3rd of December, 1984 : On the night of December the 3rd, 1984, the people of Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh were probably just about ready to get to bed. That was, however, apart from those few men working at the United Carbide gas plant simply going about the standard water cleaning of the tanks which held the gas that United Carbide sold around the world. What they didn’t know was that at the time, that water was slowly seeping into tank 610; something that would cause the gas to steadily leak out of the tank it was held in. By 11.30 in the evening, people in the city began to experience the effects of the gas leak. As men, women and children lay in their beds, they began to suffocate, cough violently and some even began vomiting. And yet, despite the fact that people fell unbelievably ill, and despite the fact that over 8000 people were said to have immediately died as a result, and despite the fact that this gas leak was almost entirely the fault of the company involved, it took two days for UNIL (United Carbide India Limited) to decide to offer ‘immediate’ assistance.

20th of April 2010 : 36 years later, an ocean oil rig caught fire. By the 19th of May, the oil washed up on mainland Louisiana. The oil managed to collect on the shore and killed off, to some extent, the large fishing industry on which many of the people of Louisiana depend on for a living. This time, the pressure to take action on the company involved – BP – took barely any time at all and there was voracious criticism all round. Within a week, 7 million gallons of oil had already spilled into the sea, killing wildlife by the thousands and choking off the income supply of farmers who lived around the area.

UNIL, an American owned company, some 3 and a half decades after the Bhopal chemical disaster has still left around 400 tonnes of toxic waste which now pollutes the groundwater of the area. It’s a fact which means that, like the farmers of Florida and Louisiana, people have been too scared to farm or use the water in the area. And all UNIL offered in compensation to the widows of those dedicated United Carbide workers? 200 Rs. per month. That amounts to about four dollars and twenty-five cents.

In total, Union Carbide offered the sum of $470 million in compensation and in a recent film, ‘Twenty Years Without Justice: The Bhopal Chemical Disaster’, it doesn’t seem to have made much visible difference. On June the 16th, President Obama said that he would ‘make BP pay for the damage their company has cost’, despite ignoring his own country’s damage caused to places like Bhopal  and also the fact that the United States consumes oil more than any other place in the world. The compensation figure was cited to be around $20 billion; a number BP agreed to. Undoubtedly, the people of the American states affected are going to find themselves a lot better off than their Indian counterparts. It’s unfortunate that, at the time of the Union Carbide disaster, India wasn’t on the world stage. Perhaps then, like America, they could have claimed tens of billions of dollars in compensation.

So, at the end of it all, if anything hopeful and optimistic came out of the Deepwater Horizon disaster and all the disasters that have been ignored before it, it’s perhaps that America will see the dangers of environmental exploitation and the value of corporate responsibility .There have been a lot of lives lost, ignored and destroyed. Because this happened on the Sheriff’s doorstep, maybe some progress will be made.

by Harish

Links : Timeline on the events of the Bhopal Disaster

Report studying the economic conditions of people living in India

Blog article written by Norman Tebbit describing President Obama’s rhetoric

Twenty Years Without Justice: The Bhopal Chemical Disaster

BP Agrees to Put $20 Billion in Escrow Account for People Affected by Oil Spill, White House Says

Deepwater Horizon Rig Disaster — Timeline