this is one of those judgments where the judgment has fallen more short of the crime itself. the law may itself have only taken the course of evidence that was made available to it! and it was not a media trial at-least so far! but justice should be impassioned at times and should be based on the laws prevalent, in this case which were none.

if you read posts around the web, they are all about MIC and all the cans and water and all the errors and then about how govt. allowed Warren Anderson to get away!

in the case like this our passion may well take us away from the real focus we need to have. we need to decide how to get the people left a more good future.

there are many reasons why the direction of the Bhopal gas tragedy case is taking an incorrect and oblique tangent!

5. our obsession with Warren Anderson
it is true that Warren Anderson did get away with the support of the govt, but what most of us don’t realize that when the incident happened, Warren Anderson was actually in new york and came to India to show how serious his company was, to have the problem sorted. it may even be said that he did so primarily for fear of a backlash, but then his action need to be acknowledged.

what is questionable is that he got to move on without explaining anything! but that’s for the legal stalwarts to handle and the government to answer, not the bigger concern that our issue should be pointing to! at this point 26 years later, though as law you need to pursue the guilty, the response should be more focused towards compensation and rehabilitation!

at the end of day, nobody complained while using EverReady batteries for all these 26 years! (EI was a direct corporate descendant of UCIL)

4 Expecting Dow chemicals to pay!
for one thing Dow never bought over the Indian subsidiary then! though allowing liability to dilute over change of ownership may be a big loophole, but expecting dow to pay for union carbide actions would be like expecting mahindra to pay for satyam’s liabilities. some free market lobbyists may argue it, as a must for a balanced capitalist economy to thrive, but sometimes allowing too large organization to fail may have a cascading effect as proved in the case of lehman brothers. there needs to be a non-passionate debate here.

3. union carbide was the major stake holder!
true! union carbide was indeed the majority stake holder, but guess who the other investors were? the government of india! so the commitment to loss need to be shared! and foremost as a matter of conflict of interest, removes the right of the govt. to represent the people who are affected and are claiming damages.

2. how much to claim? or has already been claimed.
there are varied figures floating in the media. every channel giving its own value based on its trp desire. other than the authoritative $470 million, some would say a lot of unclaimed money is there with interest. but accurate person/compensation figures are hard to come by.

1. is govt. the champion of cause in this case!
if govt. part of the accused also playing the defendants job was not sufficient enough, what follows is more ridiculous, in a country where everything the govt. has not run, is growing so rapidly (believe me i am socialist at heart), expecting that once government takes over justice and quality will prevail is a bad argument. the recommendation of the GoM, for the govt. to take over the hospital instituted for the care for bhopal victims is laudable as a gesture but
falls far short of solving the actual problem. all of us know the quality of health care our govt. hospitals provide, that is probably why most of us may have never been there! govt. should privatize healthcare by health coupon system which would yield better results.

i would like to keep this a non-conclusive post, but just change the window of opinion of the learned and the passionate.

this post was written for amnesty international

Filed under: thoughts