BY PRAFUL BIDWAI
THE victims of the world’s worst chemical disaster, at Union Carbide Corporation’s pesticides plant in Bhopal, abandoned all hope of securing real justice in 1989, when the Indian government reached an out-of-court settlement with Carbide for an atrociously inadequate $470 million. This merely totalled UCC’s insurance cover plus interest.

The Supreme Court of India approved the deal and extinguished Carbide’s liability, civil and criminal. So scandalous was this settlement that India’s conservative Attorney General Soli Sorabjee moved to restore the criminal liability of UCC, its fully owned Hong Kong-based subsidiary Union Carbide Eastern, and United Carbide India Ltd (UCIL) and their directors.
The Court restored criminal liability in 1991. But in 1996, it diluted the charges against the accused from culpable homicide to causing death by negligence, punishable with just two years’ imprisonment.
Now, eight accused in the criminal case have been sentenced by a Bhopal magistrate for two years and moderate fines. They probably won’t serve any jail term at all, as the verdict is appealed.
Worse, three accused, former UCC chairman Warren Anderson, UCC and Union Carbide Eastern, weren’t even brought to trial. There couldn’t be a meaner way to insult the 15,000-plus dead and the 200,000-plus victims who have suffered severe damage to their lungs, liver, kidneys and the immune system.
Corporate Liability
Bhopal’s toxic legacy continues, with hundreds of tonnes of poisonous waste in the Carbide factory, which has contaminated drinking water for 30,000 people. Neither UCC nor UCIL accepts an obligation to clean up the site. Nor does Dow Chemical, which bought out UCC. The Indian government and industrialists are helping Dow–at the expense of the Bhopal victims.
Former Chief Justice of India, Justice A H Ahmadi has tried to justify his 1996 order diluting the criminal charges. He pleads there’s no “vicarious liability”: “If my driver is driving and meets with a fatal accident, I don’t become liable to be prosecuted” for causing death by negligence.
There’s no similarity between an individual driver’s fault and the culpability of a corporation and its directors for the unsafe design and operation of a hazardous plant. This culpability stands enlarged because UCC knew the plant was accident-prone.  Indeed, fatal accidents occurred in it, involving phosgene, a war gas, and methyl isocyanate (MIC). A safety audit had found 30 faults in its operation. The plant was grossly unsafe.
In such cases, the principle of corporate liability makes the owners fully responsible for all mishaps. This principle is rightly being applied to the BP oil spill near the Louisiana coast in the US. President Barack Obama says he’ll “make sure that they [BP] pay every single dime owed to the people along the Gulf Coast”. The principle should apply more strongly to the Bhopal disaster.
Justice Ahmadi is not the only high official to have favoured Carbide. The Rajiv Gandhi government in December 1984 released Warren Anderson and flew him from Bhopal to Delhi in a state plane.
Now, former CBI Joint Director, Mr RB Lall has disclosed that the Ministry of External Affairs ordered the Bureau in 1994 not to pursue extradition against Anderson, a declared absconder. 
The Indian government failed to serve an arrest warrant on Anderson, claiming he was “untraceable”–when his New York address was known.
Failing the Victims
The picture that emerges is of India’s high functionaries and institutions letting Carbide off the hook and failing the victims. Consider this. The government appropriated the victims’ right to legal defence but let them down. It didn’t focus sharply on UCC’s responsibility for the plant’s safety design, whose basic deficiencies caused the accident.
The Supreme Court failed to address the legal issue of Carbide’s liability. It drove an all-too-willing government to an out-of-court settlement.  The Indian Council of Medical Research had numerous projects researching MIC’s toxicity. But it didn’t produce a simple protocol for doctors for treating the principal damage caused by MIC.
The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research didn’t inform the public of MIC’s long-term toxic effects. It didn’t produce an index of severity of injuries correlated to exposure based on distance, wind direction and so on.
So, while deciding on compensation, people living far away and unaffected by gas exposure were equated with the grievously injured living close by.
The government demanded $3 billion-plus in compensation from Carbide, but suddenly settled for $470 million. High appointments were made abroad and at home to repay the favours delivered in reaching the collusive settlement.
Bhopal has witnessed many tragedies: the gas leak disaster in 1984, the settlement in 1989, and monumental corruption in compensation distribution in the mid-1990s. Most victims got Rs 12,000 for a lifetime of suffering. Much of it went into repaying debts or bribing officials. The new judgment is the latest tragedy.
No Lessons from Bhopal
The Indian government has learned no lessons from Bhopal. India’s environmental safety and occupational health regulations haven’t been tightened.
In fact, the environmental impact assessment process–of documenting hazards, rigorously scrutinising proposals and strictly monitoring compliance–has been unconscionably relaxed.
India’s legal system remains ineffective in punishing negligence and bringing corporations to book. It has no law of torts (civil wrongs) worth the name.
No industry association or chamber of commerce has had the integrity or courage to comment on the appalling new judgment. Worse, industry has colluded with Dow. Dow has found an enthusiastic ally in industrialist, Ar Ratan Tata.
Mr Tata wants to “find funding” for cleansing the Bhopal site so that Dow can invest in India. Dow has retained Congress party spokesperson, Mr Abhishek Manu Singhvi as its lawyer, besides enlisting Messrs Montek Singh Ahluwalia, P Chidambaram and Kamal Nath. The last two are in the just-established Group of Ministers on Bhopal. They must be dropped forthwith.
With this judgment, “Emerging Superpower” India has been reduced to a Fourth World country. This shameful story can only end if the government appeals against the judgment, gets proper criminal liability restored, seriously prosecutes all the accused, and brings a modicum of justice to the victims.