Bhopal Gas Tragedy Compensation: Insult to India’s Victims
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June 2024
On 2nd December 2023, 39 years have passed, and sadly, all kinds of aspects about the tragedy are in the play, and justice has not been delivered to the victims of this Bhopal Gas Tragedy.
We want to share a few facts that not many people know.
The Union Carbide Corporation, at the time of the disaster, had a 22% partnership with the Indian government. So, as much as the Union Carbide Corporation is responsible for the tragedy, it is the Indian government.
At the time of the disaster, the government said 3,500 people died, and the consequence was that the compensation was calculated based on this number of deaths.
While the long-lasting effects on the people’s health were undermined, it was not or somewhat underestimated.
Some campaigners claim the number of deaths is as high as 25,000, but here at ExpertX, we believe it is much more than that. Also, the effects of gas continue to this day and continue to be in the next generation.
Very few people know that this plant was supposed to be a very light load plant, a regulation for hazardous industry.
It was supposed to be located in a light industrial area, not a commercial one. It was supposed to bring only a tiny quantity of MIC methyl isocyanate, the chemical to be formulated for pesticides.
Subsequently, the company decided, along with the government’s partnership, to do some backward integration, like bringing large quantities of material and formulating the final product at the exact location to reduce the cost.
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The Union Carbide Corporation, at the time of the disaster, had a 22% partnership with the Indian government
So reducing cost means higher profit, so profit before people as in this case.
The backward integration was implemented, and large quantities of MIC were brought from the US from the parent company.
That is how we learned that 120 tons of this poisonous material was present at the Bhopal plant of UCC at the time of the disaster.
Surprisingly, a compensation of 470 million dollars was given in 1989, five years after the disaster. In today’s value, it comes to around 1.8 billion dollars, about 15,000 crores in today’s value.
Considering the number of deaths and the lifelong effects on their health and their subsequent generations, this compensation seems to be very low, and it is not a part of proper justice.
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The backward integration was implemented, and large quantities of MIC were brought from the US from the parent company
Why?
Many would like to compare it with a similar disaster in the United States.
Comparing the Asbestos litigation of 1990, approximately the same time the Bhopal Gas Disaster happened, the $470 million compensation for Bhopal, if calculated by the same rate as the Asbestos litigation, should have been about $10 billion.
It would have been nearly 20 times or 30 times or more. Further, today, some analysts believe that the total cost of Asbestos litigation will be about $200 billion to $ 275 billion.
There is no doubt that the disparity in valuing Indian life is astonishing.
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... this compensation seems to be very low, and it is not a part of proper justice.
What was given to India was peanuts compared to the 2010 compensation paid to Americans when the British Petroleum oil spill happened in the Gulf of Mexico.
At the time, the compensation was about $20 billion, about Rs. 1,80,000 crores by 2010 value.
When it came to giving compensation, American companies have been utterly misers but have been no less than coercers when it came to receiving compensation.
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There is no doubt that the disparity in valuing Indian life is astonishing
It is not rocket science to see the stark difference between the value that has been put on the lives of victims of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy.
The loss of health care and well-being of the Indians, like in the case of the people of Bhopal, there is a bare disparity.
These are a few points that are not part of our general conversation about the Bhopal gas tragedy but form a significant discrepancy regarding justice.
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