This night 30 years ago – the intervening
night of December 2-3, 1984 – around this hour (around 2 AM), the disaster was
fully out to engulf lives.
Thousands were killed in the gas leak
(Methyl Isocyanate – MIC) from the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal – some 4000 to
16000 killed, depending on which report you want to believe in – and hundreds
of thousands were crippled – around this hour of the night 30 years ago –
generations were left ruined, reeling from the chemical effects of gas and
their physiological impersonations.
Bhopal Disaster is an unmatched tale of
unison of corporate greed and government apathy that polluted the thinking of
the then ruling regime in the Mahatma’s land to the extent that they colluded
with the perpetrators of the Disaster to ship the main culprit, the then Union
Carbide CEO Warren Anderson, out of India, never to return again.
30 years later, the rehabilitation process
is still not complete.
30 years later, there are victims still
awaiting the compensation.
30 years, it is still an unending nightmare.
To make the circus of governance and
accountability more obnoxious, 26 years later, in 2010, the then India CEO of
Union Carbide and some other employees were sentenced two years in jail with a
fine of $2000, for causing ‘death due to negligence’ - the maximum possible
sentence as the extant Indian laws.
‘Death due to negligence’ had never sounded
so crippled before it.
Shouldn’t the whole System including its
top leadership be tried for the negligence that brought this disaster to us?
Shouldn’t the whole System including its
top leadership be tried for the negligence that made the rehabilitation process
an endless humiliation?
Shouldn’t the whole System including its
top leadership be tried for colluding with corporate greed and being a party in
Warren Anderson’s escape?
30 years of the tragedy – Bhopal Disaster –
one of the worst man-made industrial disasters killing and affecting scores of
human lives – the questions remain – waiting for answers – in Delhi, in Bhopal,
in India, even in the US (even if Warren Anderson is no more) – for the last 30
years..