The Bhopal case seems to portend a bleak future for poor communities. In a "free trade" world order, multinational corporations can do whatever feels good for them, and after they've had their way with a community, they wash their hands and move on.
By Peter Montague
Twelve years ago, Union Carbide Corporation killed an estimated 8000 residents of Bhopal, India, and injured 300,000 others, some 50,000 to 70,000 of those injuries permanent. Starting about 2 o'clock in the morning of December 4, 1984, Carbide's Bhopal pesticide-manufacturing plant leaked 42 tonnes of methyl isocyanate, a heavy, deadly gas, into a sleeping, impoverished community.
In 1988 — when Indian authorities were still aggressively pursuing legal remedies — the Wall Street Journal reported that corporate executives throughout US industry were following Carbide's case closely because it was the first major test of a US corporation's liability for an industrial accident in a Third World country.
Carbide almost immediately accepted "moral responsibility" for the massacre, but subsequently denied and evaded any other kind of responsibility.
The Indian government initially sought $3 billion from Carbide. In response, Carbide hired $50 million worth of legal talent to fight the claim and eventually agreed to pay $470 million to compensate its victims or their surviving relatives, a settlement that cost Carbide 43 cents per share of stock. (Later Carbide kicked in another $20 million to support a hospital in Bhopal.)
In return for the settlement, the government of India agreed to protect Carbide against any further lawsuits by victims.
The day the settlement was announced, Carbide's stock price rose $2 per share on Wall Street because investors realised that the company's fortunes couldn't be touched. After all the lawyers and Indian government officials had taken their fees and bribes, the average claimant received about $300, which, for most victims, was not enough to pay their medical bills.
Carbide says a disgruntled employee caused the gas leak, but has steadfastly refused to allow this theory to be tested in a court of law under judicial rules of evidence.
It is conclusively known that Carbide's Bhopal plant was designed in such a way that, after the deadly gas leak began, the main safety system — water sprays intended to "knock down" a leak — could not spray water high enough to reach the escaping stream of gas. In sum, the plant's safety systems had been designed negligently.
Internal documents show that the company knew this prior to the disaster, but did nothing about it.
Methyl isocyanate (MIC) burns (in a corrosive chemical sense, not a fire sense) when it combines with water — water in a person's eyes or throat and lungs, for example. Thousands who survived are blind, or had their lungs burned so badly that they cannot work or, in many cases, even breathe well enough to walk.
In early December 1996, the International Medical Commission on Bhopal released the results of a multi-year controlled study of people living in Bhopal and reported numerous injuries now becoming apparent in victims who had appeared to recover after their initial exposure.
For example, small airway deterioration — a kind of emphysema — is apparent among people who have never smoked tobacco, but who inhaled MIC as youngsters that night 12 years ago. Central nervous system damage is becoming apparent in another group. As time passes, the harms attributable to the Bhopal disaster are growing worse and more numerous.
In December 1987, India's Central Bureau of Investigation filed criminal charges of "culpable homicide", a crime just short of murder, against 10 Carbide officials, including then president Warren Anderson.
Anderson now lives comfortably in Vero Beach, Florida. He and his fellow Carbide executives have continued to thumb their noses at India's courts, where, if convicted, they would face sentences ranging from three years to life in prison.
Carbide has successfully resisted all efforts to extradite those responsible for the massacre, and Carbide's executives remain fugitives from justice.
The Indian government has not pursued the matter aggressively, for fear of appearing unfriendly to the petrochemical industry. Carbide itself has become even more profitable than it was before the massacre; indeed, Carbide's chairman, Robert D. Kennedy, described the firm in late 1994 as "a darling of Wall Street".
Carbide had no choice but to evade liability for its actions, says Ward Morehouse, one of Carbide's most thorough critics: "Had they been genuinely forthcoming and made truly disinterested offers of help on a scale appropriate to the magnitude of the disaster, they would almost certainly have been confronted with suits by shareholders seeking to hold the management accountable for mishandling company funds ..."
In other words, because the Bhopal massacre was perpetrated by a publicly held corporation, the victims could not possibly have received fair compensation. The legal nature of the corporate form prevents management from "doing the right thing" whenever it would cost investors dearly.
This tells us that the future holds more Bhopals, because the overseers of publicly traded corporations now have real, tangible evidence that they cannot be brought to justice, no matter how great the crimes they commit.
As Harper's magazine said recently (describing Juarez, Mexico, not Bhopal), "The future is based on the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer, and industrial growth producing poverty faster than it distributes wealth".
The Bhopal story affirms that this is the future promised by a "free trade" world. Carbide has closed and abandoned its Bhopal plant, refused to clean up the substantial pollution of water and soil that it created there and left town, forsaking its tens of thousands of victims who must now fend for themselves.
[From Rachel's Environment and Health Weekly. Like 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, Rachel's Environment & Health Weekly is a non-profit publication which distributes information without charge on the internet and depends on the generosity of readers to survive. If you are able to help keep this valuable resource in existence, send your contribution to Environmental Research Foundation, PO Box 5036, Annapolis, Maryland 21403-7036, USA. In the United States, donations to ERF are tax deductible.]