Bhopal Gas Tragedy: An Analysis
Union Carbide Corporation is one of the oldest chemical and polymers company in the U.S. and currently employs more than 3,800 employees. In 1920, its researchers developed an economical way to make ethylene from natural gas, giving birth to the modern petrochemicals industry. Today, Union Carbide possesses some of the industry's most advanced process and catalyst technologies, and operates some of the most cost-efficient, large-scale production facilities in the world.
Union Carbide primarily produces chemicals and polymers that undergo one or more further conversions by customers before reaching consumers. Some of these materials are high-volume commodities, while others are specialty products meeting the needs of smaller market niches. The end-uses served include paints and coatings, packaging, wire and cable, household products, personal care, pharmaceuticals, automotive, textiles, agriculture and oil and gas.
Union Carbide is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company (TDCC) and sells most of the products it manufactures to TDCC.
1917 Union Carbide & Carbon Corporation is incorporated on Nov. 1, and acquires the stock of: Linde Air Products Co.; National Carbon Co., Inc.; Prest-O-Lite Co., Inc.; and Union Carbide Company (formed in 1898).
1919 George Curme files the first patent for commercial preparation of ethylene.
1920 Union Carbide establishes Carbide and Carbon Chemicals Corporation; also, the first commercial ethylene plant is completed at Clendenin, WVA - the start of the petrochemical industry.
1923 Eleven acres of land in South Charleston, WVA, are leased to set up a commercial scale plant, which will - in a few years - begin production of several ethylene-based chemicals.
1939 Bakelite Corporation merges into Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation. Bakelite, founded by Dr. Leo Baekeland, was a pioneer in plastics.
1941 Chemical production begins at Texas City, TX.
1947 Union Carbide purchases plant in Institute, WVA, which it had previously built and operated for the government for the production of butadiene and styrene at the start of World War II.
1954 Chemical production at Seadrift, TX, begins.
1957 Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation changes name to Union Carbide Corporation.
1960's The Mining and Metals Division is formed by combining the Metals and Ore Divisions and part of the Nuclear Division.
First chemical products are shipped from Taft, LA, plant in 1966.
1977 UNIPOL Process technology for making polyethylene is announced.
1978 Union Carbide completes major divestiture, selling nearly all of its European petrochemical operations to BP Chemicals Ltd.
1981 Union Carbide sells portion of its metals business.
1983 A major advance expanding the scope of the UNIPOL Process technology to include polypropylene is announced.
1984 In December, a gas leak at a Union Carbide India Limited plant in Bhopal, India, results in tragic loss of life in what is known as the Bhopal Disaster.
1985 In March, the Government of India (GOI) enacts the Bhopal Gas Leak Disaster Act that enables the GOI to act as the legal representative of the victims in claims arising of or related to the Bhopal disaster.
1986 Union Carbide divests a number of businesses: films packaging, major portions of metals business, battery products, specialty polymers and composites, home and automotive products and agricultural products business.
1989 Carbon products and industrial gases businesses become subsidiaries on Jan. 1. Carbon products business is renamed UCAR Carbon Company and industrial gas business is named Union Carbide Industrial Gases Inc.
Union Carbide and Union Carbide India Limited enter into a $470 million legal settlement with the Government of India, which represented all claimants in the Bhopal gas tragedy case. The settlement is affirmed by the Supreme Court of India, which describes it as "just, equitable and reasonable," and settles all claims arising out of the incident.
1991 Mitsubishi Corporation buys 50% stake in UCAR Carbon; UCAR Carbon later becomes a publicly traded independent company.
1992 Union Carbide Industrial Gases is spun-off as an independent company. Its name changes to Praxair, Inc.
1994 Sale of Union Carbide's 50.9% interest in Union Carbide India Limited to McLeod Russell is completed and the approximately $90 million from the sale is donated to a charitable trust to build a hospital in Bhopal for the victims.
1995 Union Carbide and Polimeri Europa S.r.l., form a 50-50 ethylene/polyethylene joint venture to produce polyethylene for the European market.
Union Carbide and two partners (Petrochemical Industries Company and Boubyan Petrochemical, both of Kuwait) form Equate Petrochemical Company to build and operate a petrochemicals complex in Kuwait. Products include ethylene, polyethylene and ethylene glycol.
1998 UCC and Petronas (the national oil company of Malaysia) form a joint venture to build a new petrochemical complex in Malaysia to produce ethylene oxide and its derivatives and oxo alcohols and oxo derivatives.
1999 On August 4, Union Carbide and The Dow Chemical Company announce an $11.6 billion transaction that would result in Union Carbide becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company.
2001 On February 6, Union Carbide Corporation becomes a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Company.
2006 Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York upholds the dismissal of the remaining claims in the 7-year-old Sajido Bano case versus Union Carbide Corporation, thereby denying plaintiffs' motions for class certification, property damages and remediation of the Bhopal plant site in India by Union Carbide. The ruling reaffirms UCC's long-held positions.
Introduction: Around 1 a.m. on Monday, the 3rd of December, 1984, in a densely populated region in the city of Bhopal, Central India, a poisonous vapor burst from the tall stacks of the Union Carbide pesticide plant. This vapor was a highly toxic cloud of methyl isocyanate. Of the 800,000 people living in Bhopal at the time, 2,000 died immediately, and as many as 300,000 were injured. In addition, about 7,000 animals were injured, of which about one thousand were killed. “A series of studies made five years later showed that many of the survivors were still suffering from one or several of the following ailments: partial or complete blindness, gastrointestinal disorders, impaired immune systems, post traumatic stress disorders, and menstrual problems in women. A rise in spontaneous abortions, stillbirths, and offspring with genetic defects was also noted.” (The Bhopal Disaster) This incident we now refer to as the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, which has also been called “Hiroshima of the Chemical Industry” one of the worst commercial industrial disasters in history.(Cohen)
The Tragedy: Possible Causes The post-accident analysis of the process showed that the accident started when a tank containing methyl isocyanate (MIC) leaked. MIC is an extremely reactive chemical and is used in production of the insecticide carbaryl. It is presumed that the scientific reason for the accident at Bhopal is that water entered the tank where about 40 cubic meters of MIC was stored. When water and MIC mixed, an exothermic chemical reaction started, producing a lot of heat. As a result, the safety valve of the tank burst because of the increase in pressure. This burst was so violent that the coating of concrete around the tank also broke. It is presumed that between 20 and 30 tonnes of MIC were released during the hour that the leak took place. The gas leaked from a 30 m high chimney and this height was not enough to reduce the effects of the discharge. The reason was that the high moisture content (aerosol) in the discharge when evaporating, gave rise to a heavy gas which rapidly sank to the ground. The weather egged on this process. The conditions on the fateful day were typical for a clear night in the region, with a weak wind which frequently changed direction, which in turn helped the gas to cover more area in a shorter period of time (about one hour). The weak wind and the weak vertical turbulence caused a slow dilution of gas and thus allowed the poisonous gas to spread over considerable distances. (Chemical Accidents...)
Many different terms have been used to describe the events in Bhopal that early morning of December 3, 1984: accident, disaster, catastrophe, crisis and also as sabotage, conspiracy, massacre, and experiment, whichever best suited the arguments that would help to pin the ‘blame’ on somebody. In his book titled The Bhopal Tragedy: Language, Logic and Politics in the Production of a Hazard, the authorWilliam Bogard “Each of these descriptions, in its own way, minimizes the problem of human agency and intention, and thus refuses to address directly the issue of responsibility.”(ix) Bogard goes on to point out that the best way to describe this incidence would be a tragedy because, “In calling Bhopal a tragedy, we are still permitted to say that intention and agency were involved in how the event unfolded and that responsibility must ultimately rest with someone or some group. But unlike saying that Bhopal was the deliberate result of sabotage, a conspiracy, or some diabolical experiment involving human guinea pigs- charges that are virtually impossible to prove in any case- a tragedy, in contrast, emerges out of a complex of confused and misguided intentions, many of which may be honorable in themselves but when forged to the actual chain of events produce the worst possible outcome.”(Bogard, ix) In the last twelve years, numerous studies have been conducted on the incident and there are numerous deductions. In most of the studies, the two main agencies analyzed were the Union Carbide Corporation and the Indian Government of the Late Primeminister Rajiv Gandhi and the Madhya Pradesh state government of Arjun Singh. One of the main reasons for the tragedy was found to be a result of a combination of human factors and an incorrectly designed safety system. “A portion of the safety equipment at the plant had been non-operational for four months and the rest failed. When the plant finally sounded an alarm--an hour after the toxic cloud had escaped--much of the harm had already been done.”(The Bhopal Disaster). Union Carbide itself believed the theory that the tragedy resulted when “ a disgruntled plant employee, apparently bent on spoiling a batch of methyl isocyanate, added water to a storage tank”(Browning). Still others, like the many experts in industrial safety, believe that the tragedy was preventable, arguing that it was the due to “....the negligence on the part of the Union Carbide Corporation and its corporate subsidiary Union Carbide of India Ltd.(UCIL), which had the responsibility for taking care of the day-to-day operations of the facility”(Bogard 4). The corporation and its subsidiary were also charged with corporate irresponsibility for pursuing the profits instead of the safety and hazard standards. The Madhya Pradesh State government had not mandated any safety standards and Union Carbide failed to implement its own (i.e. US) safety rules, apparently comfortable in the knowledge that it was not contravening Indian regulation. “The Bhopal plant experienced six accidents between 1981 and 1984, at least three of which involved MIC or phosgene, a highly poisonous gas used in World War I and a component in the manufacture of MIC. The accidents were generally small scale- one worker was killed in 1981- but official inquiries required by law were often shelved or tended to minimize the government’s or the company’s role”(Bogard 5). It is noted that it was probably this pattern of neglect that failed to bring about the much needed change in the malfunctioning safety equipment and improperly trained workers at the chemical plant. Even so, this negligent behavior on the part of Union Carbide regarding safety standards raised little concern among the citizens of Bhopal. So, why were the people of Bhopal so indifferent when voicing their concerns on the safety factors in the Union Carbide plant? Why was nothing done about the defective safety equipment? To understand this, it is important to understand that India is a poor nation. The country needed pesticides to protect her agricultural production. MIC is used to produce pesticides that control insects which would in turn, help increase production of food - central to India’s Green Revolution, which was ironically, US imposed. Initially, India imported the MIC from the United States. In an attempt to achieve industrial self-sufficiency, India invited Union Carbide to set up a plant in the state of Madhya Pradesh to produce methyl isocyanate. The license was given to them on the belief that the chemical industry would provide the desperately needed jobs and capital for the people of the country. To the people of the city of Bhopal, Union Carbide was a highly respected , technically advanced Western company that would bring them the jobs they needed. This coupled with political power and scientific expertise worked together to changed the people’s perception of what was dangerous and more importantly what was safe.
The Analysis: Union Carbide’s Reaction Through all the months immediately following the incident, Union Carbide never directly apologized to the Indian government and her people or to the people of Bhopal. The Indian Government, in response to the tragedy and pressure from the Indian people, filed a compensation lawsuit against the UCC for an estimated $3 billion. On the other hand, Union Carbide strongly felt that the Indian government was to blame. This was the headlines in The New York Times on Dec. 17, 1986, The Union Carbide Corporation in Dec., 1986, while continuing to deny liability, filed a countersuit against the government of India and the State of Madhya Pradesh regarding the 1984 disaster at Carbide's Bhopal subsidiary. The company is charging the governments with "contributory" responsibility for the leak of poisonous gases, saying both governments knew of the toxicity of methyl isocyanate but failed to take adequate precautions to prevent a disaster. The government of India has sued Union Carbide for at least $3 billion in compensation for the victims of the leak of methyl isocyanate.(D4) This was iterated in the document titled Union Carbide: Disaster at Bhopal , written by Jackson B. Browning for the Union Carbide Corporation. At the time of the Bhopal tragedy, Jackson B. Browning was the Vice President responsible for the Health, Safety, and Environmental Programs in the corporation. He was one of the spokesmen for the corporation during the crisis in 1984 and was also in charge of the teams that responded to and investigated the tragedy. He retired from UCC in 1986.
Browning’s document outlines the various aspects of the Bhopal tragedy from the perspective of the Union Carbide Corporation. In the very second paragraph on page one of the article, the author notes that the cause for the accident, as believed by the parent company- “Although it was not known at the time, the gas was formed when a disgruntled plant employee, apparently bent on spoiling a batch of methyl isocyanate, added water to a storage tank.”(Browning). This was the main argument by UCC in their defense and they still maintain the same. The corporation needed to divert the blame for the tragedy from themselves to something or somebody else, especially one that would catch the attention of anybody remotely interested in the incident. They used “sabotage”. What I found interesting was that on the one hand Browning called the incident of December 3rd a “massive industrial disaster” and on the other hand, a premeditated action- a sabotage. To me, the two don’t fit together. Disaster would mean ‘even if we knew, we could have done nothing about it’ and sabotage on the other hand would mean ‘if the process had not been tampered with, there would have been no leak, no loss of life’. But this was clearly not the case. Studies conducted on this incidence by a Dr. Paul Shrivastava, tell a completely different story. Dr. Paul Shrivastava, an Associate Professor of Business in NewYork University and Executive Director Industrial Crisis Institute Inc., NY conducted studies that revealed that Bhopal was neither an isolated incident nor the first of its kind in the corporation. There had been many accidents of similar nature in UCC's American plants prior to the Bhopal accident. He found that 28 major MIC leaks had occurred in UCC’s West Virginia plant during the five years preceding the Bhopal incident, the last one occurring only a month before. His studies found that the ‘sabotage’ theory was UCC’s way to avoid paying the huge amount that the Indian government had demanded as settlement. Interestingly, UCC, till date, has been unsuccessful in presenting any evidence to prove that theory and has never disclosed the name of the supposedly guilty employee.(Ahuja)
All the previous accidents in the other Union Carbide plants were not highly publicized events, and hence, there were no repercussions that UCC had to face. But in the case of the Bhopal tragedy, the magnitude of the incident worked against them and made it difficult for them to distance themselves from it. In his article, discussing the theories of image restoration, Benoit notes that there are two components to an attack on one’s image: an undesirable act has been committed and you are responsible for that action. “Only if both of these conditions are believed to be true by the relevant audiences is the actor’s reputation at risk...”(71). The Bhopal incident was too big for the public to ignore and added to everything else, there was a huge loss of human life. This naturally drew attention. Even Browning notes in his article that “ the scope of the Bhopal tragedy made it to “page one” material in the weeks and months that followed.” Union Carbide was under attack from all sides as news of the leak spread and they needed to make arguments to achieve one particular goal- “restoring or protecting their reputation”(Benoit 71). Benoit argues that “....when our reputation is threatened, we feel compelled to offer explanations, defenses, justifications, rationalizations, apologies or excuses for our behavior”(70). But these defenses and excuses needed to be made to the audience that mattered the most to you. To the Union Carbide Corporation in the United States, the audiences were the people around them in the US and the media.
The Press seemed to be the main focus in Browning document. The tone of the document suggested that the main audiences to pacify would be the media and once that was done the corporation would have definitely ‘saved face’. The other relevant audiences needed to be identified carefully. In the document, Browning has a sub-section titled “Keeping Vital Audiences Informed”. Under this section, Browning himself clearly identifies that audiences they were responding to: the most visible-the media, and other interested parties like the customers, shareholders, suppliers and other employees. Nowhere in this whole section was there a mention of the people of India or the people of Bhopal. There seemed an urgency for the corporation to assure the people of the United States who were their main stockholders, that such an incident would not happen here. Browning notes in the document that Warren Anderson, the then chairman of the UCC, and he were summoned to appear before the House Commerce and Energy Committee to answer one question- “Can it happen here?” It seems like this pretty much proved that the process of image restoration for the corporation was not all that difficult because of the large distance between the ‘vital’ audiences and the site of the disaster Bhopal. In his discussion of the tragedy, Benoit notes, The unusual aspect of Carbide’s public image is the fact that the public believed Union Carbide was responsible for Bhopal and had not told the truth about it- yet had a generally favorable overall opinion about the company. This may reflect a partial lack of interest in events that occurred in distant lands and suggests that salience of the accusations to the audience of an important factor of image restoration.(140) This shows an important factor of restoring one’s image in the eyes of the public depends to a great extent on how relevant the unfavorable event is in their eyes, in other words, how close to home is the tragedy.
As the first step towards image restoration, Browning’s main strategy seems to have been to distance the corporation from the site of the disaster. Browning, very early in the document, points out that the Union Carbide Corporation had only 50.9% stake in the affiliate, the Union Carbide India Ltd. He also makes clear that all the employees in the company were Indians and that “...the last American employee at the site had left two years[1982] before.” Union Carbide Corporation maintained that it did not have any hold over its Indian affiliate. The UCC argued that the day-to-day working in UCIL was independent of the parent company and hence it was not to be held responsible. But most of the research showed that this was not really true. In spite of denials, it appears the Union Carbide company in Danbury, Connecticut had substantial authority over its affiliate......Many of the day to day details, such as staffing and maintenance, were left to Indian officials, but every major decision, such as the annual budget, had to be cleared with the American headquarters, and directives were often issued from the US.(Bogard 28) And in addition to this, by both Indian and US laws, a parent company (UCC in this case) holds full responsibility for any plants they operate through subsidiaries and in which they have the majority stake.Hence, it seemed like the main aim of making an argument that UCIL was independent could be for two purposes: 1) to avoid paying the large sum of $3,000 million that India demanded as compensation or 2) to find a ‘scapegoat’ to divert the blame onto. In his article, Keith Michael Hearit, an Assistant Professor in Communication Studies, Purdue University, discusses the concept of scapegoating with respect to saving face, “ .....instances in which corporations cannot deny the validity of the charges, they are forced to deal with the issue of guilt and responsibility to restore their social legitimacy. At such time, corporate apologist offer individual/group dissociations. An individual/group dissociation is a scapegoating strategy by which a rhetor seeks too transfer guilt to another.” (8) In this case, UCC, by noting that UCIL had an all Indian workforce and the last American employed had left two years before, attempted to restore its image by differentiating the affiliate from the rest of the organization. This is one of the many modes of image restoration discussed by Benoit.
William Benoit has an interesting and detailed discussion of the theory of Image Restoration in his book titled Accounts, Excuses and Apologies. He lists five categories that, he argues, identify instances of image restoration strategies in a defensive discourse: · Denial · Evading Responsibility · Reducing Offensiveness of Event · Corrective Action · Mortification Defense by denial can be done in two ways- simply denying that the accused committed the act or by shifting the blame on something that the accused can distance itself from. The accused could also evade responsibility either by claiming to have been provoked or defeasibility -claiming lack of information, or declare that the event was an accident or claim that the act was done with good intentions. The third method that Benoit talks about is by reducing the perceived offensiveness of the act by either minimizing or bolstering or differentiation or transcendence or in turn attack the accuser or by compensation which reduces the perceived severity of the injury. Another strategy used for image restoration is corrective action. Audiences may well forgive the accused if the accused is promise to remedy the problem and never do it again. The last strategy is mortification, the sincere apology. This is often a never used strategy.(73-74)
Union Carbide used some of these strategies to restore its reputation after the gas leak in Bhopal. One of the strategies employed is that of ‘corrective action’ and stands out in an interesting section of Browning’s document titled “Safety Emphasized”. Under this section, Browning tries to establishe that Bhopal was a stray incident and should not be held against the corporation because “No analysis of Union Carbide’s reaction to the Bhopal tragedy is possible without recognizing the considerable emphasis the company and its affiliates had placed on safe operations”(Browning). To lend credibility to the corporation’s cause, Browning cites an international management specialist, Dr. Richard Robinson, a professor in Massachusetts Institute of Technology, commenting on the tragedy as saying that Union Carbide was one of those multinational corporations who were very dedicated to the safety aspect of their plants and that “ it is particularly depressing that it was Union Carbide which was involved”. Browning notes that considering the company’s strict safety policies that the news of the Bhopal tragedy was “astounding”. Arguments in this section are more devoted to explaining that it would be unfair to assume that the accusations that UCC was not careful with safety, were true. It is, in a sense, a form of apologia- the corporation is utilizing the “act/essence dissociation. An act/essence dissociation distances the apologist from the wrongdoing by arguing that while the wrongdoing admittedly occurred, it was an isolated act that does not represent the apologist’s true nature.”(Hearit 9) And this is often followed by the next step -to point out how the corporation has worked to remedying the unfortunate incidence. This is exactly what Union Carbide Corporation did.
Under the two sections titled “First Steps At Control” and “Contingency Planning and Experience Help”, Browning lists out all the things that UCC did immediately following the first call they got about the tragedy. He notes that vital decisions were made - the UCC facility making MIC in the US was shut down; a task force led by the chairman of UCC, Warren Anderson, was set up; medical and technical teams were dispatched to the site of the tragedy “within 24 hours”. He also noted that “Union Carbide had a contingency plan for emergencies” The people of UCC worked together, with the press and the ‘vital audiences’, in to help in dealing with the “terrible facts of the tragedy”. What is interesting is that most of the research done on the incident points to the fact that Union Carbide did not have any kind of emergency plans in its Indian subsidiary. So much so that when the accident occurred and people started pouring into the hospitals in Bhopal complaining about the various ailments, the hospital staff had on idea of what had happened or what to do. “The city health officials had not been informed of the toxicity of the chemicals used at the Union Carbide factory. There were no emergency plans or procedures in place and no knowledge of how to deal with the poisonous cloud.”(The Bhopal Disaster)
Browning ends his document noting, with confidence, that the approach used by UCC at the time of the disaster were in his opinion “correct ones”. He also notes that today’s Union Carbide Corporation is a very different company. The Corporation now works twice as hard on its safety operations and that “money and staff were committed to those objectives”.
Conclusion Thirteen years later not much has changed. Union Carbide India Ltd. is an abandoned site in Bhopal. UCC sold its share of the affiliate. In October of 1991, the Indian Supreme Court upheld a settlement, which had been appealed from a lower court decision of 1989, under which Union Carbide had to pay $470 million in compensation of all claims. In 1996, at Union Carbide's annual meeting, William H. Joyce, its chief executive, declared that the company had no intention of doing anything further for the victims. This resolve was apparently reversed, as the company announced that it is planning to support the building of a $ 20 million hospital for the victims of the Bhopal tragedy through a London based independent charitable trust..
Today, Union Carbide is a six billion dollar company, whose worldwide sales percentage is increasing every financial year. It seems like their image restoration strategy worked for them. “Union Carbide may have been aided in this matter by an unconscious ethnocentric bias in the public. It is reasonable to assume that if this terrible tragedy had occurred here in the United states (rather than in a foreign country), its image would have suffered even more.” (Benoit, 141).
Bhopal was one of the worst industrial disasters in history. For all its horrors, the tragedy had at least one beneficial consequence- the intense public debate that followed the tragedy made more private citizens aware of the hazards of the chemical industry as a whole. It put the lethal nature of the chemical industry in out in the open. In response to this, the Chemical Manufacturing Association created the ‘Responsible Care Program’ that is now being implemented worldwide in at least 22 countries. The Program's aim is to improve community awareness, emergency response and employee health and
Nearly 23 years after an accident at a Union Carbide chemical plant killed thousands here, there are signs that a second tragedy is in the making. New environmental studies indicate that tons of toxic material dumped at the old plant have now seeped into the groundwater, affecting a new generation of Bhopal citizens.
The Indian government - long criticized for its lax regulation of Union Carbide and reluctance to pursue legal claims - now says it's ready to hold parent company Dow Chemical liable for the ground contamination.
For many, the Bhopal litigation serves as a test case for India's relationship with foreign businesses and investors. But for the victims of Bhopal, the gas tragedy is a matter of justice, compensation, and safety - all of which, they say, has been a long time in coming.
While Union Carbide settled a civil suit in 1989 by agreeing to pay victims a lump sum of $470 million, a criminal trial against the company and its top officials is entering its 15th year, with less than half of the few hundred witnesses having testified. And the compensation process has taken so long that the settlement fund has nearly doubled in value; Officials haven't decided how to dole out nearly $333 million in unplanned interest.
In the meantime, government inaction on water contamination may be affecting untold thousands who were seemingly left untouched by the poisonous gas accident of Dec. 3, 1984.
"Our state pollution control board in December filed a report that confirms that there is contamination of the groundwater, and we will give this to the Supreme Court to settle," says Babu Lal Gaur, state minister for rehabilitation of the Bhopal gas victims, in an interview with the Monitor.
He notes that these studies were kept under wraps by the previous Congress Party government, but that the new state government, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party, will pursue the case with vigor. "The Dow company, they are responsible for this, and the state government wants Dow to clean up, after the decision of our Supreme Court."
A Union Carbide spokesman says that the company and its sole shareholder, the Dow Chemical Company, cannot be held liable for any waste cleanup at the plant or any contamination of the ground water. "There is no legal foundation for application of liability," says John Musser, the Union Carbide spokesman, speaking from Midland, Mich., headquarters.
Union Carbide took "moral responsibility" for the tragedy, says Mr. Musser, but never had legal responsibility for the Bhopal plant, since that plant was operated by a separate Indian subsidiary, Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL).
At the time of the accident, Union Carbide owned 50.9 percent of UCIL's shares, but severed its relationship with UCIL in 1994. UCIL did some cleanup at the site, Musser says, "but did not complete the work," and the plant site was later bought by another Indian company, Everready Industries India Limited. Today, the plant site has been transferred to the legal responsibility of the state government itself, he says. "The chain of responsibility is very clear and Union Carbide has not been a party in that."
For Abdul Jabbar, a community activist here, a case establishing clear responsibility has been a long time in coming. Mr. Jabbar has been involved in the Bhopal gas victims' cause since that first night on Dec. 3, 1984, when he woke up to the sounds of screams on the street, and gathered up his family to flee.
"This tragedy is living on," says Jabbar, who runs a seamstress workshop for widows of gas victims. "The groundwater for 3 to 5 kilometers from the site is contaminated, and this comes 20 years after the fact. The state public health agency has conducted two studies proving the water is unfit for drinking, but still people use the hand pumps."
Jabbar says he believes that the previous Congress government withheld information about water contamination at the Union Carbide site because it was the Congress government that welcomed Union Carbide to Bhopal in 1969, and Congress led governments that regulated it thereafter. The current government's hands are not dirty, he adds, so they are happy to blame Congress and move on with the issue. Officials with the Congress Party did not return calls for this report.
The scientific evidence of water contamination is mounting. By 2002, a number of environmental and public interest groups had collected samples from the soil, groundwater, fruits, and vegetables, finding high levels of heavy metals such as nickel, chromium, mercury, and lead, along with other toxic materials such as dichlorobenzines, all of which were used at the Union Carbide plant.
Contamination levels in soil and water samples at the plant were more than 10 times higher than in surrounding areas, indicating that the plant was the source of the contamination. Mercury and lead contamination have even found their way into samples of breast milk.
There is one more cruel twist. Back in 1984, the wind direction carried the methyl isocyanate gas toward the south. But now, the contaminated groundwater is heading north, carrying the poisons to a completely new population.
Holding Dow Chemical responsible has its risks, of course. India's central government has opened its doors to foreign business, including dozens of new chemical factories scattered along the Arabian Sea coast, from Bombay to the southern tip of Kerala and up the east coast of Tamil Nadu.
Any new legal action in the 20-year-old Bhopal case could scare off foreign investors who might fear an unending barrage of litigation in the case of an accident. Some survivors here say that Indian regulations on industry remain lax and sporadic, and that a future Bhopal-style tragedy is still possible.
Down at Shahjahani Park - a small patch of grass from which tall mango trees grow - a meeting of old men and women promises to keep the struggle going.
Among them is Raisa Bi, one of more than 500,000 Bhopal residents who survived that night but continues to suffer from its effects. She works six days a week stitching clothes at the workshop run by Jabbar's group. Her disabled husband, himself a gas victim, cries every day she goes to work, she says. "He asks, 'How do I go on living my life like this?'"
While she is encouraged that the state government is now showing interest in water contamination, she believes that the only people who truly care about the Bhopal gas tragedy are those who have survived it.