Bhopal Gas Tragedy

Practically every grown adult in India today has heard in one way or the other about the tragic
incidents that took place in Bhopal. But to understand this tragedy, one has to retrospect deep
into the past to really understand how this all happened as it was a series of events that triggered
this mishap. So let us start from the very beginning. In the 1970s, the Indian government initiated
policies to encourage foreign companies to invest in their local industry. Union Carbide
Corporation (UCC) was asked to build a plant for the manufacture of Sevin, a pesticide
commonly used throughout Asia. The company built the plant in Bhopal because of its central
location and access to transport infrastructure. The specific site within the city was zoned for
light industrial and commercial use, not for hazardous industry. The plant was initially approved
only for formulation of pesticides from component chemicals, such as MIC imported from the
parent company, in relatively small quantities.
On the horrendous day of 2nd December 1984, while most of the one million residents of Bhopal
slept, an operator at the plant noticed a small leak of methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas and increasing
pressure inside a storage tank. The vent-gas scrubber, a safety device designer to neutralize toxic
discharge from the MIC system, had been turned off three weeks prior. Apparently a faulty valve
had allowed one ton of water for cleaning internal pipes to mix with forty tons of MIC. Within
hours, the streets of Bhopal were littered with human corpses and the carcasses of buffaloes,
cows, dogs and birds. An estimated 3,800 people died immediately, mostly in the poor slum
colony adjacent to the UCC plant.
Our fathers and forefathers said there is never any smoke without a fire, and well they said as in
this case there was a lot of gas because of many fiery reasons. To shed light on these causes I
found a unique approach, an approach that would question the UCC, an approach that would
question the government who were 22% stake holders of this facility.
My first question being "Was it right to risk a million lives in the city of Bhopal to save a few
million dollars?" Well my question holds water as it is a known fact that the famine that hit Asia
during the 80's cut the profits down of pesticide manufacturers which led them to cutting
production costs by neglecting safety and regulatory standards.
Nextly "Was it right to let 10,000 people die just because of poor maintainance standards?" The
cost-cutting strategies of Union Carbide meant compromising the maintenance of its equipment
which could have avoided chemical leakages like the Bhopal disaster. The double standard that
goes with industrial outsourcing was revealed in the investigations.
Moving on, "Was it right to cut the number of employs by half to manage the entire plant?" To
prove the validity of my question I would like to quote the number 12. Due to the slump caused
by low demand in carbonyl, Union Carbide laid off half of the supervisory personnel and
operators so that at the year of the leakage, only 12 operators remained.
Lastly but not the least, "Was it right to neglect previous leakages?" UCC might have denied this
but interviews with its employees after the disaster revealed that in its campaign to reduce
expenses and pump up profits, Union Carbine failed to address previous complaints by the
workers on MIC-related incident since 1976. So 8 years of ignoring small leakages led to a huge
one that still is the pain in the heart of this country worth a billion people.
The Bhopal disaster was a clear case of a failure of ignoring the communications made by the
workers at the plant and corporate social responsibility in line with the industrialization in
developing nations. It demonstrated how industrial hazards and environmental destruction are
tied with the dynamics of globalization. From a critical perspective, MNCs capitalize on
exploiting low-cost resources, labour, and operating expenses in the developing world to derive
maximum bottom-line savings and to expand markets. But is it only right to blame the UCC yet
the government of India also deserve blame because of the non-enforcement of more stringent
environmental regulatory standards especially with industries handling toxic substances. One
glaring error is that the government allowed the construction of the MIC facility in a densely
populated area. The techniques and procedures for Corporate Social Responsibility were not in
place to reduce the risk of an industrial catastrophe like Bhopal. The exaggeration on bottom-line
savings compromised the maintenance of equipment and the safety procedures required to keep
hazardous substances safe and leakage-free. The company itself was not capable of handling
toxic accidents and even the locals and the hospitals within Bhopal did not know what they were
dealing with. If CSR was dutifully applied, thousands of lives and the environment could have
been saved. The billion dollar thought is had UCC listened to their workers about the past
leakages, so many people would have lived to see the day. Food for thought