WeeklyWorker

16.06.2010

Union Carbide gets away with murder

Jim Moody looks at the worst recorded industrial accident and US double standards

While president Barack Obama’s threats against “British Petroleum” continue unabated, a US transnational has been getting away with murder.

In the early hours of December 3 1984, a pesticide manufacturing plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, right in the heart of India, violently ejected an enormous toxic cloud. Storage tank E-610 had overheated and vented 42 tonnes of methyl isocyanate (MIC) and its poisonous breakdown products in one burst, which then spread as heavy vapour over nearby populated areas. Apart from MIC, the lethal mixture contained phosgene, hydrogen cyanide, nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide.

Eight thousand people in the immediate neighbourhood lost their lives immediately, with a similar number dying over subsequent weeks. More than 170,000 had to seek medical treatment at the time; till today, at least 200,000 individuals bear various degrees of permanent injury. Immediately after it occurred, the Delhi Science Forum sent a team of scientists to Bhopal, whose extensive report was presented to the press on December 18 1984. One of its major conclusions was: “It is clear that the company’s drive for making profits and effecting economies has been at the expense of safety and well-being of its workers and that of the city’s population.”[1]

Union Carbide India Ltd (UCIL) operated the plant on behalf of its US parent, Union Carbide Corporation (UCC), but responsibility was cast adrift in the aftermath of the catastrophe. UCC executives to this day keep up the pretence that UCIL operated autonomously, which is a direct lie. UCIL’s first managing director and regional director for India, Edward Muñoz, swore an affidavit[2] in a Manhattan court in 1985 stating plainly that his warnings about the dangers of bulk storage of MIC were completely ignored by the parent company in the USA; he also made it clear that UCC held UCIL’s purse strings and took all the big operational decisions. Costs and personnel were cut, unsafe procedures used and safety provision reduced to criminally low levels - all to allow Union Carbide to produce a dangerous chemical on the cheap and store it with criminal negligence.

Under the 1985 Bhopal Gas Leak Act the government of India became sole trustee for toxic gas victims, allowing it to head off a lawsuit in the USA and thus protect Indian capital’s subservient relationship to the US. In response to the Indian government’s first claim of $3.3 billion compensation, UCC offered a measly $350 million. But, barely believably, the Indian government finally agreed to $470 million, which represented less than a 20th of what UCC had paid to similar victims in the USA. This news was corporate heaven, and UCC shares rose by seven percent on the very day the Indian supreme court sealed the deal. Becoming a subsidiary of Dow Chemicals Corporation in 2001 did not affect denial of responsibility in the slightest; if anything, under Dow the position has hardened. Questioned about the possibility of further claims from Bhopal victims after it acquired UCC in 2001, Dow representative Kathy Hunt was quoted as saying: “$500 is plenty for an Indian.”[3]

Earlier this month, over 25 years later, seven former employees of UCIL, including its then chairman, Keshub Mahindra, were convicted in a Bhopal court of causing death by negligence. Each was sentenced to two years in prison and a fine of Rs100,000 (about £1,500); they are all out on bail at present, pending appeal. An eighth former employee who was convicted died before sentencing.

UCC, its former chairman, Warren Anderson, and Union Carbide Eastern all ignored summonses from the Bhopal court on charges of culpable homicide. Although Anderson has been ‘on the run’ since the catastrophe in 1984, the US authorities have consistently refused to extradite him. BR Lall, the former joint director of the CBI who headed its investigation into Bhopal from April 1994 to July 1995, revealed in June this year that the CBI was “forced by ministry of external affairs [MEA] officials not to follow Anderson’s extradition”. Lall recalled: “There was enough evidence against Anderson and we were going ahead with investigations when MEA’s intervention slowed down the extradition process and he could never be brought to India.”[4] India’s bloggers are buzzing with indignation at this latest injustice toward the victims of Bhopal, heaping blame on Rajiv Gandhi, Arjun Singh and their Congress party.

Stung by the public reaction to the court’s verdict, Madhya Pradesh’s state government is now taking legal opinion on whether it can re-investigate the whole case. It even wants to see if the question of Anderson’s flight from justice can be brought back to court. Also feeling public heat on the issue, Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh this week resurrected the group of ministers committee on Bhopal, which many thought long dead and buried. Its remit is to report to cabinet within 10 days, having investigated under what circumstances Bhopal occurred, how punishment for some culprits was reduced and how Anderson was able to escape justice. Meanwhile the Bhopal victims’ group has been demanding that the government revive charges of culpable homicide against the accused.

Bhopal survivors and human rights activists went so far at the start of this week as to appeal to president Barack Obama for “real justice” in the case. They noted his tough stand on “corporate accountability” over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and, perhaps tongue in cheek, suggested he should also allow judicial processes to fix “responsibility of the corporations and individuals of the US responsible for the Bhopal tragedy.” They wondered if he could work with the “same sense of collaboration with the Indian government on this issue ... that you proclaim you have achieved with the Indian government on the issue of ‘global terrorism’ among other things.”[5]

Protection given to Anderson by US and Indian administrations past and present has reflected in microcosm their wider concerns over penalties or punishment for the US corporation, despite Union Carbide’s unequivocally intimate complicity with what happened in Bhopal. Indian scapegoats might have been offered up and there is also the, admittedly slim, possibility that the case against an ageing Anderson might be brought to life. But these are minor issues, compared to the way Union Carbide despoiled Bhopal and ended up killing thousands. But it appears that UCC will not be in the dock for its crimes either in India or the USA - its protection at all costs by previous administrations has been continued by Obama.

India’s largest ‘official communist’ party, the CPI (Marxist) damned the court verdict and called on the government to act - though it failed to mention the complicity of previous Indian governments. It is, however, rightly critical of pending legislation, though its criticism is framed in nationalist terms: “... the Civil Nuclear Liability Bill, which excludes foreign suppliers from any liability, may help more Warren Andersons.”[6] For its part, the second largest ‘official communist’ party, the CPI, considers that the “whole nation is shocked with the judgement” and “The government owes an explanation to the nation.”[7]

Bhopal remains the world’s worst ever industrial catastrophe. Yet even now, 390 tonnes of abandoned chemicals continue to leak into and pollute groundwater in the region, affecting tens of thousands who live nearby. US corporations and politicians, including its ignoble president, look the other way.

India’s working class movement and the Marxists within it need to grasp some nettles and be clear about culpability over Bhopal. A succession of governments have allowed corporations free rein to exploit India’s working class, gathering some development crumbs for Indian capitalism on the way. And then when things have gone disastrously wrong, as they did at Bhopal, they have done all they could to contain popular anger, taking scant recompense for damage inflicted - all in the name of maintaining the profitability of India for capitalism, whether home-grown or foreign.

Notes

  1. ‘Bhopal tragedy: looking beyond’, reprinted in Bhopal: industrial genocide? Hong Kong 1985.
  2. www.bhopal.net/source_documents/munoz%20affidavit1985.pdf
  3. ‘Dishonesty, fraud, breach of trust’ June 14: expressbuzz.com/nation/dishonesty-fraud-breach-of-trust/181303.html
  4. Times of India June 8: timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/6025567.cms
  5. www.thaindian.com/newsportal/uncategorized/bhopal-gas-victims-activists-approach-obama-for-justice_100380360.html
  6. cpim.org/content/bhopal-gas-case-verdict
  7. www.communistparty.in/2010/06/second-tragedy-of-bhopal.html