Wednesday, December 03, 2014

After 30 years, Bhopal still festers...

India’s central government and the state government of Madhya Pradesh are in denial over the scale of the tragedy that occurred 30 years ago when at least 5,000 people died in Bhopal in a devastating Union Carbide gas leak that has caused continuing ill health for some 500,000.

Neither government has even begun to deal adequately with what needs to be done in terms of compensation, health care, or cleaning up the factory’s contaminated 70-acre site.

Tonight will be the 30th anniversary of the moment when toxic gases from the pesticide factory swept in a fatal wave through nearby slums and spread across the city.

The situation has not changed since I last reported here on the 25th anniversary, and it seems likely that nothing will change for another five or 10 years or even longer unless Narendra Modi, India’s new and energetic prime minister, decides that enough is enough and that this blot on India’s record of social awareness and government action should be, in all senses of the word, cleaned up.

If Modi does not step in – and there is no sign yet of him doing so – an unsatisfactory equilibrium will continue embracing the refusal of US-based Dow Chemical, which now owns Union Carbide, to accept any liability, the reluctance of an Indian government that mixes indolence with a fear of upsetting potential American company investors, the astonishing inertia of the Madhya Pradesh government whose capital is Bhopal, the apparent indifference of the vast mass of the city’s 1.8m population, and the demands of a clutch of non-government activists who have built a life-style around their worthy campaigns and health-care camps and have a virtual stand-off with the state government. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. Bhopal 30 years on: The women of India are battling the poisonous legacy
  2. India: 'major victory' for Bhopal survivors as government promises extra...
  3. Hollywood takes on corporate giants over Bhopal gas disaster...
  4. BHOPALI, the story of the Bhopal tradegy and Union Carbide...
  5. Bhopal disaster victims used as lab rats for Big Pharma! WTF!
  6. How India is selling out the victims of Bhopal to big corporation...
  7. The children of Bhopal... 

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