Environmental Science

LESSON 43. CASE STUDY – BHOPAL DISASTER

Union Carbide is a multi-national corporation based in the United States of America. It has some 138 subsidiaries in 127 places. Union carbide has been criticized by environmentalists in America for its chemical manufactures which are regarded as terribly hazardous to nature and man. They are not allowed to put such factory in USA. It is said that the Canadian Government in 1972 asked the Union Carbide to wind up its MIC plant on the grounds of pollution and danger to public life. The same plant was dismantled and installed in Bhopal in 1980, and one wonders why the centre and the state governments welcomed this death trap which was outlawed by Canada.

In May, 1982, the head office of Union Carbide in Danbury (West Virgina, USA) had sent three top officials to go into the existing security measures in the Bhopal unit of the company and report to the head office. After going through various aspects of safety measures, the experts reported that:

1. The filling of the MIC tank is done manually and there is no scientific instrument available for back-up in case of error.

2.  the pressure gauge on the phosgene tank is out of order and there is no instrument to indicate the pressure of gas within the tank.

Further, it is known that MIC gas has to be stored below 8⁰ C which means under refrigeration but the refrigeration plant was out of order for a very long time. The mechanism for flaring or burning of the gas in case of leakage was  also not operational.

The Union carbide did not give importance to the report of their experts and install the effective safety measures. This has resulted in the disaster of December 2,1984, which Justice Krishna Iyer calls `Bhoposhima', being a mini- Hiroshima.

Such criminal negligence of the multi nationals in not adopting the necessary safety mechanisms a how that they consider the developing nations as "pollution havens", where they can obtain maximum profits at minimum costs, ignoring the lives and safety of population in these countries.

Bhopal offenders, including even officials of Government and Municipal corporations, and unquestionably the staff, high and low under the Union Carbide (India) may well be caught within the meshes of the penal provisions. Section 284 IPC is so widely worded and lends itself to such semantic liberty that those who rashly or negligently permit or start the manufacture of poisons which may endanger human life or even cause hurt or injury to any person are culpable. The Carbide culpables, the reckless officials who licenced the operations or renewed it, are within the punitive ring. The Government of India through an Ordinance assumed powers to file cases in the USA to claim damages for the victims of Bhopal tragedy. An attempt was in fact made to file a suit for compensation to the sufferers of this tragedy in the US courts. It was not admitted on the pretext that Union Carbide (India) is only a subsidiary of the Union Carbide, registered in India. Therefore, all its liabilities lie in India. Thus in spite of owning 50% shares, Union Carbide escaped the liability because the Indian concern is technically not a branch of the parent company based in USA.

Union Carbide also adopted another subterfuge by transferring most of their assets to another concern, which means that even if a case had been admitted in USA, and their liability proved, they would have hardly anything left in their coffers to pay.

In the mean time a case was filed in the Supreme Court of India. The Supreme Court in their judgement granted a sum of $470 million to the families of the victims, which was readily agreed to by the Union Carbide. The apparent reason for the ready agreement by the Union Carbide for the said amount was simply because it was much below the amount they would have to pay if such an accident had taken place in any developed country let alone the USA. A number of cases were soon filed by individual victims to this effect, thus causing a further delay even in the distribution of the said amount. Justice delayed is justice denied is aptly application in this particular case.

To conclude it is emphasized that

• Regularly measures in the form of legislation are needed to check the degradation of the environment.

• Both at natural and international levels laws were introduced to stop pollution.

• The constitution of India has provisions to make environmental legislations. One of the primary duties of the states and citizens is the obligation to protect and improve the environment. The Union government utilised this provision to pass various Acts in order to protect the environment from destruction.

• Legislation is not perfect. It has some drawbacks which come in the  way of its effective enforcement.

• Although the legislative measures are taken and the administrative set-up is satisfactory, it is difficult to enforce the legislation due to shortage of funds, lack of expertise and non-cooperation of the public.

• Bhopal gas tragedy took place due to negligence on the part of the authorities of the Union Carbide, which has resulted in the death of about 5,000 people and affected more than 2,00,000 people. The Supreme Court of India has sanctioned $ 470 million towards compensation to the victims, which is actually peanuts.