THINGS TO COME
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THINGS TO COME
On the wall of my office hangs a reproduction of a full-page
advertisement by the Union Carbide Corporation, dated 1961. Most
of the ad is a colorful painting with a short text below it. The
headline beneath the painting reads, "Science helps build a new
India." In the bottom third of the painting, a thin,
dark-skinned man wearing a turban is plowing desert ground,
wrestling a large wooden plow pulled by two skinny oxen yoked
together with wood and rope. Two dark-skinned women wearing
traditional saris look on, one holding a parasol, one balancing a
large basket or jug on her head. Behind this agricultural scene,
still in the bottom third of the painting, is the River Ganges;
across the Ganges on the far shore, bathed in golden sunlight, is
a scene that could line the New Jersey Turnpike as it passes
through Linden --an enormous chemical complex, a tangle of bulky
pipes, tall stacks and huge tanks resembling a petroleum
refinery, except that Linden's refineries are dark with soot and
grime while Carbide's rendition shimmers with the color of gold.
In Carbide's ad, the golden industrial dream is reflected across
the wide Ganges, gleaming.
The top two-thirds of the picture is dominated by a huge
disembodied hand, unmistakably the hand of a light-skinned white
male, extending downward from the upper right. The hand is so
large that it covers most of the pale orange sky. The hand is
pouring a clear red fluid out of a chemist's flask, and the red
fluid is streaming down, partially obscuring the agricultural
scene below. The hand seems clearly intended to remind us of the
ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, where Michelangelo depicted the
hand of God bestowing life by touching Adam. The text of the ad
says, in part, "...Union Carbide recently made available its vast
scientific resources to help build a major chemicals and plastics
plant near Bombay." Below the text is the Union Carbide logo and
the slogan, "A hand in things to come."
It was 12 years ago yesterday that the Union Carbide corporation
killed an estimated 8000 residents of Bhopal, India and injured
300,000 others, some 50,000 to 70,000 of those injuries
permanent.[1,2,3] Starting about two o'clock in the morning,
Carbide's Bhopal pesticide-manufacturing plant leaked 42 metric
tonnes (46.3 tons) of methyl isocyanate, a heavy, deadly gas,
into a sleeping, impoverished community, killing and injuring
hundreds of thousands.
In 1988 --when Indian authorities were still aggressively
pursuing legal remedies against Carbide --the WALL STREET JOURNAL
reported that corporate executives throughout American industry
were following Carbide's case closely because it was the first
major test of a U.S. corporation's liability for an industrial
accident in a third-world country. Carbide almost immediately
accepted "moral responsibility" for the Bhopal massacre, but the
corporation subsequently denied and evaded any other kind of
responsibility. The Indian government initially sought $3
billion from Carbide. In response, Carbide hired $50 million
worth of legal talent to fight the claim and eventually agreed to
pay $470 million to compensate its victims or their surviving
relatives, a settlement that cost Carbide 43 cents per share of
stock. (Later Carbide kicked in another $20 million to support a
hospital in Bhopal.) In return for the settlement, the
government of India agreed to protect Carbide against any further
lawsuits by victims. The day the settlement was announced,
Carbide's stock price rose $2.00 per share on Wall Street because
investors realized that the company's fortunes couldn't be
touched. After all the lawyers and Indian government officials
had taken their fees and bribes, the average claimant received
about $300, which, for most victims, was not enough to pay their
medical bills.
Carbide says a disgruntled employee caused the gas leak that
devastated Bhopal but Carbide has steadfastly refused to allow
this theory to be tested in a court of law under judicial rules
of evidence. It is conclusively known that Carbide's Bhopal
plant was designed in such a way that, after the deadly gas leak
began, the main safety system --water sprays intended to "knock
down" such a leak --could not spray water high enough to reach
the escaping stream of gas. In sum, the plant's safety systems
had been designed negligently. Internal documents show that the
company knew this prior to the disaster, but did nothing about
it.[4,p.12] Small wonder that Carbide officials --for all their
cheap talk about accepting moral responsibility --do not want the
issues of causation and blame adjudicated.
Methyl isocyanate (MIC) burns (in a corrosive chemical sense, not
a fire sense) when it combines with water --water in a person's
eyes, or a person's throat and lungs, for example. Thousands who
survived are blind, or had their lungs burned so badly that they
cannot work or, in many cases, even breathe well enough to walk.
Carbide initially said that MIC injuries would all become
apparent immediately after exposure and no long-term consequences
could be thinking.
This week, the International Medical Commission on Bhopal (IMCB)
released the results of a multi-year controlled study of people
living in Bhopal and they reported numerous injuries now becoming
apparent in victims who had appeared to recover after their
initial exposure. For example, small airway deterioration --a
kind of emphysema --is apparent among people who have never
smoked tobacco, but who inhaled MIC as youngsters that night 12
years ago. Central nervous system damage is becoming apparent in
another group. As time passes, the harms attributable to the
Bhopal disaster are growing worse and more
numerous.[5,6,7,8,9,10,11]
In December, 1987, India's Central Bureau of Investigation, the
equivalent of the U.S. FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation],
filed criminal charges of "culpable homicide," a crime just short
of murder, against 10 Carbide officials, including then-president
Warren Anderson.
Warren Anderson now lives comfortably in Vero Beach, Florida. He
and his fellow Carbide executives have continued to thumb their
noses at India's courts, where, if convicted, they would face
sentences ranging from 3 years to life in prison. Carbide has
successfully resisted all efforts to extradite those responsible
for the Bhopal massacre, and Carbide's executives remain
fugitives from justice. The Indian government has not pursued the
matter aggressively, for fear of appearing unfriendly to the
petrochemical industry.[4,p.11] Carbide itself has become even
more profitable than it was before the massacre; indeed,
Carbide's chairman, Robert D. Kennedy, described the firm in late
1994 as "a darling of Wall Street."[4,p.10]
Carbide had no choice but to evade liability for its actions,
says Ward Morehouse, one of Carbide's most thorough critics: "Had
they been genuinely forthcoming and made truly disinterested
offers of help on a scale appropriate to the magnitude of the
disaster, they would almost certainly have been confronted with
suits by shareholders seeking to hold the management accountable
for mishandling company funds...."[12,p.490] In other words,
because the Bhopal massacre was perpetrated by a publicly-held
corporation (i.e., one in which members of the public can buy
stock), the victims could not possibly have received fair
compensation for damages. The legal nature of the corporate form
prevents management from "doing the right thing" whenever it
would cost investors dearly. (A privately-held corporation could
do the right thing if the stockholders agreed to make an
unprofitable decision.)
This of course tells us that the future holds more Bhopals
because the overseers of publicly-traded corporations now have
real, tangible evidence that they cannot be brought to justice,
no matter how great the crimes they commit. That would appear to
be the dreary lesson that Bhopal portends for things to come. As
HARPER'S magazine said recently (describing Juarez, Mexico, not
Bhopal), "The future is based on the rich getting richer, the
poor getting poorer, and industrial growth producing poverty
faster than it distributes wealth."[13] The Bhopal story affirms
that this is the future promised by a "free trade" world. Carbide
has closed and abandoned its Bhopal plant, refused to clean up
the substantial pollution of water and soil that it created
there, and left town, forsaking its tens of thousands of victims
who must now fend for themselves.
But all is not gloomy. Some good may yet emerge from Bhopal.
** In January 1996, a group of organizations petitioned the New
York Attorney General demanding that Carbide's corporate charter
be revoked. (A corporate charter is a piece of paper issued by a
state legislature giving a corporation the privilege of doing
business.) Under New York law, a corporation's charter can be
revoked if the corporation causes great harm. By any reasonable
standard, Carbide would appear to fall within such a definition.
A charter revocation could be a signpost pointing toward a quite
different future.
** This week 300 groups and individuals issued a new "Charter on
Industrial Hazards and Human Rights" --a document some are
calling a Magna Carta of corporate harms and human rights. The
charter tries to draw positive examples from the Bhopal
experience, gathering all the lessons into one human rights
document that emphasizes the need to address the impact of
industrial hazards on women, indigenous peoples, and minority
groups.[14]
** In Bhopal, a new medical clinic has opened its doors,
dedicated to serving the victims of Carbide's negligence and
managerial malfeasance. The Bhopal People's Health and
Documentation Clinic is real, and is serving the day-to-day needs
of gas victims and their families. You can help by sending a
donation to their U.S. fiscal agent, the Pesticide Action Network
in San Francisco. Make your check out to "Pesticide Action
Network/Bhopal" and mail it to PAN, Suite 810, 116 New Montgomery
Street, San Francisco, CA 94105. To discuss a donation,
telephone PAN at (415) 541-9253.
Carbide's successful evasion of liability for the Bhopal massacre
stands as a dark statement of things to come in a "free trade"
future. In this new world order, multinational corporations do
whatever feels good for them, and after they've had their way
with a community, they wash their hands and move on.
On the other hand, the continuing struggle in Bhopal to put
things right is a testament to the power of the human spirit,
which refuses to be crushed.
--Peter Montague
(National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981/AFL-CIO)
================================================================
[1] The basis for the estimate of 8,000 deaths and 300,000
injuries, 70,000 of them permanent, is meticulously documented by
the prize-winning journalist, Dan Kurzman, in his book, A KILLING
WIND: INSIDE UNION CARBIDE AND THE BHOPAL CATASTROPHE (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1987), pgs. 130-133. The death count most often
repeated by the NEW YORK TIMES is 2000, but other unofficial
estimates run as high as 20,000. The Indian government now
acknowledges 7072 deaths; see Wil Lepkowski, "Ten years Later;
Bhopal," CHEMICAL & ENGINEERING NEWS [C&EN], December 19, 1994,
pg. 12.
[2] R. Bertell and G. Tognoni, "International Medical Commission,
Bhopal: A model for the future," THE NATIONAL MEDICAL JOURNAL OF
INDIA Vol. 9, No. 2 (1996), pgs. 86-91.
[3] P. Cullinan, S.D. Acquilla, and V.R. Dhara, "Long term
Morbidity in survivors of the 1984 Bhopal gas leak," THE NATIONAL
MEDICAL JOURNAL OF INDIA Vol. 9, No. 1 (1996), pgs. 5-10.
[4] Wil Lepkowski, "Ten Years Later; Bhopal," CHEMICAL &
ENGINEERING NEWS [C&EN], December 19, 1994, pgs. 8-18.
[5] Rosalie Bertell, "Twelve years After Bhopal--An Editorial
reflection," INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON PUBLIC HEALTH Vols. 11
and 12 (1996), pgs. 2-4.
[6] Birger Heinzow, "Results of the International Medical
Commission on Bhopal (IMCB)," INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON
PUBLIC HEALTH Vols. 11 and 12 (1996), pgs. 4-8.
[7] M. Verweij, S.C. Mohapatra and R. Bhatia, "Health
Infrastructure for the Bhopal Gas Victims," INTERNATIONAL
PERSPECTIVES ON PUBLIC HEALTH Vols. 11 and 12 (1996), pgs. 8-13.
[8] Rajiv Bhatia and Gianni Tognoni, "Pharmaceutical Use in the
Victims of the Carbide Gas Exposure," INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES
ON PUBLIC HEALTH Vols. 11 and 12 (1996), pgs. 14-22.
[9] J. Jaskowski and others, "Compensation for the Bhopal
Disaster," INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON PUBLIC HEALTH Vols. 11
and 12 (1996), pgs. 23-28.
[10] Ingrid Eckerman, "The Health Situation of Women and Children
in Bhopal; Final Report for the International Medical Commission
on Bhopal 1994," INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON PUBLIC HEALTH
Vols. 11 and 12 (1996), pgs. 29-36.
[11] Thomas J. Callender, "Long-term Neurotoxicity at Bhopal,"
INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON PUBLIC HEALTH Vols. 11 and 12
(1996), pgs. 36-41.
[12] Ward Morehouse, "The Ethics of Industrial Disasters in a
Transnational World: The Elusive Quest for Justice and
Accountability in Bhopal," ALTERNATIVES Vol. 18 (1993), pg. 487.
See also David Denbo, Ward Morehouse, and Lucinda Wykle, ABUSE OF
POWER; SOCIAL PERFORMANCE OF MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS: THE CASE
OF UNION CARBIDE (New York: New Horizons Press, 1990).
[13] Charles Bowden, "While You Were Sleeping," HARPER'S MAGAZINE
December 1996, pg. 44.
[14] Paper copies of the Charter are available from the Council
on International and Public Affairs, Suite 3C, 777 United Nations
Plaza, New York, NY 10017; single copies and small quantities
are free. Telephone: (212) 972-9877. For a free electronic copy
via E-mail, send the word CHARTER in the body of a message (not
in the "subject" line) to info@rachel.clark.net.
Descriptor terms: union carbide; free trade; pesticides; bhopal;
india; methyl isocyanate; mic; industrial disasters; future;
charter on industrial hazards and human rights; human rights;
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