You and I would pay for Bhopal mess, not Union Carbide-22/6/10

By R Shankar, India Syndicate, 22/06/2010

You and I would pay for Bhopal mess, not Union Carbide

The Group of Ministers (GoM) constituted to re-examine the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy has recommended that the Central Government dole out an additional compensation worth Rs 1,500 crore to the victims. Where will this Rs 1500 crore come from? Through additional taxes. In short, you and I would have to pay up for the crime that we have not committed. And what about Union Carbide Corporation – the company that was grossly negligent in running the plant at Bhopal despite repeated warnings? Not a penny.

You and I would pay for Bhopal mess, not Union Carbide


You and I would pay for Bhopal mess, not Union Carbide

And the GoM has another impossible wish - to bring the former chief of UCC - the 91 year old Warren Anderson - back to India after allowing him to flee more than 25 years ago. For what? To crucify him? To make him pay up? To settle old scores?

Instead of the tax payer being made to pay up, why not ask those who allowed Anderson to flee to cough up Rs 1500 crore? We have many on the list of suspects - Rajiv Gandhi, Narasimha Rao, the then Madhya Pradesh chief minister Arjun Singh, the CBI. Two of them are no more, so the Congress, not the Centre, should pay up. This because the decision to allow Anderson to go was taken at a personal level; it was NOT a government of India decision.

Not surprising, the GoM report has given a clean chit to former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi vis-a-vis the circumstances in which Anderson was allowed to leave the country after being arrested. The report cited the absence of any records either in the Ministry of External Affairs or the Home Ministry which could indicate that the former PM was in the know of things. If there was no evidence, the GoM could have summoned the then foreign secretary Rasgotra or questioned the then US envoy. That ofcourse would have caused a major embarrassment to the GoM and the Congress (read Sonia Gandhi).

You and I would pay for Bhopal mess, not Union Carbide

The GoM quoted "contemporary media reports" to suggest that Rajiv Gandhi came to know of Anderson's exit only after he had left the country. The GoM obviously chose which 'contemporary media reports' to chose and ignored a bulk of media reports that showed that Rajiv Gandhi not only knew of Anderson's exit, but also facilitated it.

If the GoM says that a prime minister did not know of how a man whose company just killed over 15000 people in Bhopal flew out of India saying a sarcastic goodbye , there must be something seriously wrong with the prime minister and his office. Assuming that Rajiv Gandhi knew of Anderson's exit only after the UCC chief landed in the US, what action did the then PM take to bring to books those who allowed a man who killed over 15,000, maimed thousands and damaged Bhopal's soil permanently to flee? The GoM has no answer because it did not look into the issue, rather chose to ignore it.

The GoM has ignored the following media reports:

According to Rajkumar Keswani, one of the first journalists to break the gas leakage story, it was Arjun Singh who allowed Anderson use the government plane after receiving a call from Delhi.

You and I would pay for Bhopal mess, not Union Carbide

Who called Arjun Singh from Delhi and gave instructions to go soft on Anderson? Moti Singh, the then DM, says that there was a call from Delhi to free Anderson. Who was the mysterious caller? Rajiv Gandhi had become prime minister only weeks earlier following Indira Gandhi's assassination.

Once the message reached Arjun Singh, he rushed in and made sure that the authorities treated Anderson well and was released without delay. A magistrate was taken to the Union Carbide guest house, he was granted bail just four hours after his arrest and then he was taken in a police car to the airport where a state plane was waiting to take Anderson to Delhi.

Considering the haste and urgency with which Arjun Singh acted, it is obvious that the call from Delhi was from the highest authority - the Prime Minister's office. So, was it Rajiv Gandhi?

The then CBI director K Vijay Rama Rao has thrown a hint when he admitted recently that the Americans were blocking the extradition. So was it Washington that put pressure on Rajiv Gandhi to let Anderson off the hook and allow him to leave the country?

Brahma Swaroop, the then Chief Secretary allegedly called up the Collector to inform him that a plane was waiting at the airport for Anderson to be taken to Delhi.

Why did not the GoM examine Moti Singh, Swaroop or Arjun Singh while quoting `contemporary media reports'?

"The chief secretary summoned me to his chamber in secretariat and said that Mr Anderson was to be released and sent to Delhi by a plane which was awaiting him at the airport," claims Moti Singh according to CNNIBN.

You and I would pay for Bhopal mess, not Union Carbide

Why not re-question the way the then judge of the Supreme Court, Justice Justice A H Ahmadi allowed the case to be watered down to that of a traffic accident? And how he went on to head a hospital centre funded by UCC?

The GoM has also decided to petition the Supreme Court for a review of its judgment that diluted charges against the perpetrators. Fair enough. But will responsibility be fixed? Will the judges who diluted the charges, the prosecutors who put up half a case and the lawyers who did not press the point in favour of the victims be brought to books?

And what is the price of an Indian life? Rs 10 lakh to the next of kin of those dead; Rs 5 lakh for those who suffer from permanent disability; Rs 3 lakh for those with partial liability. Those who lost their eyesight or are suffering from painful cancer or have had children with disability would get a paltry Rs 5 lakh which will hardly be enough to pay the hospital bills.

In the compensation package too, the victims have got a raw deal. The compensation packages are based on old categorisation and figures, according to Satinath Sarangi of Bhopal Group for Information and Action.

You and I would pay for Bhopal mess, not Union Carbide

The GoM has also been unfair to the dead. The total number of registered death cases has been put at 15,274 though the actual figure was 22,146. But for the government record shows just 5,300. Hence only the next of kin of 5,300 people would get Rs.10 lakh compensation recommended in the GoM report. Over 17,000 people are left out. Why did not the GoM recommend a relook at the figures to give the victims a fair deal?

It is evident that there is a mismatch of figures of the 15,274 death claims. This is because the GoM conveniently considered the figures used in the 1989 Supreme Court-brokered financial settlement of $470 million -- which has now come under a clout.

Similarly, compensation for the permanently injured (C category) and temporarily injured (B category) was also decided based on the grossly underestimated 1989 figures.

The GoM was also not fair, rather blundered, on the number of people registered by the office of the Welfare Commissioner, Bhopal, as dead, disabled and injured from 1989 till 1996 -- all because of the gas leak. Hence, a large number of victims, who are indeed eligible claimants, have been left out. They get no penny.


You and I would pay for Bhopal mess, not Union Carbide

The GoM report also leaves out the number of people who died after 1996 due to medical complications caused by the gas leak. Unofficial sources put this number at around 20,000.
The GoM is silent on the second and third generation victims who live in pain and are disabled. They are haunted by constant medical complications caused by the contaminated drinking water as the toxic waste has seeped deep into the soil.

The next big question is on the toxic waste. The GoM has decided to bury the waste and has recommended another Rs 350 crore for this. Rs 170 crore has been kept aside for related environmental purposes and the government of Madhya Pradesh will be asked to bear 25 per cent of this Rs 170 crore from its own exchequer. A unit of the Indian Council of Medical Research will be set up at Bhopal to ensure better health service facilities to the victims; Rs 200 crore will be invested on this.

Thumbing his nose at India, Chairman and CEO of Dow Chemicals Andrew Liveris will not attend the Indo-US CEO Business Forum meeting scheduled to be held in Washington on Tuesday. "He is not attending because of his prior engagement," Dow spokesperson said as an excuse.

A high-level Indian delegation led by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee alongwith Commerce Minister Anand Sharma, Deputy Chairman's Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia and prominent corporate leaders from India will be attending the meeting. Bhopal gas tragedy is likely to figure in the meeting. In 1999, Dow Chemical Company bought the Union Carbide which was responsible for the world's worst industrial disaster in 1984 - the Bhopal Gas Tragedy.

Dow washed its hands of any liability for the tragedy which occurred when toxic methyl isocyanate gas leaked from Union Carbide India Ltd (UCIL) pesticide plant in Bhopal on December 3, 1984, killing about 15,000 people while injuring at least five lakh others.

But why is Dow Chemicals, which bought over the Indian arm of Union Carbide, not in the picture? Dow Chemicals has washed off its hands and the GoM is silent because two of the senior minister s in the GoM had `favoured' Dow by recommending that the company should not be made liable.

Why did the GoM not look into who in the first place gave permission to Union Carbide to set up a factory in Bhopal. The factory had outdated technology and the permission was rejected more than once. It was during the Emergency that the UCC got the signal to go ahead. How and who was responsible for this?

You and I would pay for Bhopal mess, not Union Carbide

The Union Cabinet will now meet on Friday to decide on these recommendations. But do not expect much. There will be more talk, more recommendations that cannot be implemented and a lot of political gas.

But one thing for sure: you and I will have to dole out more taxes. Nobody would mind that to help fellow Indians, but not at the cost of allowing the perpetrators of the crime and those who abetted the crime to go scot free.
The GoM was set up after a court in Bhopal sentenced seven former employees of Union Carbide to two years in jail. The sentence, perceived as lenient by many, had led to widespread public outrage.

It has also been decided not to dismantle the GoM. It will continue to oversee the Bhopal affair. "The GoM meeting is not over. We will continue to address issues as and when they come up. For immediate requirements, we have made a report," Chidambaram said.

The GoM will spend more money on meetings and reports. What Bhopal victims need is not reports, or assurances but concrete action.

Source: India Syndicate