Dow shalt be gassed

More than two decades later, the UPA government faces a critical choice. Either defend the Bhopal gas victims, or reject the victims and mollycoddle Dow to promote 'development' through sleazy capital

Praful Bidwai Delhi

The Indian Institutes of Technology don't even remotely resemble what might be called engineering versions of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, known for its Left-of-Centre orientation and tradition of radical social activism. Most IIT students and faculty are highly conservative. They rarely discuss issues such as corporate ethics and their own social responsibility as prospective executives and managers of multinational or Indian companies, many of which routinely visit their campuses for recruitment and to sponsor various events. So when more than 1,200 IIT alumni demand that their institutes have nothing to do with the major US multinational Dow Chemical, and when IIT after IIT refuses Dow permission for campus recruitment or rejects its sponsorship of research or conferences, it's time to sit up and take note.  Similarly, when thousands of farmers successfully block the construction of an R&D centre by Dow at Chakan near Pune since mid-January, and when a former Bombay High Court judge joins their agitation, we must recognise that something unusual is happening. Simply put, Dow has replaced Union Carbide Corporation as the prime symbol of corporate criminality, greed, social irresponsibility and misanthropy. At the centre of this identity is Bhopal, which witnessed history's worst-ever chemical accident. The gas disaster killed more than 3,000 people within a week, and poisoned another 200,000. Another 20,000 have since perished from grave chemical injuries to their lungs, other organs and the immune system. And many more are condemned to live in ill-health, pain and suffering. Carbide was hated and despised not only because its faulty design and recklessly unsafe operation of the Bhopal plant caused the accident in December 1984, but because it traded its civil liability for the insignificant sum of $470 million - or barely twice the magnitude of its insurance cover — through an egregiously collusive settlement with the Indian government, rubber-stamped by the Supreme Court.   Dow bought Carbide in 2001. Both logically and legally, Dow took over Carbide's assets and liabilities, but has been in denial about the liabilities ever since. These are primarily two — responsibility to clean up the Bhopal factory site of the 9,000-plus tonnes of assorted toxic chemicals that remain, including carcinogens,  as well as treat and compensate some 25,000 people who have been consuming water contaminated by the plant; and secondly, criminal liability in respect of Carbide, its subsidiaries, directors and executives for culpable homicide.  The Supreme Court has unambiguously ruled that the criminal liability survives. Dow inherits that liability. But Carbide has refused to stand trial in an Indian court on the homicide charge. And Dow claims that being an American company, it's not subject to Indian jurisdiction. The Indian government pretends that former Carbide chairman Warren Anderson cannot be served an arrest warrant because he's untraceable-when his New York address is well-known.  Dow is eyeing the large Indian market and wants to invest here — but only if it's let off the liability hook. This can only be done if the government shields it and colludes with it, just as it did with Carbide in 1989. Dow has drafted a staggering array of powerful corporate CEOs, diplomats and officials to mount pressure on the Manmohan Singh government to allow it to walk away from its liability.  Dow has been lobbying the government directly, through the US-India CEO Forum, of which its president Andrew N Liveris is a prominent member, and through the US government and embassy. It's holding out the carrot of investment. Among those who have pleaded its case are Ratan Tata, co-chair of the forum, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Finance Minister P Chidambaram, Commerce Minister Kamal Nath, and Indian ambassador to the US, Ronen Sen. Last April, even the Cabinet Secretary circulated a note recommending that the liability issue be dropped in the interests of the "scope of investments in this sector". Hard evidence of this, spread over 55 pages, obtained through an RTI application, is available at www.bhopal.net/pmo.html.  The government's kid-gloves approach to Dow is evident in its failure to act against its illegal sale of Carbide's proprietary technologies and processes, on which it has earned a profit of millions. Carbide was proclaimed an absconder from the law in 1992.  However, Dow isn't going unopposed or unchallenged. The Union Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilisers has held Dow legally liable for cleaning up the plant site, and demanded in court that the company deposit Rs 100 crore as initial payment for the cost of decontamination. More important, the disaster's victims have waged an unrelenting, courageous and extraordinarily hard battle to bring Dow to justice. For the second time in two years, the survivors have marched all the way from Bhopal to Delhi. In 2006, they ended a hunger strike after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh promised to establish a coordination committee (a diluted version of the high-level commission for relief, rehabilitation, decontamination demanded by the victims), and also to take legal action against Dow.  Fifty of them are again in Delhi to demand that Singh act on his assurance. Backing them are civil society groups and conscientious citizens who are acutely aware of the gross injustices heaped on them: average compensation of under Rs 10,000 for lifelong injury and disability amidst unemployment, Rs one to two lakh for death, paid after long years, and ruthless extortion by corrupt officials and money lending sharks.  Indeed, 23 years after the disaster, the survivors deserve a New Deal.  They are fighting not only for fair compensation, but also to reaffirm the notion of human dignity and remind this society that it cannot even remotely claim to be civilised if horrible injustices go unpunished. The Manmohan Singh government faces a critical choice. Either it upholds the rule of law and defends the victims who have already suffered grievously for long years, or it thwarts the victims, and mollycoddles Dow in the interests of promoting "development" through sleazy capital. The second course will further magnify the wrong done to the survivors and rub salt into their wounds. It's of such injustices, injuries and insults that the recipes for Naxalism and extremism are made.