Bhopal: after 40 years, ongoing effects of world’s worst industrial disaster show environmental racism is alive and well
In the early hours of December 3 1984, 27 tonnes of toxic gas methyl isocyanate leaked from a storage tank at Union Carbide Corporation’s pesticide plant on the outskirts of the central Indian city of Bhopal. Amnesty International estimates that more than 22,000 people have died as a result of the leak and more than half a million people suffer permanent injury.
What would become the “world’s worst industrial disaster” continues to devastate lives 40 years on. The water of 200,000 people in 71 surrounding villages in Madhya Pradesh state is contaminated by tonnes of toxic waste. Children with birth defects and other medical conditions are still being born. The disaster has imposed hefty medical costs on people who were already poor, which is particularly difficult and cruel for families whose breadwinners died as a result of that night.
Union Carbide was accused of negligence and cutting costs in the build-up to the disaster. In 2008, eight former plant employees, all Indian, were the first company staff to be convicted of negligence since the incident. Former CEO Warren Anderson, an American citizen, was released hours after his arrest by Indian authorities under pressure by US officials in 1984. He died in 2014, at the age of 92, in a nursing home in Florida.
Union Carbide and the Indian government reached a settlement of US$470 million (£368 million) in 1989, with each survivor due to receive US$500 in compensation. This figure was agreed without consulting the survivors and was only designed to compensate the short-term impact to employees, not the enduring harm to women, children and the elderly.
Dow Chemical merged with Union Carbide in 2001 and has claimed that the settlement absolves them of further legal responsibility. In 2010, a five-bench panel of India’s Supreme Court dismissed a plea to review it, saying that “the question of compensation can’t be raked up three decades after the settlement”.
A 40-year struggle for justice
Environmental racism explains the disparate fates of the survivors and culprits of the Bhopal disaster, according to Amnesty International. This is where discrimination causes some people to bear the brunt of environmental degradation, violating their human rights in the process.
Despite the apparent stalemate, survivor groups have remained dogged in their fight for justice and accountability. I have documented some of these efforts in a theatre play, We All Live in Bhopal, which catalogues the first 30 years of the struggle. The play shows the resilience of survivors and their communities, and the hope which inspires their activism.
Women survivors are the backbone of the struggle for global awareness and legislative redress. Champadevi Shukla and Rashida Bee organised a 19-day hunger strike in New Delhi in 2002 following the announcement of the merger with Dow Chemical. This coincided with a month-long relay hunger strike in Bhopal, and similar efforts in ten countries by 1,500 people.
Their sustained efforts won them the 2004 Goldman Environmental Prize, which “honours ordinary people who take extraordinary actions to protect the planet”. Shukla and Bee used their prize money to set up the Chingari Trust, which helps children with disabilities stemming from the disaster.
Bhopal prompted a host of environmental protection efforts by the Indian government, including the Environmental Protection Act of 1986, which created a legal framework for the government to deal with everything from pollutants to industrial waste disposal. Nonetheless, the country’s rapid economic growth concerns some survivors who fear another Bhopal. The most recent report of the Federation of India Chambers of Commerce and Industries ranked industrial accidents as the third highest risk to the country’s business operations.
For now, Bhopal’s survivors continue to wage their struggle for justice.
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M. Sudhir Selvaraj does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.