane and 24 times the acceptable mercury level. Various government reports, however, have given Carbide a clean chit. A report by the Defence Research and Development Establishment (DRDE) at Gwalior said the site’s waste had less toxicity than table salt. Another, by the Gandhi Medical College in Bhopal, acknowledged a four times higher rate of sickness among residents of areas closer to the Bhopal factory, even in those born after the accident, but said “there was no evidence to suggest that any toxic substance present in the Union Carbide factory so far has reached the ground water and then to the human body”. So, it blamed this on, for those born after December 3, 1984, the poor conditions seen in slums. Not surprisingly, the Madhya Pradesh government wants to construct a memorial on top of the site.

It will be useful to know the central government’s views on these reports since these will determine whether, on the 50th anniversary of Bhopal, we have a third generation of citizens maimed by the gas tragedy or something else. (Since no one wants to marry gas victims, there are special marriage bureaus focused on them.)

At the heart of this is the debate over acute and chronic toxicity, with the latter dealing with slow exposure of humans to toxins which trigger diseases of the type we’re seeing in Bhopal — DRDE’s and most other studies have focused on acute toxicity which deals with adverse effects of a single exposure or multiple exposures in a very short period of time. This is important because, 25 years later, all the toxic waste left behind by Carbide remains covered with plastic in a shed that leaks in the rain. Apart from this, there are thousands of tonnes of soil, such as in the solar evaporation pond where Carbide would dump its waste to evaporate, which would also need to be treated.

The government began to think about cleaning the waste only after a suit was filed in the Madhya Pradesh High Court in 2004. A committee of experts was set up after that, but is now mired in court cases — the waste was to be sent to an incinerator in Gujarat, but the state government withdrew the permission after NGOs there said they didn’t want the waste; the high court threatened Gujarat with contempt and the state went to the Supreme Court. This being the reality, it’s safe to assume that court proceedings will drag on for another 10-15 years (the Madhya Pradesh High Court verdict, whatever it is, will certainly be challenged in the apex court). Though they were commissioned three years ago, reports of the expert bodies on the clean-up are still nowhere to be seen.

Of course, if the government agrees the waste is not toxic, we don’t even need to clean up the waste. Just build upon it. And if there’s another generation that’s maimed, instead of blaming it on slums, the next report could blame it on global warming.