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By Dharmesh Shah By the 1990s, with their new slogan No More Bhopals, the Bhopal movement had shifted from the retributive, eye-for-an-eye approach to an environmental justice approach. How did these poor and marginalised communities of Old Bhopal come to understand and define Bhopal as one of hundreds of people’s struggles against environmental prejudice? How did they reach out to pollution-impacted communities all over the world?
History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again – Maya Angelou When two women leaders of the Bhopal gas tragedy movement, Champa Devi Shukla and Rasheeda Bee, were awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize, many local leaders -- including a renowned environmental activist -- protested. The problem according to them was that the awardwinners were not environmentalists. Reminiscent of the American environmental justice movement of the early-1980s, the debate here was over popular perceptions of environment vs the environmentalism of the poor. When the American environmental justice movement began in response to the environmental discrimination that African and indigenous communities were facing, the term ‘environment’ was defined in simple yet powerful words – “environment is what surrounds us, where we live, work and where our children learn and play.” Protecting the immediate environment from harm was at the crux of the environmental justice movement One would also have to delve into the history of environmental discrimination to understand the birth of the environmental justice movement. The term ‘environmental discrimination’ or ‘environmental racism’ was first used by Dr Benjamin Chavis, an African-American civil rights leader who found that toxic facilities were always placed close to ethnic and minority communities. In 1986, his study titled Toxic Waste and Race in the United States of America established the direct correlation between race and location of toxic facilities. In 1990, Dr Robert Bullard’s Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class and Environmental Quality was the first study to fully articulate the concept of ‘environmental justice’ and document the movement which was spreading across America. From this perspective all the past and present struggles for justice against environmental discrimination have had a unique history and an equally fascinating evolution. The movement for justice in Bhopal is one of them. So who defined Bhopal in an environmental justice context? How did this environmentalism of the poor emerge in the Bhopal movement? How was this definition and concept understood, communicated and accepted by the victims? Environmental racism by Union Carbide Internal documents of Union Carbide prove that the corporation systematically adhered to a policy of racial discrimination in designing, constructing and operating the Bhopal plant. A 1973 Capital Budget Memo from Union Carbide's board of directors in Danbury, Connecticut, states that the company knew about the "technology risks" -- "The comparative risk of poor performance and of consequent need for further investment to correct it is considerably higher in the UCIL operation than it would be had proven technology been followed throughout. CO and 1-Napthol processes have not been tried commercially and even the MIC-to-Sevin process, as developed by UCC, has had only a limited trial run” (emphasis added). Further the site chosen to set up the factory was in the midst of an economically and socially marginalised community of old Bhopal, mostly comprising unorganised workers and agricultural labourers. People were unaware about the factory or its operations and were kept in the dark about any safety or emergency procedures in cases of emergencies. For instance the residents were not aware about the simple technique of surviving a toxic gas leak by using a wet cloth to cover the face. This simple bit of information could have saved thousands of lives. Fight for environmental justice before 1984 Several reports of industrial accidents and environmental contamination regularly emerged from the Union Carbide factory. Cattle deaths, water contamination, worker deaths and pollution-related health problems were a few prime causes for disputes between the local people and the factory management. The water contamination due to the plant’s solar treatment ponds attracted protests from local people in the 1980s. Workplace accidents were on the rise and workers were already connecting their health problems to the pollution from the factory. The workers union issued publications to the communities warning them about the environmental hazards the factory posed. Raajkumar Keswani, a Bhopal-based reporter investigating the environmental issues surrounding Union Carbide, even predicted the tragedy in 1981. There are records of a court case over compensation for cattle deaths due to the pollution from the factory. But in the absence of any system to record these incidents or a language to interpret them, the issues remained largely unreported. Hence, it can be argued that the environmental justice movement began around the same time in India as it did in America. The gas leak could be described as a major turning point in an already emergent environmental rights struggle; an event that determined the course of the movement over the next 25 years. Using the language of environmental justice In 1990 an American lab called Citizens’ Environmental Laboratory which was commissioned by a local advocacy group, Bhopal Group for Information and Action, found high levels of chemical contamination in the groundwater. Interestingly, this fact had already been discovered by Union Carbide in 1972 but never disclosed. The discovery of the contamination added another aspect to the ongoing fight of the survivors whose struggle for justice had been battered by the out-of-court settlement between the union government and Union Carbide. This settlement originally aimed to end all civil and criminal liabilities of Union Carbide for the disaster but due to intense public outrage and struggle by the survivors the criminal liabilities were reinstated. With the information of the water contamination the survivors even started pushing for environmental remediation. The language of popular environmental justice took on greater significance after 1999 when Greenpeace surveys of groundwater around the Union Carbide factory found dangerously high levels of heavy metals and organochlorine contamination consistent with persistent leaching from the site. In a first of its kind demonstration the survivors and their supporters stormed into the factory and began a mock containment exercise to highlight the issue of above- and below-ground contamination due to the abandoned toxic wastes. This was also when there was a noticeable shift in the notions of justice; from its earlier retributive, eye-for-an-eye approach, to an exemplary approach. No More Bhopals, the movement’s new slogan, made the fight for environmental justice relevant to all ongoing people’s struggles against environmental prejudice. The survivors reach out to pollution-impacted communities all over the world, connecting through the language of environment. In 2001, Dow Chemical acquired Union Carbide and became the world’s second-largest chemical corporation. However, Dow refused to accept the pending liabilities of Bhopal, citing the 1989 settlement which only addressed the civil liabilities. Environmental damages caused by Union Carbide before and after the disaster remained unaddressed. The survivors launched a concerted campaign against Dow with a determination to set a precedent for corporations guilty of environmental crimes. As a result, Dow’s $1 billion investment plans in India have been stalled indefinitely due to Bhopal. Environmentalism of the poor For many survivors like Mohini Devi, campaigning on the most directly experienced injustices led incrementally to a wider understanding of the environment, always from the perspective of justice. Mohini Devi became active in the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Udyog Sangathan, a trade union at one of the economic rehabilitation worksheds, in order to save jobs and improve working conditions. She says, “I have learnt the importance of the environment and the meaning of the term. Environment is what surrounds us and it is very important for a person to know what his/her environment is. Similarly on a larger scale when forests are cut in the Himalayas its impact will be felt throughout India. The Sangathan has also raised a lot of environmental issues like the misuse of the big and small lakes in Bhopal. I am not aware about global environmental issues but I know that large dams (referring to the Narmada struggle) are causing huge impacts on the environment.” As a researcher it is indeed fascinating to know how the language of environmental justice is adopted and widely used in a social movement. According to Goldman Prizewinner Rasheeda Bee of the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationary Karmchari Sangh, “Environmental issues just came up. How I found my way through them all, god only knows. Mostly I just thought it was right, that I could do something about it, and did it. When the black water came out of the hand pumps, some refused even to touch it and there were other people who had to drink it every day. The people who came to test the water wore gloves. All this just pushed us to believe that change is necessary and the justice we were struggling for could save thousands of lives.” Bhopal has also led many to reflect upon dilemmas posed by mainstream notions of progress. As one of the movement participants, Om Wati Bai puts it, “These companies are harmful, so they should not come, but if they don’t then India will not progress. So there is a loss if they come and there is loss if they don’t.” The struggle in Bhopal has adopted several existing notions of social justice and evolved many of its own ideological discourses. On the issue of corporate accountability for instance, the survivors have lent solidarity to many struggles against corporate crimes and also participated in critiquing several policies which unjustly favour corporations. The Indo-US nuclear deal is being vehemently opposed by the Bhopal survivors because it includes India ratifying to the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage, which basically will ensure that in case of a Bhopal-like disaster the liability of the parent corporation remains limited to the Indian operator of the plant. One can never predict the logical conclusion of any social movement, but the wisdom Bhopal has gathered will continue to inform and inspire social justice struggles for a long time. The Bhopal movement lies at the interface of many different issues for development which are experienced as oppression by the survivors, but need to be articulated in different discourses in order to build allies. Being known as an environmental justice struggle has enabled international support from environmental organisations and trade union hazards campaigns. It has also helped to focus on the ongoing issues of industrial groundwater pollution and toxic contamination which are continuing to affect the health and wellbeing of the people of Bhopal irrespective of whether they have been affected by the gas. As many survivors have told us during our research, Bhopal’s gas leak has already happened, but there are many slow Bhopals ongoing throughout India and all over the world, as corporations continue to cut corners and shift costs onto their workers, communities and the environment. (This is the third in our series on the Bhopal Survivors Movement. This article is an edited extract from the forthcoming book Bhopal Survivors Speak: Emergent Voices from a People’s Movement. Bhopal Survivors’ Movement Study 2009. Word Power Books: Edinburgh The Bhopal Survivors’ Movement Study comprises Eurig Scandrett, Suroopa Mukherjee, Dharmesh Shah, Tarunima Sen and many named and unnamed survivor activists who have contributed.) Infochange News & Features, September 2009
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