Alternatives International

ANGER AT BHOPAL JUDGEMENT

Daya Varma — 2010-07-01T19:03:00Z

On December 3, 1984, Bhopal became the site of the world's worst industrial Disaster. The question is: should India entertain hazardous industries at all? If the answer is yes, then what should be done to minimize the chances of disaster? And what should be done to minimize the suffering of the survivors and the families of the dead?

More than 25 years after Bhopal was turned into a city of death on the morning of December 3, 1984, the provincial High Court delivered its judgment on June 7, 2010 convicting former Union Carbide India Chairman Keshub Mahindra and seven others to a maximum of two years in jail. Warren Anderson, now 89 years old and Chairman of the Union Carbide Corporation USA at the time of the disaster in 1984 did not feature in the judgment. He had visited Bhopal soon after the accident and was taken into custody but released after diplomatic intervention, possibly involving the then President of the US Ronald Reagan and the just installed Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi. Since then Bhopal activists have been demanding the extradition of Anderson and death by hanging. The light sentence of Indian officials of the Union Carbide and no verdict on Anderson naturally created a fury on the part of the Bhopal disaster survivors, activists, sympathizers of the Bhopal victims and Indian journalists; to paraphrase, “TWO YEARS FOR 20,000 DEATHS!”

Capitalist democracy is a highly developed institution; most of the devices used to deal with various circumstances, including disasters and accidents, have been accepted as legitimate both by the right— for whom they were designed— and by the left whom they fooled. It is based on punitive measures meted out to high officials. In India, the Railway Minister usually resigns after a severe train accident; the Food Minister resigns after famines. These punitive measures spare the system and bypass the main issue. It was therefore to be expected that a demand for the extradition and hanging of Anderson, and life imprisonment of Indian officials of the Union Carbide, and a posthumous verdict against Arjun Singh, the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh at the time of the disaster, and Rajiv Gandhi, the then Prime Minister, would have satisfied the activists and spared them the tedious task of organizing protests and signature campaigns.

On the other hand the Bhopal disaster and everything that followed, including the High Court Verdict, also raises another question or, rather, a set of questions. I have been peripherally involved in the Bhopal issue right from the beginning but my efforts have been directed towards accumulating evidence in support of adverse health effects of the disaster especially on survivors and pregnant women and their fetuses on one hand, and analyzing the possible causes of the disaster on the other hand. All my studies have been published. I even incurred the wrath of Indian activists when I wrote that the deaths in Bhopal could possibly not have happened by hydrogen cyanide because what leaked from the storage tanks was not cyanide and even if all of it got converted into cyanide, it could never the reach minimum concentration of 300 parts per million (ppm) necessary for its lethal effects. In contrast methyl isocyanate (MIC) which actually leaked, can kill at less than 10 parts per million. Cyanide leaves no residual effect if it does not kill but we all know that MIC does— and did. But none of this is the most significant part of the Bhopal disaster. Nor is the leniency of the High Court judgment. Neither two years of imprisonment can be matched with 20,000 deaths, nor can 20 years or life imprisonment, or hanging of all surviving officials including Anderson. Punitive measures have not checked recklessness in the past and would not do so now.

The Bhopal Disaster poses three basic questions. One, should India entertain hazardous industries like the one that was in Bhopal at all? If the answer is yes, then what should be done to minimize the chances of disaster? The disaster having taken place, as it did in Bhopal, what should be done to minimize the suffering of the survivors and the families of the dead?

In my opinion, no country can afford to desist from developing industry, including hazardous industries, to progress and meet the future needs of its population. The former Soviet Union did it. The present China does it. And of course hazardous industries exist in all developed capitalist countries. Approximately 1.4 million tons of hydrogen cyanide are produced annually, of which the USA accounts for 50 percent. Even methyl isocyanate-based plants exist in the USA, Germany and Japan. When the late Chief Minister Arjun Singh, one of the champions for communal harmony in India, lobbied to get Union Carbide to set up its operations in Bhopal he thought he was bringing industry to backward Madhya Pradesh and was being instrumental in producing a pesticide much needed for agricultural production. Indeed such measures did make India food-sufficient— food availability and its equitable distribution is a different issue. I do not think that the Union Carbide plant was of much inferior quality than the one in West Virginia. There were no settlements adjacent to the plant when it was built, though it was much too close to the railway station and the two major hospitals in Bhopal. What was missing in the Union Carbide operation in Bhopal was that it made no provision for the specific condition of India, its work culture, and the commitment of its officials towards safety in the operation of an industry as hazardous as it was. Why should water leak into pipes carrying MIC? I might add that once water reached the MIC tank, what followed could not have been prevented even if all safety features were in operation. In my opinion India, or a foreign establishment in India, should make provisions for establishing a proper safety and operational work culture at all levels and this is true for all hazardous industries, including nuclear power plants and mining industries.

Perhaps the lenient High Court judgment should have aroused stiffer demands for compensation rather than for stiffer penalties. British Petroleum is being forced to commit more than twenty billion dollars to clean up the mess it has created in the Mexican Gulf. Why should India be lenient towards Dow Chemicals, the current owners of Union Carbide?

Union Carbide ceased operations in Bhopal after the disaster but it left hazardous chemicals which have become a part of the ground water. It is going to eventually cause a greater hazard than the gas disaster but at a slower and less noticeable rate.

If the anger against the High Court judgment focused on these issues, one could feel that Bhopal Disaster has taught a useful lesson. Blood for blood is another matter!

Dr Daya Ram Varma is a pharmacology and therapeutics professor based at McGill University. He sits on the board of directors of Alternatives and is a founding member of CERAS (Centre d'Étude et Ressources d'Asie Sud).

Photo: flickr/ obbino

INDO-U.S. NUCLEAR DEAL SHARPENS DEBATE ON THE NATURE OF INDIA'S INDEPENDENCE

Daya Varma — 2006-08-31T16:08:43Z

Those who were connected with the communist movement in the 1940's argued that India did not gain independence in 1947; rather the British colonialists handed over power to their native representatives. This “faith-based” belief (like religion) was partly shaken not by any analysis by the leaders of the Communist Party of India (CPI) but rather by a cursory note in the January 27, 1950 issue of the Comintern journal "For a Lasting Peace and People's Democracy".

The message underlying this note was understood differently by two divergent sections of the party. The then CPI General Secretary, Ajoy Ghosh pointed out: "None of us is clear what the Lasting Peace editorial means. If anybody claims he is correct, it is arrogance on his part." Notwithstanding these reservations, the Lasting Peace article suggested, even if vaguely, that the Indian ruling class can, in principle, play an anti-imperialist or independent role; this went against the official position of CPI at that time. It may be argued that this article sowed the seeds of the division which ultimately resulted in the unfortunate split of CPI into CPI and CPI (Marxist) in 1964. The 1967 Naxalbari uprising and the encouragement provided to this event by another foreign party, in this instance the Chinese Communist Party, led to further splits and to the formation of CPI (Marxist-Leninist) in 1969. CPI (ML) in its analysis declared India to be a semi-colony and this idea seems to have taken root in a section of the Indian left.

What does a country being a semi-colony mean? Because colonialism is characterized by total economic and political control of a country or region by the imperialist ruler, there must be some downgrading of this control in a semi-colony. However, it appears that in the views of some Indian leftists, the principal aspect of semi-colony is “colony” and not the “semi”. Pre-liberation China was essentially a colony but not as directly ruled by one power as India. Is post-1947 India like pre-1949 China? In his bold defense in the "Hyderabad Conspiracy Case" in 1972, the veteran communist leader, the late T. Nagi Reddy (India Mortgaged, Victory Press, Vijaywada, 1978) attempted to establish this by presenting data on the extensive financial and political control of India by the US and USSR (which had turned social imperialist, according to him and many of us, by this time, i.e., 1970s).

However, the presence of foreign capital by itself does not make a country a semi-colony; if this were so almost every country, including the US, will arrive at the status of a semi-colony. Indeed countries like Cuba, by no means a semi-colony, are craving for foreign investments and constantly complaining about the US sanctions against such investment.

It may be assumed that a country which is a semi-colony primarily functions in the interest of its imperialist masters at the cost of its national interests as was true for Chiang Kai Shek's China. Is this what India is doing? And is India's foreign policy geared to serve foreign powers, especially the US? It is pathetic to hear that those who trumpeted the subservience (the author included) of India through the years are now saying that the US-India nuclear deal will compromise the traditionally independent foreign policy of India. It would be more prudent to say that the nuclear deal merely proves that the analysis of India being a semi-colony has been incorrect all along. So nothing spectacular has happened.

The US-India nuclear deal, which might not even materialize, has caused a furor in Indian left circles, which contend that by agreeing to this deal India has surrendered its sovereignty and independent fgn policy. In Marxist terms, there are only two ways to examine the foreign policy of any country - either it is based on proletarian internationalism or it is based on the national interest. One can argue that neither the policy of the pre-Khrushchev Soviet Union nor of pre-Deng Tsiao Peng China was based on proletarian internationalism. Stalin signed a pact with Hitler based (putatively) on the USSR national interest and then gave a call for a United Front against fascism once Germany's attack on the Soviet Union became imminent; the motive did not change.

The thaw in Sino-US relations leading to the hearty welcome of Nixon and Kissinger occurred during Mao Zedong's time. So what has stood the test of time is that all countries follow a policy in their national interest. And the Indo-US nuclear deal is just another instance of two countries agreeing to a deal, both in their own national interests; at its worst, the nuclear deal, if it occurs, might place some constraints on India's nuclear bomb program.

This does not mean that the perception and analysis of national interest by current political leaders always proves correct. It is very likely that India has much to gain by building ties with Iran than by signing a deal with the US. It is also possible that India thinks a nuclear Iran is not in its national interest. On the other hand, the US is a major economic and military power and it is possible that maintaining a viable nuclear energy option is in India's national interest.

The Indian Prime Minister has declared from Red Fort that India will never surrender its sovereignty. Why should he be less trustworthy than the left? Why shouldn't India sign a deal with the US if it is in its national interest? So the debate could be whether or not the deal benefits India or not rather than on the fancy assumption that India has sold itself to a marauding and aggressive imperial power. The Indian left specializes in tackling non-issues and ignoring real issues of concern to the marginalized and deprived masses. The US-India nuclear deal provides another occasion to the left to launch into this diversion.