Bhopal Disaster Revisited [updated]

On December 3, 1984, a chemical plant run by Union Carbide and located in Bhopal, India released about 40 tons of a toxic gas which was an intermediate chemical used in creating pesticides. (That is, the plant was in the business of creating chemicals deadly to life.) Safety at the plant had not been a concern of management; numerous safety systems were offline or non-functional. The gas cloud drifted over the city and killed thousands of people, and inflicted permanent injury to hundreds of thousands more. It was the worst industrial accident to date. Today, the site remains a contaminated wasteland, unusable and never cleaned up. The survivors have been minimally compensated, but as time passes, enough of them have died that compensation may now be in the works. Update: 12/03 15:51 GMT by M : Whoops, just kidding, the Reuters story linked there is wrong; the BBC was apparently hoaxed into putting a Dow spokesman on TV who wasn't actually a Dow spokesman. Dow has no plans to clean up the facility and no plans to compensate the survivors. Hope this clears things up.

Comments

Dow-chem chairman Warren Anderson

[metlin]

Yeah, except that the chairman of UC has been charged with culpable homicide in India, and declared a fugitive. But the US govt. has so far refused to let him be extradited for trial.

On Regulation

[American AC in Paris]

Fortunately, corporate ethics have progressed in leaps and bounds in the past twenty years. Today, the world can sleep soundly knowing that increasingly de-regulated industries have learned their lessons and would never risk innocent lives in the name of saving a buck.

Without the monumental advances in overcoming human nature since these dark times, we wouldn't even be considering shifting regulatory responsibility from the government to the private sector. Yea, we are truly blessed to live in such an enlightened age.

...so next time somebody talks to you about phasing out cumbersome government regulatory systems, remember: we are no longer the savage brutes we were in 1984. The corporations of the world understand now that there are more important things than the bottom line. They would never, ever, ever sacrifice the safety of the community to further their own economic gains...

fnord

The business of creating chemicals deadly to life

[Anonymous Coward]

These pesticide thingies sound evil. Are you also against antibiotics?

Re:Dow-chem chairman Warren Anderson

[MoxCamel]

Mod parent up please.

When you hear shit like "the terrorists hate our freedom," think of Bhopal. Around 3k people died on 9/11. In Bhopal, the lasting death toll is somewhere around 15,000. I wonder if Anderson would have been allowed to settle if 15,000 Americans had died.

Mod me down if you want, I have karma to burn. But I'd sure like to see some magnetic yellow ribbons to support the victims of US multinational homicide. Mox

Re:Dow-chem chairman Warren Anderson

[metlin]

I wasn't jabbing at America, I was jabbing at the lack of international justice in matters such as this.

A foreign company was responsible for large-scale devastation and deaths in thousands, and yet the management of the company get away scot-free.

Don't you think it's a little unfair? Swindling money and getting away with it (a la Enron) is one thing, but killing people and getting away with it is another.

Over 15,000 people were killed and thousands more have been scarred for life. The entire ecological system in that city is in ruins and there is no life or vegetation growing there.

There is something called responsibility for your actions. Just because you are a corporation does not excuse you from that. American or not.

I heard a history of this on the radio

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps someone else can verify the facts. What I understood was:

The president (ceo?) of UC turned up in India immediately after the incident. He said that he was horrified and the company would do everything it could to make things better. The Indian government then arrested him. After that UC brought in the lawyers and the result is what you see today. Advice to the Indians: You get more flies with honey than with vinegar.

The reason the compensation for the victims is so pitiful is that it was done under Indian law. In Indian law, if you accidentally kill someone, the compensation is based on what they would have been worth at the end of their life. In most cases, that is pretty much zero. In American law, you get an amount that tries to reduce the consequences of the death. ie. If you are caring for your parents and are killed, the damages include an amount to replace that care. This produces much greater damages than the Indian case.

Blame the Indian Government.

[tjstork]

Let's not forget that the reason Union Carbide was in there to begin with was because the Indian government created an environment where western companies could pay workers less than market wages, have lax environmental laws, and pretty much run a shoddy operation in order to get money. That business in India could have easily been located in the United States, but, instead, the Indian government allows its workers to be payed less and treated worse to get its competitive advantage. Declaring the head of Union Carbide a fugitive and playing victim is a red herring designed to cover the tracks of a completely corrupt system that is designed to elevate one caste while others are expendable. If you want to prevent Bhopals, insist that foreign governments have rules to make companies paying the same wages and same safety standards as their western counterparts.