By any reckoning, the inhabitants of Bhopal who were exposed on December 2/3, 1984 to massive doses of toxic chemicals released from a pesticides plant owned by Union Carbide Corporation fall within this category. They have experienced both acute pain and prolonged suffering, which has been made all the more humiliating by corporate skulduggery and official apathy.

Over the past 25 years, the death toll in Bhopal has risen sharply from 3,000 to over 20,000. A range of diseases and disorders caused by exposure to Carbide's poisons continue to claim people's lives month after month. More than 100,000, perhaps 150,000 people—nobody knows the exact number because the government hasn't bothered to update its health surveys—continue to suffer from a variety of debilitating ailments such as chronic obstructive pulmonary (lung) disease, disorders of the kidneys, liver and brain, and damage to the immune system, besides musculo-skeletal, gastro-intestinal and eye disorders.

Half the people living in the bustees heavily exposed to the 40,000 kg of poisonous gases spewed out by the UCC plant, including deadly methyl isocyanate (MIC), have lost 60 percent or more of their lung capacity and are unable to perform manual labour or tasks that normal human beings do routinely. Some 10,000 are virtually bedridden, with nobody to look after them. Thousands of able-bodied young men have been reduced to emaciated half-adults. Many more are living through hell.

A quarter-century on, the Bhopal tragedy hasn't ended. Besides the diseased bodies of the human victims, it also continues to manifest itself through the chemical contamination of more than one-fifth of the 60-odd acres of land occupied by the UCC plant, and worse, of groundwater, which the people are forced to drink.

More than 10 scientific surveys conducted since 1999 by official and independent researchers, including Greenpeace and the Centre for Science and Environment, have found that the plant site contains high levels of mercury, lead, nickel, copper, chromium, hexachloro-cyclohexane, chlorobenzene and carbaryl pesticide. Mercury levels at one sample location were 6 million times higher than the safe limit. Mercury is a potent neurotoxin. Many of these chemicals persist in the environment over a long period.

Two new surveys will be released this week, one by an Indian laboratory and another by a Swiss institute, which confirm unacceptably high levels of chemical contamination of both soil and water with substances that are specific to Carbide's residues. But the Madhya Pradesh government is in denial of this and cites questionable findings by its pollution control board, which hasn't even sampled the water.

Instead of cleaning up the plant site of the hundreds of tonnes of toxic waste, the state government wants to clean up its image through a public relations exercise by throwing open the plant site to the public to coincide with the disaster's 25th anniversary. This will fly in the face of an October 2005 order of the Madhya Pradesh High Court, which said: “the factory premises should be appropriately guarded by deputing armed guards so that no outsider can enter …[It] cannot be regarded as a garden, park or laboratory where children come to play.”

If the state government wants to bury the toxic legacy of the Carbide plant, the Centre is keen to roll out the red carpet for UCC's successor, the world's second largest chemical giant, Dow Chemical Co of the US, which bought Union Carbide for $9.3 billion in 1999.

Legally, Carbide's obligation to clean up the plant site stands transferred to Dow. India's Department of Chemicals and Fertilisers even filed an initial claim of Rs 100 crores on Dow in the Madhya Pradesh High Court. But Dow contends that it has no liability or obligation to the Bhopal victims and no responsibility to clean up. It's lobbying the Centre at the highest level—its chairman has met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh twice—to be let off the hook

Dow has drafted the support of the US-India Business Council, which last week felicitated Dr Singh in the US. It has also found an enthusiastic ally in industrialist Ratan Tata. Mr Tata has offered “to lead and find funding” for the “remediation” (cleansing) of the site so that Dow can invest in India.

Dow has long eyed India's growing market. To get a toehold in it, Dow has repeatedly tried to reach technical collaboration agreements with various companies and the IITs. But hundreds of IIT alumni, including this writer, have opposed Dow's move. It can't recruit on their campuses. Dow also tried to set up a research centre near Pune. It had to beat a retreat under spirited public protests.

However, Dow hasn't given up. It's still lobbying the government and has retained Congress party spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi as its lawyer, besides enlisting the support of powerful official functionaries like Messrs Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Kamal Nath. But letting Dow off the liability hook would only add insult to the victims' injury.

Insult was indeed what Minister of State for Environment Jairam Ramesh delivered when he visited the Bhopal plant in September and poked fun at the victims . He picked a fistful of waste and declared: “See, I am alive!” There could have been no meaner way of rubbing salt into the wounds of people who have suffered grievously from the gas leak. Mr Ramesh even insinuated, like UCC's shameless supporters, that the disaster was caused by negligence, or worse, sabotage, on the part of its workers.

We must recall the entire context. Bhopal hasn't witnessed one tragedy, it has suffered many. Immediately after the gas disaster, the victims were robbed of their original medical records by American “ambulance-chasing” lawyers and denied competent and timely medical treatment which could have saved hundreds of lives and prevented large-scale suffering. The Indian Council of Medical Research set up many research projects on MIC and treatment. But it failed to produce a simple treatment protocol which would tell a general practitioner what medicines to administer for lung, kidney or liver injuries, eye damage, or nervous disorders.

The government appropriated the victims' right to legal defence under the doctrine of “the state as a parent”, but failed to gather clinching evidence to show that UCC, the parent corporation, was responsible for the design and day-to-day operation of the Bhopal plant; and that the accident was caused by basic deficiencies in its safety system design. It did not pursue the case seriously enough in the US or in India

In 1989, a second tragedy visited Bhopal in the form of a grossly unfair and collusive settlement imposed upon the victims by the government and the Supreme Court, which settled their compensation claims for a paltry $470 million—a sum barely double the company's insurance cover—and totally extinguished Carbide's civil liability. The government, which had demanded over $3 billion from Carbide, inexplicably agreed to lower the amount by five-sixths.

Distribution of compensation was Bhopal's third tragedy. There was no attempt to grade the severity of the victims' health damage. Unaffected middle class people living far away from the plant used their bureaucratic connections to get compensation, while the badly affected poor people living close to the factory got squeezed out. Most victims got as little as Rs 25,000 for a lifetime of suffering. Much of it went into repaying debts or bribing corrupt officials.

A fourth tragedy occurred when the Indian government failed to pursue the issue of criminal liability of Carbide's directors, including former chairman Warren Anderson—even after the liability was restored by the Supreme Court, albeit in a diluted form. The government claims it cannot trace Anderson to serve a warrant on him—although his address in a posh New York suburb has been widely publicised!

The government has learnt nothing from the disaster. India's environmental and occupational safety regulations have not been tightened. In fact, the environmental impact assessment process has been undermined through an unconscionable relaxation of requirements to document hazards, rigorously scrutinise proposals and strictly monitor and verify compliance

India's legal system remains abysmally weak and ineffective in punishing negligence and bringing corporations to book. Twentyfive years on, there's no law of torts (civil wrongs) worth the name in India. Powerful interests have been complicit in denying and subverting justice for the Bhopal victims. Indeed, the entire system has conspired against them.

Yet, the Bhopal victims haven't given up their heroic struggle for justice and dignity. They continue to remind us that we are still far away from realising the goal of inclusive civic citizenship, which is pivotal to democracy. We can repay our debt and deliver a modicum of justice to them only if we prevent future Bhopals—and an erasure of the many lessons of that disaster. (IPA Service)