A quarter century of unnatural gas

Exactly 25 years ago today, about 8,000 people died in Bhopal of the immediate effects of the poison gas that had leaked from Union Carbide’s pesticide factory through the night. The Bhopal Gas Tragedy is the world’s biggest industrial disaster and has till now killed 22,000 and injured almost 600,000. Even today, thousands die as the poison contaminates drinking water, creeps into vegetation, food, into the baby in the womb and into mother’s milk.

But not all of it is because of the accidental release of 40 tonnes of methyl isocyanate on the night of December 2-3. The locals are also being slowly poisoned to death by toxic waste dumped around the factory that has leached into the soil and groundwater.

Astoundingly, defying all logic and civic sense, even after 25 years of sustained campaigning and international attention, the killer waste has not been cleaned up.

If the Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) was responsible for the gas leak, our governments at the Centre and in Madhya Pradesh are responsible for the continuing deaths and the enormity of its aftermath. Complaints about water contamination had started before 1984. These were ignored. But after the gas leak —  now called the industrial Hiroshima — the contamination was impossible to ignore. Reams have been written about it, photographs and documentary films have shocked the world with graphic visuals of the maimed, the sick, the dying, environmentalists have been screaming from the rooftops, there have been demonstrations around the world. And yet the locals continue to drink the poisoned water and live off the poisoned land in Bhopal.

According to a new study by the Centre for Science and Environment, the groundwater in areas even 3 km from the factory contains almost 40 times more pesticides than is permissible by Indian standards. So what? These periodic disclosures don’t shock us.

Five years ago, in a report to commemorate 20 years of the tragedy, the BBC showed how they took a sample of drinking water from a well and found its level of contamination to be 500 times higher than World Health Organisation limits. Several public interest groups, including Greenpeace, have collected samples from the soil, groundwater, fruits and vegetables, and found in them unacceptable levels of toxic materials that were used at the factory. Even the government’s public health survey has declared the water there unfit for drinking. But the locals have no choice.

Apparently, the state government plans to build a Rs116 crore memorial at the factory site, like the Hiroshima Memorial. Nice. No need to pay the victims or give them proper healthcare or clean up the toxic waste.

The Hiroshima Memorial has detailed documentation of what led to the bombing and what happened afterwards. Maybe the State would document the whole story at Bhopal too? Would it start from the leak in 1984? Or from UCC’s dumping tonnes of toxic waste around its factory from 1969? And then the thrilling part, where the State played a leading role. How it settled for $470 million in compensation instead of the $3.3 billion claimed, how it failed to disburse that for decades, finally paying a flat Rs25,000 to the affected and Rs1 lakh for those killed, not accounting for medical expenses, how it stashed up the huge interest accrued and tried to divert it elsewhere. And how it has still not cleaned up the toxic waste and is poisoning its own people and future generations. How the State has let Dow Chemicals, who now owns UCC, go free and even tried to woo it back to India, hoping for business investments. How nice to have a memorial to showcase the State’s flagrant failings!

Alarmingly, our ministers don’t realise that they are complicit in an enormous crime. For Union Carbide may have unleashed the industrial Hiroshima, but our government continues the silent genocide.