Edit: Irreparable injustice

The death of the former Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson in a Florida nursing home last month yet again brings to mind the depressing failure of the Indian State to deliver justice to the tens of thousands of victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy. The toxic gas leak from the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal on a wintry night in December 1984 led to over three thousand deaths, besides injuring and physically maiming many for life. For years since the accident, innumerable reports have poured in of people in that area contracting cancer, kidney and liver failure, women delivering physically challenged infants. In 1989, Union Carbide paid US$470 million to the Indian government to settle the litigation around the accident.

Despite sustained demands and painstaking work done by activists to secure justice for the victims, the Indian State (colluding with the corporate giant and the US government) reneged on its basic obligation to Bhopal’s gas-affected people. Not only did the Indian State conveniently forget the official creed of ‘national sentiment’, but people were left to the succour of voluntary organisations. Anderson’s death comes on the eve of the 29th anniversary of the world’s biggest industrial disaster, which has — not without reason — come to represent the callousness of States and huge multinational corporations.
Anderson, then the top executive of Union Carbide, should have been brought to book by the Indian government and the judiciary. Even the political class failed to drum up an effective response to the tragedy. Thanks to the lack of will on the part of the Indian government, Anderson managed to dodge the law his entire life. Three days after the gas leak, Anderson briefly came to Bhopal, where he was arrested and bailed out under suspicious circumstances. The glare of suspicion fell upon then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and a former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister. Both were perceived by many as having facilitated Anderson’s abrupt exit from Bhopal.

After his mysterious flight from India, the powerful corporate chief never returned to face the law, notwithstanding the summons periodically issued in his name. Finally the Indian State declared him an absconder, signifying in more ways than one the systemic flaws in the judicial system, and the central government’s lackadaisical approach to bring justice to the victims. The US government refused to entertain India’s extradition requests despite a Bhopal court issuing an arrest warrant in 2009 as well as another non-bailable warrant against Anderson.

It may be insightful in this context to consider the Indian government’s aggressive stance towards the US, in the case of the Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade, accused by the US authorities of furnishing wrong information to them. Contrast the reaction then with the Indian government’s dealings with the US establishment in the case of Bhopal. More than two decades later, thousands of gas victims still await decent compensation and justice. Successive governments at the Centre could not summon the courage or the will to press the issue with the United States. In a further setback to the victims, a US court recently observed that neither Union Carbide nor its former chairman Warren Anderson were liable for environmental remediation or pollution-related claims at the firm’s former chemical plant in Bhopal.

Given the hugely catastrophic dimensions of the Bhopal gas tragedy, the resistance to the civil nuclear energy plant in Tamil Nadu’s Kudankulam is hardly surprising. It’s equally imperative in this context that India does not dilute the provisions of the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, notwithstanding protests from foreign companies to water down the liability components in the Act.