ANALYSIS
A changing world has however made democracy a more answerable form of government.
The public outrage over the shockingly inadequate punishment handed out to some of those responsible for the Bhopal gas tragedy of 1984 has finally forced the government to sit up and take notice. After the initial shock was over, Bhopal appeared to have shifted to the backwaters of our public consciousness and was ignored as events overtook us.
In the interim, the number of victims has grown distressingly large and the compensation deal worked out by the government with Union Carbide has been exposed as shamefully small.
It is evident that without this sort of public pressure, our governments are slow to respond. Protected for years by a small middle class, a disinterested wealthy upper sliver of society and a large, ignorant and backward population, our rulers, leaders and public servants, have become arrogant and complacent.
A changing world, growing economic wealth and an information explosion has however made democracy a more answerable form of government. As Indians become aware of their rights, freed from the feudal mindset of the past, questions are being asked and answers demanded.
The confusion within the Congress party at the anger which it has faced for its apparent neglect of the gas victims, of the easy passage offered to Union Carbide with a minuscule compensation deal and the release of its chairman Warren Anderson demonstrates just how difficult political parties and government find this new form of participatory democracy.
Opposition parties are pressured by the same compulsions of their political rivals and cannot therefore fulfil their primary role.
The alacrity with which a Group of Ministers (GoM) has been organised to re-look at compensation and its disbursal, to hold Union Carbide responsible and re-consider prosecution of then chairman Anderson shows just how shaken the UPA government at the Centre is by public opinion.
As the GoM deliberates on its course of action, it could look to the $20 billion escrow account set up by BP following pressure put on it by US president Barack Obama over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. One of the many problems post-Bhopal is that the company was let off lightly on the presumption made then that India was a poor country and compensation was decided on that basis. That is in question now.
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