DOWn and out : Kick them
2007
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Rishabh Srivastava - Profile
There are 96 more posts on Jai Hind: Proud to be an Indian by Rishabh Srivastava
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Awareness, Environment, Law & Order, Politics, Society
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Awareness, Bhopal, Environment, Law & Order, Politics, Society
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Bhopal, the “Hiroshima of the chemical industry,” is the world’s worst-ever industrial disaster. “During the trial, Carbide’s lawyers had argued, shockingly, that an American life was worth more than an Indian life”.
The Union Carbide India, Limited (UCIL) plant was established in 1969 and had expanded to produce carbaryl in 1979; MIC is an intermediate in carbaryl manufacture.
The chemical accident was caused by the introduction of water into methyl isocyanate holding tank E610, due to slip-blind water isolation plates being excluded from an adjacent tank’s maintenance procedure. The resulting reaction generated a major increase in the temperature of liquid inside the tank (to over 200°C). The MIC holding tank then gave off a large volume of toxic gas, forcing the emergency release of pressure.
On December 3rd, 1984, thousands of people in Bhopal, India, were gassed to death after a catastrophic chemical leak at a Union Carbide pesticide plant. More than 150,000 people were left severely disabled - of whom 22,000 have since died of their injuries - in a disaster now widely acknowledged as the world’s worst-ever industrial disaster.
More than 27 tons of methyl isocyanate and other deadly gases turned Bhopal into a gas chamber. None of the six safety systems at the plant were functional, and Union Carbide’s own documents prove the company designed the plant with “unproven” and “untested” technology, and cut corners on safety and maintenance in order to save money.
Today, twenty three years after the Bhopal disaster, at least 50,000 people are too sick to work for a living, and a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association confirmed that the children of gas-affected parents are themselves afflicted by Carbide’s poison.
Carbide is still killing in Bhopal. The chemicals that Carbide abandoned in and around their Bhopal factory have contaminated the drinking water of 20,000 people. Testing published in a 2002 report revealed poisons such as 1,3,5 trichlorobenzene, dichloromethane, chloroform, lead and mercury in the breast milk of nursing women living near the factory.
Although Dow Chemical acquired Carbide’s liabilities when it purchased the company in 2001, it still refuses to address its liabilities in Bhopal - or even admit that they exist. Till date, Dow-Carbide has refused to:
1) Clean up the site, which continues to contaminate those near it, or to provide just compensation for those who have been injured or made ill by this poison;
2) Fund medical care, health monitoring and necessary research studies, or even to provide all the information it has on the leaked gases and their medical consequences;
3) Provide alternate livelihood opportunities to victims who can not pursue their usual trade because of their exposure-induced illnesses;
4) Stand trial before the Chief Judicial Magistrate’s court in Bhopal, where Union Carbide faces criminal charges of culpable homicide (manslaughter), and has fled these charges for the past 20 years.
Now according to the latest reports the government is preparing to remove the hurdles to the entry of Dow Chemical, which has bought Union Carbide into India in a big way. The Chemical & Fertilisers Ministry has filed an affidavit in the tragedy case, seeking Rs 100 crore as initial compensation for Union Carbide India’s liability for cleaning up the contamination at the factory site. But, the Industries Department wants an out-of-court settlement and a withdrawal of this affidavit.
There is a consensus in the highest echelons of the Congress that it is India’s best interests for the US chemical multinational to invest in the country by getting rid of the obstacle that is Bhopal.
“It is not as if Dow Chemical has an impeccable record when it comes to manufacturing lethal chemicals. It was the sole supplier of the highly inflammable chemical, napalm, which the US used in Vietnam. For some years, despite widespread protests in the US and elsewhere against the use of this deadly weapon, Dow continued production of this profitable product, arguing that the US Department of Defence had to take responsibility for its deployment. As controversially, it (and Monsanto) produced Agent Orange — the toxic defoliant which was dropped widely over Vietnam to flush out the Viet Cong. It derived its name from the orange-striped barrels in which it was shipped out and is a cocktail of different herbicides. When it degrades, it produces dioxin, one of the most toxic substances ever known. In 1976, a chemical plant in Seveso, Italy, suffered a leak and a few kilograms of dioxin were released. The town has gone down in environmental history as one of the worst cases of accidents, along with the Sandoz chemical plant warehouse fire in Basel, Switzerland, the Three Mile nuclear incident in the US and Chernobyl in the Soviet Union”.(Hindustan Times dated 29/10/07)
It will be a tragedy if, in the attempt to be pragmatic in seeking a massive US investment, the government caves in and lets Dow off the hook.
For More details on tragedy and latest happenings visit: http://www.studentsforbhopal.org/
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November 7th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
You are surely right that it will be a tragedy if Dow Chemical is freed from its Bhopal liabilities by the Delhi politicians – such behaviour cannot be described as “government” – it will set a terrifying precedent, that a multinational corporation can operate irresponsibly and dangerously in order to maximise profit knowing that if anything goes wrong it can buy its way out of trouble.
A private deal will mean that the victims of the water poisoning, many of whom were already sick from the gas leak, will have no fair compensation for their suffering nor will they be provided with the medical care some will need for the rest of their lives.
The stench of corruption hangs heavily over this whole affair. It is not so many months ago that Dow was fined $325,000 in the US for routinely over many years bribing Indian officials to get its poisonous products certified as safe for the market. One of those products, incidentally, is Dursban, banned for domestic use in the United States, which Dow is happy to sell to Indian families.
In Dow’s India, the poor are expendable and tainted American dollars are worth more than Indian lives. Let us do everything possible to rid India of this cancerous corporation.
December 3rd, 2007 at 10:42 pm
Young engineers of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are refusing lucrative jobs at Dow Chemicals (which owns Union Carbide) on moral grounds, as the company has been held responsible for the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy that killed over 5,000 people and left thousands permanently disabled.
‘IIT students are refusing jobs offered by Dow Chemicals for its wrongdoing. They are writing to their IITs to remove its name from the recruiters’ list,’ said Mira Shiva of All India Drug Action Network, an NGO.
‘IIT Madras and IIT Bombay had cancelled their prospective engagements with Dow. Now students from IIT Kanpur have written to their institute for the same,’ Shiva told IANS here on the 23rd anniversary of Bhopal gas disaster.
The disaster took place in the wee hours of Dec 3, 1984 in Bhopal after Union Carbide’s pesticide plant released 40 tonnes of methyl isocyanate gas, killing between 2,500 and 5,000 people.
Dow Chemicals acquired Union Carbide Corp in 2001.
Kamal Mitra Chenoy, a Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) professor who has been associated with issue for many years, said: ‘We need to question and regulate the kind of companies that enter the academic institutes else, before we realise, our students would be manipulated into becoming official spokespersons of these companies to suit their public gimmick.’
‘By refusing Dow entry into the campuses, IITians have not only prevented the company to use them to gain legitimacy in the country but also proved that justice comes before business,’ Chenoy said.
Eminent people in the capital also condemned the government’s reported move to bail Dow out of its legal liabilities.
‘The government should not allow Dow for making foreign direct investment in the country at the cost of Indian lives. It seems that government is planning to write off Dow’s liabilities in return for investments in India,’ said Kuldip Nayar, a noted journalist and columnist.
‘For years, the criminal trail has not been able to progress because Union Carbide is absconding and the government has refused to act strongly to enforce its appearance. It is high time that government represents its own people and companies like Dow. It must make Dow honour Indian law and lives,’ Nayar added.
Reports of Dow making an investment of $100 million (about Rs.4 billion) in a global R&D centre in India are doing the rounds. Media reports say that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Maharashtra government.
Shalini Sharma, an activist, who has returned from Bhopal, said: ‘Health of those who survived in the tragedy is vulnerable. And even after 23 years, the state government has completely failed in their rehabilitation.’
‘People are forced to drink water despite being aware of the fact that it is severely contaminated with hazardous chemicals and would make the their health worse. They are still waiting for clean water,’ she said.
Sharma added: ‘Till now, over 20,000 have been gassed to death and 150,000 continue to be chronically ill in the area. A new generation of children are being born with severe birth defects.’
The Central Bureau of Investigation has recently raided Dow’s offices across the country for allegedly bribing officials to the tune of millions in order to get licenses to sell their products here.
The US Securities Exchange Commission has also fined Dow for financial irregularities.