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By Eurig Scandrett Since the gas disaster of 1984, Union Carbide Corporation (now part of Dow Chemicals) has played a cat-and-mouse game of corporate restructuring in a bid to conceal liability from Indian courts. Part 2 of our series on the Bhopal Survivors’ Movement chronicles the long struggle to hold the corporation liable
In the first few years following the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster, a remarkable movement emerged which has taken on the Indian government and powerful US corporations in its demands for justice. The movement was initially led by experienced activists who arrived in Bhopal from all over India to support the relief effort, until their organisation, the Zehreeli Gas Kand Sangharsh Morcha, fragmented into factions. Within a few years the movement had become a grassroots struggle based in independent trade unions, neighbourhood committees and pensioners’ rights campaign. The Bhopal Survivors’ Movement Study has been documenting this movement through interviews with survivor activists who have been involved over the years, and excerpts from some of these interviews will be published as Bhopal Survivors Speak on the 25th anniversary of the gas disaster in December 2009. Corporate liability As union membership and militancy grew in the government rehabilitation schemes, some of the groups started to focus on the legal front and the liability of Union Carbide Company (UCC) and its Indian subsidiary. Up to this point, the company had done nothing to help the relief and had obstructed justice wherever possible, withholding information which could have saved lives and distancing itself from any responsibility. In June 1986, some of the activists from what remained of Zehreeli Gas Kand Sangharsh Morcha, including Alok Pratap Singh and lawyer Vibhuti Jha, came up with a proposal to fasttrack the legal system to the benefit of the survivors. As Singh describes it: “We agreed that victims should be awarded interim relief because the compensation case might take a long time. We did not expect the government to file this application so we decided to go ahead with it. We filed two applications in the court on behalf of both Zahreeli Gas Kand Sangharsh Morcha and Jan Swasthya Kendra (Peoples Health Clinic): one for interim relief and another one to make us the interveners. Justice Deo accepted the applications. The argument for interim relief was that since there was no dispute over the basic facts of the disaster (there is a gas leak and there are victims) so there was no impediment to awarding interim relief before the case had been completed. The concept was introduced by us for the first time in June-July 1986.”
In December 1987, Justice Deo at Bhopal District Court awarded interim damages of Rs 350 crore against Union Carbide. This was appealed by the company to the High Court where the principle was accepted but the amount was reduced to Rs 250 crore. A second appeal went all the way to the Supreme Court which, in 1989 abruptly terminated the proceedings to announce that a settlement had been reached between UCC and the Government of India for a final no-liability payment of $470 million, a fraction of the government’s estimation of costs. There had been no consultation with survivors’ groups and, although announced by the Supreme Court, due process had essentially been bypassed. The willingness of the government to settle for such a small amount and absolve the company of further liability without consultation with the survivors, proved to be an important indicator of how the government was taking the side of the powerful corporation. Whilst survivors were desperate for a financial lifeline, they were outraged by the underhand way in which their lives were being undervalued. Campaign groups varied in their response, from grudging acceptance through desperation, through legal appeal, to trashing UCC’s offices in Delhi. Legal challenge led to a subsequent revision of the Supreme Court’s announcement, quashing the immunity ruling and opening the door to criminal prosecution of Union Carbide and its executives, which in turn led to a cat-and-mouse process of corporate restructuring in a bid to conceal liability from Indian courts. In 2001, Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) was acquired by Dow for $ 11.6 billion which then became the second-largest chemical company in the world. Dow has refused to accept Union Carbide’s Bhopal liabilities on the grounds that it was not responsible for a factory it did not operate. At the time of writing, the Indian accused, which include former executives of Union Carbide India Limited, are facing a diminished charge of death by negligence. UCC and former CEO Warren Anderson remain fugitives from justice, charged with culpable homicide, whilst a stay of execution currently prevents the courts from requiring Dow to produce these fugitives. Dow’s motivation for acquiring UCC is most likely to take advantage of India’s changing economic environment, with development increasingly based on inward investment, corporate-friendly policies and reduced regulation. This expansion has been effectively thwarted to date by direct, solidarity and independent protests throughout the country. The proposed chemical hub in Nandigram collapsed along with Tata’s Nano car plant in the bloody conflicts which arose there. Dow’s showpiece research and development centre, being developed near Pune, was razed to the ground by local protests. Internationalism and environmental justice The inclusion of the water contamination issue was a crucial move, for it made it very clear that the 1989 settlement had not laid the ghost of Bhopal to rest, and both company and government had many more tasks to fulfil. Toxins had been leaching from the factory since before the gas leak and Bhopal Group for Information and Action (BGIA) had been uncovering information about continuing contamination from the site. Greenpeace got involved and the issue became increasingly visible internationally. BGIA, along with the stationary workshed trade union Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationary Karmchari Sangh and some other smaller local groups united with a network of international supporters to form the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal (ICJB) and focus on the new environmental front. One of Stationary Sangh’s leaders, Rasheeda Bee tells the story: “I met up with Sathyu [from BGIA] and he told me about the contamination of the water... Greenpeace came in 2000 and it was after this that we in the Stationary Sangh joined hands with Sathyu. Then in 2004 the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal was formed…
“Some people from Bhopal had gone to Japan where there had been a mercury leak and many people were affected and children were being born deformed. Then in 2002 I went to South Africa for a conference regarding Environment and its safety – the World Summit on Sustainable Development. There too I saw and heard more about Dow’s atrocities. But many of these chemical companies were also present at the conference and this made me uncomfortable. What was the purpose of this façade at the United Nations? It made me doubt whether the UN was in reality ready to work for the environment, when I saw that companies like Dow were part of such a conference.
“What happened in Bhopal has already happened, but we need to join forces to stop it from happening again anywhere else in the world.”
Activism for some took on different tactics, using Gandhian methods of hunger strike, padyatra and peaceful processions through the main roads of Bhopal, dharna at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi and in front of the Dow office in Mumbai. The idea was to alert the world to the possibilities of more Bhopals happening in their backyards. In February 2008, a padyatra left from Bhopal to Delhi and staged a dharna for five months, escalating tactics of lobbying, letters written in blood, die-ins, blockades, chaining to railings, hunger fast… until ultimately an empowered commission was established to deliver on neglected promises made to survivors. In 2004, Rasheeda Bee and Stationary Sangh co-leader Champa Devi Shukla were jointly awarded the Goldman prize for environmental campaigning and with the award, established Chingari Trust for work with children born with congenital disabilities as a result of their parents’ gas exposure as well as creating their own annual award for women fighting corporate crime in India. The Goldman award proved to be both decisive and divisive. On the one hand, poor, gas-affected women with little education won a prestigious environmental award and symbolically represented to the world Bhopal as an environmental justice movement. On the other hand, many other equally poor, gas-affected women with little education were overshadowed. The movement today and in the future As with many mature protests, the movement the researchers encountered was squabbling and struggling with divisions on the basis of tactics, ideology and personality, but vibrant and creative, overcoming differences when the situation demanded. The main survivors groups comprised those affiliated to ICJB, the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Udyog Sangathan (BGPMUS) and Bhopal Gas Peedit Nirashrit Pension Bhogi Sangharsh Morcha (Pension Morcha). Badar Alam, from the Pension Morcha interprets the recent disagreements: “All these organisations worked together until 2002 when we went to Bombay for the Dow action, the issue of Dow accepting liability for Bhopal. They spilt up after 2002 for some personal reasons which I am not aware of. There didn’t seem to be a fight or misunderstanding. They all have different working styles and none of them can compete with the other. All the local leaders had their own abilities and they were all doing their own work according to those abilities. People from outside came in later…
“The organisations got together only at the time of the anniversary or for a rally to Delhi that happened too rarely. The differences and quarrels were on various things including authority: each person wanting to demonstrate his/her authority and the loyalty of their followers. It was these small issues that led to splits.”
The issues over which groups disagree are a microcosm of debates over development: the role of the state, the ethics of foreign funding, the nature of leadership, gender dynamics, attitudes to industrialisation, the position of intellectuals, local action versus national programme, mass mobilising versus targeted action etc. Even when agreeing on issues, strands within the movement adopt different narratives on the basis of who they are addressing. Those with a more international focus often frame themselves in terms of environmental justice, groups working with the most vulnerable present a discourse of state welfare provision and union-based groups’ primary concern is oriented around economic rehabilitation. Our data suggest that differences amongst groups also reflect demographic niches amongst their membership. Whilst all groups are supported primarily by both Muslim and Hindu women, their supporters differ with respect to class and caste. At risk of oversimplifying, BGPMUS comprises gas-affected working-age Muslims and OBC Hindus; the Pension Morcha comprises older women from the very poor, particularly from scheduled castes, and ICJB garners support from working class communities affected by water contamination across a range of castes. During the period when the research was conducted, a new initiative was formed which gives an indication of the future of the movement. A group of children who attended an ICJB padyatra in February 2008 decided to form their own sangathan. The leadership of Children Against Dow-Carbide is mostly aged between 12 and 16 and the group holds regular Sunday events in which political protest is mixed with entertainment. Later that year the group disrupted a Dow-sponsored corporate social responsibility event to expose their irresponsibility in Bhopal. In 2009, two representatives, each aged 16, went as part of a delegation to the USA to raise the Bhopal case with American students and politicians, and simultaneously their comrades organised a rally in Bhopal attracting hundreds of young people. Amir, aged 15 and Yasmeen, aged 12, led our interview with a group of Children Against Dow-Carbide. “We wanted to organise a separate organisation for children within ICJB because we felt it was important for children to be aware of what happened and what is still happening. Also we know that our elders have been fighting for 25 years … but we have seen that the government pays attention when children are involved.
“We have the same aims as the other organisations and have become aware of the issues from them. We are particularly concerned about the disabled children and want to make sure that they get their rights to compensation and healthcare. We are also concerned about children affected by the poisoned water.
“What has happened has happened and we can’t change that but we will keep on fighting. We want to stop another Bhopal happening elsewhere. Even when we get justice we will keep fighting so that no company feels it can do what Union Carbide did, and nobody else will have to experience what Bhopal has.”
(Eurig Scandrette is lecturer in sociology at the Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. This article, Part 2 of a series on the people’s movement in Bhopal, 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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