Bhopal’s Slow Leak
A quarter century after the worst chemical spill in history, an ugly legacy
affects both Bhopalis and Dow Chemical
by Jacob Resneck
They came with rocks. They came with iron bars, sticks and petrol. They toppled scaffolding, tore out timber frames and wrecked foundations. Then with petrol and kerosene carried in jerry cans, they set the wreckage alight. That July morning as the summer heat bore down on the village of Shinde – about 30 kilometres from Pune in the state of Maharashtra – hundreds of Warkari devotees razed a Dow Chemical Corporation building site, slated to be a research and development centre.
“All the machines were burned down,” recalls 57-year-old Vilas Sonawane, a leader of the Lok Shasan movement that opposes Dow. “Then there was a godown, the godown was burnt down. That is how it took place.”
The violence terminated a bitter standoff. Villagers and Warkari pilgrims united against the police protecting Dow’s expansion into the rural Chakan district.
Work has been halted since January 2008 when local villagers boycotted the workers at the site, refusing to sell them food or provide water. The destruction on July 25, 2008 was the work of hundreds of Warkaris, devotees to a 17th century Hindu sect who make an annual pilgrimage to the area during the lunar month of Aashadha. They were convinced the building was too close to sacred sites.
Officials in Maharashtra, long champions of Dow’s expansion intothe area, were furious, even accusing the neighbouring state of Gujarat of planting agent provocateurs in the
village to steal the 300 jobs promised by Dow.
But this David-and-Goliath story of a farming village of 2,200 people defeating a petrochemical company that last year boasted $57.5 billion in sales has a back story. It begins more than 800 kilometres away, in the state of Madhya Pradesh.
In India, the name Union Carbide is synonymous with mass death. Twenty-five years ago, Union Carbide Corporation’s pesticide plant in Bhopal leaked tons of poisonous gas that killed thousands. The disaster stands alongside nuclear meltdowns like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl as one of the greatest man-made calamities ever.
And Sonawane, the activist, wasn’t scared to point out this connection to villagers. “We told them it was quite possible that Bhopal maybe could happen again if this company is situated here,” Sonawane says. “The villagers were convinced; they were really scared.”
Since Dow completed its takeover of Union Carbide in 2001 it’s found itself tainted with the past sins of its subsidiary; a connection that company continues to deny.
“Dow never owned or operated the Bhopal plant, Dow does not have responsibility for any issues pertaining to Bhopal,” says Dow spokesman Scot Wheeler via e-mail. Wheeler notes that Dow completed its purchase of Union Carbide after the company had divested itself of the Indian subsidiary that had owned and operated the Bhopal plant.
But the stigma that Dow inherited in India lives on.
Perhaps that’s one reason why the building site in Maharashtra never bore the Dow logo and the company’s presence wasn’t known until it had been triumphantly announced during a joint statement by Dow and Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, who said the project would put “this small village on the global R&D map”.
Bhopal is still haunted by the night a tank holding more than 40 tons of methyl isocyanate (MIC) at a pesticide plant in the urban centre ruptured, spewing tons of toxic gases that killed more than 3,000 overnight and maimed thousands more in the early hours of December 3, 1984.
More than two decades later, survivors of that horrific night and their kin continue to suffer from health effects and seek justice from the company and their government. Many claims they have been cast off as collateral damage in India’s drive to industrialise and court international investment.
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