THIRTY YEARS ON... THE TRAGEDY CONTINUES
The Bhopal Gas Tragedy continues to choke the lives of victims
There is much that is interesting about Bhopal. The period between 1890 and 1926 for example, when it was ruled by a succession of women Begums — very unusual in that era, or its moniker of ‘city of lakes’. If Benaras is known for its exquisite silks, Bhopal is famous for its zari work. All that changed on the intervening night of December 2-3, 1984. Diehard fans of the 1975 screen classic, Sholay, may still associate the city with the character of Surma Bhopali — incidentally, the city today has a restaurant named after him — but in the collective consciousness, Bhopal has come to be associated inextricably with the Gas Tragedy. Thirty years later, the incident continues to divide Bhopal in two. In the more recently-built quarters, the shadow of 1984 has almost dissipated. There is no pain here that continues to blaze in the eyes, long after the tears have dried. Here, you do not hear the repeated refrain of ‘ khatam
ho gaya’ uttered in a voice that has lost its grief in the struggle to survive, to take care of the ones that remain. In every house in the bylanes around the ruins of the Union Carbide plant, you hear of parents, spouses and children ‘ jo khatam ho gaye’ or died, either in the days or months that followed the disaster, or of lingering health issues in the years since. “My mother died that night. She choked in her sleep. My father and I survived but we continue to suffer from breathing trouble, failing vision and weakness,” says 35-year-old Sunita.
“When Union Carbide came to Bhopal in 1969, all that we knew was that it was a plant that was making pesticide. Local members of the assembly (MLAs) belonging to the Communist parties had always opposed the setting up of the plant within the city. But then prime minister Indira Gandhi had said that the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal would give a boost to the Green Revolution in the country,” recalls Abdul Jabbar, who has been fighting for the rights of the victims since immediately after the event. Jabbar himself was affected in the disaster and lost his parents and brother to it.
Former MIC plant operator at Union Carbide’s Bhopal facility TR Chouhan says, “The management had told the workers that the Bhopal plant had been designed and built on the basis of the company’s 20 years of experience in manufacturing MIC at the company’s West Virginia plant. However, after the accident, I came to know that there had been many differences between the two plants, which made the one in Bhopal dangerous.” He adds, “Also, in case of an accident, the company had made evacuation plans only for the workers and not for the people living around the plant. Even the siren to warn people was switched off after five minutes, as per the company’s revised policies. Only a muted alarm to alert plant personnel continued to ring.”
Conspiracy theories, scandals, allegations, blame games, protests and litigations — the thirty years since 1984 — has seen it all, ensuring that Bhopal never quite slipped out of the headlines. When Warren Anderson, the man who was CEO of Union Carbide when the disaster occured, died in the US last week, Bhopal erupted in anger. Anderson had not received any punishment following the incident. On November 10, victims and activists will gather in New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar again for a waterless hunger strike to be staged by five women survivors. Their demands are for additional compensation for all survivors of the disaster and correction of figures of death and extent of injury in the curative petition filed in the Supreme Court by the central government. The disaster has physically weakened many of its vistims, robbing them of their ability to work.
“Doctors are still treating these people with symptomatic drugs. And because of the indiscriminate use of psychotropic drugs, painkillers and steroids, the victims are developing a fresh set of problems such as kidney damage. All this is because of Union Carbide not disclosing the nature of MIC, which is resulting in doctors not being able to find the correct antidote,” says activist Satinath Sarangi. In 2000 The Bhopal Medical Hospital and Research Centre was set up under the Supreme Court’s directive. The hospital has not been without its own share of scandals. In 2011, 279 victims were allegedly illegally tested for new drugs without their knowledge or consent. The matter is subjudice. While present director Manoj Pandey shied away from commenting on that scandal, he was more forthcoming on the health conditions of the victims. “The most common ailments are chronic respiratory and pulmonary diseases and cataract,” says Pandey. Psychological disorders are also prevalent.
While Sarangi also mentions increased incidences of tuberculosis and cancer among those exposed to MIC, Pandey is less ready to attribute the cause of these disorders to gas exposure. In one of its reports on Bhopal, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) admitted to “higher incidence rates of cancer in the gas affected areas.” However, it concluded that the spread of cancer was “in anatomical sites that are associated with use of tobacco...”
When eight-and-a-half year old Md. Altamash was born with crippling disabilities, the family was convinced it was because his father Md Kain had been exposed to the toxic MIC fumes as a five-year-old child. Congenital malformations are common in the affected areas. An ICMR report based on clinical studies conducted between 1985 and 1994 records that “the incidence of congenital malformations per 1,000 births was 14.2 in affected areas and 12.6 in control or unaffected areas.” In the same study to record pregnancy outcome in women exposed to MIC/toxic gas the number of abortions recorded in the affected areas was 24.2 per cent, where as it was only 5.6 per cent in the control areas. Dr N P Mishra, who had been dean of the Gandhi Medical College and one of the main doctors to have treated the gas victims at the time denied any long term residual effect of one-term exposure to MIC as was suffered by the people of Bhopal. He had been on the review committee of the ICMR that has studied the effect of MIC exposure on the people. Mishra’s verdict is in contradiction to the findings of activist and academician Anil Sadgopal. In a report filed in the Supreme Court in August 1988, the Sadgopal and Dr Sujit Das had said, “evidence emerging from a number of Indian research projets has established that MIC enters the bloodstream and reacts with various tissue components, thereby persisting and causing multi-systematic disorders.”
Meanwhile, leftover toxic chemicals and wastes from the plant continues to contaminate the soil and ground water here. A Centre for Science report says “tests have showed widespread contamination of soil and groundwater with heavy metals, organic chemicals and pesticides”. Children often enter the site through holes in the walls and women go to relieve themselves here. The effect of the contamination on people vary from allergic skin reactions, to kidney prolems, damage to the nervous system, cancer and damage to reproductive health. The CSE had also invited experts to come up with an action plan for Bhopal, details of which are available on their website. But legal and official hurdles continue to delay the cleaning up of the 30-year-old chemical trash.