Looking for someone to blame for Bhopal

Probable genetic damage will continue to be seen in future generations

Of course Union Carbide, both the former American company and its 49 per cent stake-owned Indian subsidiary are to blame — for hiring and not supervising entry-level people who poured water on a smoking chemical vat, catalysing the Carbide gas leak, which in turn harmed and killed thousands in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, in 1984. The plant site is still toxic and probable genetic damage will continue to be seen in future generations.

Some of the players

The course of least resistance is to blame Carbide, now owned by Dow Chemical, and Warren Anderson, who led Carbide 30 years ago and who died this year aged 92.

But there’s certainly enough blame to go around: The Supreme Court of India, for brokering a very modest settlement for Bhopal’s victims. The Indian Parliament, for passing the strange Bhopal Act ostensibly to (unsuccessfully) pressure American courts to take up the victims’ cases, since the Indian government itself became the plaintiff acting in its citizens’ behalf. The State of Madhya Pradesh, for allowing an ultra-hazardous fertilizer plant to be sited near a populous city. The Bhopal and Madhya Pradesh authorities for failing to inspect the plant regularly and for failing to ensure that adequate safety and training standards were observed in operating and maintaining the plant. The victims’ advocates, for keeping the forlorn hopes of the victims alive for 30 years. The Bhopal hospital administrators who confronted a German doctor holding 50,000 antidotes to cyanide poisoning and sending him back to Düsseldorf: they feared that panic would ensue if it became known that the plant’s main product was a cyanide derivative. The Bhopal judge who bragged to me in 1994 that he spent no more than 60 seconds distributing the settlement funds to each victim, not bothering to set aside any amount for genetic damage. Sir Ian Percival, a former U.K. Solicitor General, sole trustee of a London charitable trust, to provide medical relief in Bhopal. Before Sir Ian died in 1998, he spent Rs.10 crore of trust funds to refurbish his London office, pay himself large trustee fees and support his travel and office expenses.

This is hardly a complete list, but you get the idea.

(Armin Rosencranz is a professor of law and public policy at Jindal Global University and co-author of Environmental Law and Policy in India.

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