Obama’s BP handling raises hopes of Bhopal activists

India, which has bungled the Bhopal gas leak case should copy Obama’s no-nonsense approach to fixing corporate responsibility.

The Indian government, which has been a bystander to the Union Carbide gas leak disaster, should take a leaf out of Obama’s playbook.

Under intense legal and political pressure from Obama, British energy giant BP Plc, which has a gushing oil well dirtying the Gulf of Mexico, agreed on Wednesday to put $20 billion into an escrow account to compensate victims of the oil spill disaster.

BP said it would pay another $100 million to a separate fund to help oil-industry workers sidelined by the Obama administration’s moratorium on deepwater drilling. The payments outstrip the letter of the US law, which caps economic liabilities in oil spills at $75 million.

The administration first hauled BP’s boss Tony Hayward from London to Washington to appear before the US house energy and commerce subcommittee. After throwing Hayward to the wolves, the Obama administration hammered out a pact in a four-hour bargaining session with BP’s top management. BP agreed to “set aside” $20 billion in US assets as a guarantee that it would make good on the promised $20 billion in cash by 2013.

“The aggressive American approach towards BP should be a model for fixing responsibility even in the Bhopal case,” said a New York activist for the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal.

Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee is likely to see Dow Chemical’s boss Andrew Liveris during the India-US CEO forum on June 22. Though Mukherjee shot down the possibility of Bhopal-focused discussions, there are reports that two members of the group of ministers on Bhopal — Ghulam Nabi Azad and Prithviraj Chauhan will also be in the US next week.

Meanwhile, Bhopal activists in the US have stepped up calls for Warren Anderson’s extradition. They held protests outside the New York headquarters of Dow Chemicals. “Now Obama should do the right thing for Bhopal,” said activist Babs Harrison, who held a poster saying, “Kick Anderson’s sorry ass all the way to India.”