Twenty-five years ago, during the first few minutes of the morning of December 3, 1984, the explosion of a tank at a Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal led to the worst industrial disaster in world history. Within a few hours of the incident thousands were dead – by the end of the week the numbers killed reached 7000-8000!
Victims of the Bhopal disaster 1984
In total about 600,000 other people were affected by the gas that was released into the atmosphere, succumbing to various types of cancers and other chronic diseases. By the end of 1999 the office of the medical commissioner in Bhopal had directly linked the deaths of 22,149 of the city’s residents to this event!
To this day no court has condemned those guilty of causing this “accident”! The amount of compensation that Union Carbide was eventually forced to pay is a pittance for a huge American multi-national company and its owners and managers have basically got away with causing this massive disaster.
What happened on that night?
On the night of December 2, 1984, tank number 610, which according to Union Carbide’s own regulations should at no time have been more than half full, was 90 per cent full. The content of the tank was at least 40 tons of methyl isocyanate (MIC), a lethal compound used in the production of insecticides. A broken valve had allowed water to enter the tank. The plant’s cooling system had also broken down, and for the sake of cutting costs, the number of people on the MIC section’s night shift had been reduced from six down to two.
Immediately after the night shift workers noticed the increase in pressure inside the MIC tank, it exploded. A lethal cloud was released in the direction of the shanty town surrounding the factory. MIC began breaking up into its various constituent compounds, including hydrocyanic acid. This acid disintegrates the body’s internal organs, especially lungs, heart and brain, and prevents the transfer of oxygen into the blood. The victims of this acid on that night, in effect, ‘drowned’ in their own blood and other bodily fluids!
How could such an event be possible?
How could such an event be possible? Because this “accident” was the logical result of the way the capitalist system organises social production. In the capitalist system, production is aimed at maximising the profits of a few capitalists and not on the basis of satisfying workers’ needs! This explains the fact that all the machinery and systems’ inspection programmes were in complete disarray, that the workers’ training period had been reduced from six months to just 15 days (!), and that most of the safety systems had been switched off to reduce production costs.
What did those responsible for this tragedy do to help the people? The first reaction of the owners and managers of Union Carbide, like other capitalists throughout history, was to shirk any responsibility for the tragedy. First they tried to shift the blame of this tragedy on to Sikh terrorists who were demanding secession from India. After they failed to pass off the incident as a terrorist act, a few days later they claimed that the tank had been sabotaged by a “disgruntled” worker. After these two ‘stories’ did not catch on, the management became completely silent. [1] The management of Dow Chemical, which is legally responsible for the blunders of the company it has bought out, is ducking its liability. It has even created the www.bhopal.com website to publicise its official position on the disaster. [2]
What compensation did the victims receive?
The issue of compensation has hit many snags because of how it is supposed to be calculated. Many people in India believe that the victims should receive as much compensation as American citizens would do. Then in 1986, the lawyers of Union Carbide were successful in convincing a US court to declare that the court has no jurisdiction to determine how much human life is worth in underdeveloped countries. In according with this judgement the prosecutor’s case was transferred to India.
At first the government of India demanded $3.2 billion compensation and one of the judges in Bhopal issued a fine of $300 million on Union Carbide in order to improve the victims’ situation immediately. Union Carbide did not accept this ruling and challenged it in the Madhya Pradesh provincial court and then the Supreme Court of India.
In 1989, when the Supreme Court was still reviewing Union Carbide’s case, the government of India concluded a direct deal with the Union Carbide and agreed on $470 million compensation. [3] This settlement did not involve any consultation or representation by the victims and by 2003 (the 19th anniversary), $240 million of the $470 million received from Union Carbide was still in the Indian government’s bank accounts!
The tragedy continues!
The root cause of the whole tragedy of Bhopal lies within the heart of the capitalist system. A system that operates according to one main criterion to determine all economic, social and political decisions in society: maximising profits! The accident took place because the company knew full well that the safety standards for protecting workers and residents of neighbourhoods near factories (and the environment) in countries like India are much lower and more ‘free’ than in countries like the US. Union Carbide, like any company from the imperialist countries that has investment in underdeveloped countries, wants to maximise its own profits. That is why the Bhopal factory was built near the city and was operating without any regard for health and safety issues.
Union Carbide MIC plant after the disaster. Photo by Simone Lippi.
In addition to all these legal deficiencies, the Indian authorities did not want to put the factory owners and managers on trial - because this might have had a negative effect on attracting foreign investment in the future! [4] Union Carbide eventually left the city of Bhopal in 1999.
What has been the legacy of foreign investment for the production of pesticides and increasing agricultural production in Bhopal? It has left five thousand tons of chemicals at the factory’s site that for many years will continue to seep into the soil and water of the suburbs near the plant. It has left rusty pipes, bags of chemical waste, buckled tanks, pools of mercury, and a large part of the city’s population suffering from various diseases – with no access to money for treatment!
The living and painful nightmare of the city continues in the birth of terribly deformed children who, during their very short lives, are never free of sickness and pain. This is a warning to the workers of all underdeveloped countries that their bourgeoisie will always support imperialism’s right to make super profits over their most basic labour and human rights!
Health and safety standards can only be achieved through the organised and planned action of the working class. International standards are never ‘complete’, and even the limited standards that are observed in the US and Europe are easily trampled on when they ‘get in the way’ of profits!
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On September 11, 2001, another human tragedy unfolded in New York. The attack on civilians in America was reprehensible act and a reactionary reaction to the predatory and rapacious policies of American imperialism in the Middle East. It did, however, give the US bourgeoisie the ‘moral’ cover to put the programmes that it had been planning for months into action immediately. Under the guise of 'self-defence' and 'defeating terror' in Central Asia, the Middle East, and anywhere else that it thought harboured terrorists, US imperialism bullied and cajoled the “coalition of the willing” into action behind it - threateningly brushing aside any critics as people who ‘aid and abet’ terrorists.
If the deaths of almost 3000 innocent people can be used by the bourgeoisie to attack the workers and exploited masses around the world - and also reduce the democratic rights of workers and national minorities in America and Europe - then the bourgeoisie easily finds the money and the means to start numerous military campaigns and two wars of invasion. [5] If, however, the deaths of seven times as many workers and poor families cannot be used for advancing profits, then it will not lead to any full-scale wars: it will lead to a nightmare that continues in the form of people will chronic disorders still waiting for essential treatment after 25 years of suffering.
3 December 2009
1- In 2001 Union Carbide merged with the Dow Chemical Company. Dow Chemical, now the world’s largest chemical company with annual sales of 50 billion dollars, has continued Union Carbide’s policy of blaming an employee for the “accident”. Dow Chemical also believes that the 1989 settlement has fulfilled financial responsibility for poisoning Bhopal’s people.
2- This site has nothing to do with www.bhopal.net, the site of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, or with www.bhopal.org, the Bhopal Medical Appeal. This site maintains that an employee deliberately introduced water into the MIC tank and therefore it does not accept responsibility for the gas leak tragedy!
3- To put this amount in its proper context, we should compare this with the Exxon Valdez oil tanker accident. In that incident, even though the environmental damage on the Alaskan coast was huge, no one was killed. However, because those responsible for this accident were tried under US law, Exxon had to pay more than ten times Union Carbide's fine!
4- There are also enduring allegations about government corruption. Even today, on the 25th anniversary of the disaster, protesters in Bhopal chanted slogans like “Down with the government”. Government officials also dismiss that the site presents any danger to human health!
5- In Iraq, according to the latest figures collated by www.iraqbodycount.org, documented civilian deaths from violence stand at between 94,279 and 102,949! The number of civilians killed in Afghanistan until March 2002 (i.e., more than seven and a half years ago) had already reached 3000-3400.
