This, some may argue, sadly makes the government a 'co-accused' or 'co-conspirator' in the case. Ideally, this should have been a case of the people of Bhopal, the plaintiff, versus the governments of India and of Madhya Pradesh and the Union Carbide of the United States of America (USA), all respondents. The involvement of the central and the state governments in the case is loud and clear.

The main culprit, if any, is the government of India, which at first allowed the Union Carbide or its Indian arm (UCIL) to set up a '100 per cent export oriented unit (EOU)' to manufacture a lethal gal chemical, methyl isocyanite (MIC), without proper investigation into and knowledge about the potential hazard the killer chemical could cause to the environment in case of any leakage from the storage tanks or in the manufacturing process. There are several unanswered questions about the union government's hurried clearance of the Union Carbide's EOU proposal. Did the government make any serious attempt to know, before according its approval to the project, why Carbide chose a far away site such as India to set up this plant when its product would be required to be transported back tens of thousands of kilometers across three continents for commerce. What prevented the company from setting up the project in the USA or in some neighbouring countries such as Mexico and Canada? What was the end-use of the highly toxic gas? Was the killer gas meant for US defence supplies for use as nerve gas or chemical warfare? Why was the plant allowed to be set up around the crowded city of Bhopal and not at a more remote place? Could the gas leakage have been deliberately engineered by the company's top management to secretly experiment or demonstrate its potency as a weapon of mass destruction? How did the principal accused in the case, Union Carbide chairman Warren Anderson, managed to free himself so easily after his arrest to flee the country forever? In fact, he was escorted out of the country by the government. This is unbelievable. What was it that the government wanted to hide from the public and the court?

These are some of the tricky questions which may never find honest answers. But, one thing is clear that the Union Carbide could never set up the MIC project without the written approval of the concerned ministry and the union cabinet. And, the disaster, which killed tens of thousands of people and incapacitated over a few lakhs for life, could have probably been avoided if the government's industrial safety inspection machinery performed its routine task as per the official manual. The Indian government, in its wisdom, did not even seriously pursue the matter with the United States government seeking its full cooperation in the case. The CBI never grilled the government on any of the tricky issues involving the officialdom leading to the Bhopal disaster. May be it was beyond the scope and ability of the CBI director to question his political masters, those powerful members of the union cabinet who accorded approval to the project. Thus, the CBI had no choice but to restrict its investigation to criminal negligence on the part of UCIL executives to ensure safety standards at the plant, making a sham of the enquiry. UCIL's part-time chairman Keshub Mahindra, one of India's leading business lights, was made an easy victim of the circumstances.

One cannot help but go back to the history of India's policy making apparatus, which decides on foreign investments, imports and exports. Such policies invariably provide loopholes for the rich and the powerful to exploit to dodge the regulations or use them to their advantage. Between 1975 and 1985, many multinational corporations (MNCs) operating in low technology areas in India used a loophole in the Foreign Exchange Regulations Act (FERA), now defunct, to take export route or import saving core sector route to retain overseas management control over their Indian outfits. This made decorative paints maker, ICI of the UK, to go for making fertilizer, Hindustan Lever (now Hindustan Unilever) to export rice, fish, garments and also make fertilizer, biscuit baron Britannia went for catching fish in the deep seas and tobacco giant ITC went for a host of things, including fishing and hoteliering, packet tea titan Brooke Bond took to buffalo slaughtering for processed meat export and chemical conglomerate Union Carbide for deep sea fishing and MIC manufacturing for export. Those were the crazy days of the control-permit Raj. The MNCs in India squandered huge funds, mostly from their local reserves, to retain their overseas tag. The entire nation had to bear the cost of the government decision as most of the unrelated diversification projects of those MNCs turned out to be a financial disaster. And, Union Carbide's MIC project led to the biggest industrial disaster in the annals of world history.

Behind the Bhopal gas tragedy is mostly, if not entirely, the failure of the then union government to protect the interest of the nation against corporate greed. In any other civilized country, such a tragedy would have brought down the entire government, high level judicial or joint parliamentary probe ordered to fix responsibility for such an industrial disaster, laws would have been quickly amended to provide exemplary punishment to the offenders of industrial safety norms killing innocent people outside factory premises. No such thing happened. No fast track special court was assigned to handle the case. Instead, the CBI was assigned to look into the matter. Curiously, the law was subsequently amended to reduce punishment for 'criminal negligence' the scope of which covers even road accidents. In India, Death and human disaster seem to concern only the victims and not the government, nor even the civil society. Yesterday, it was the MIC leak. Tomorrow, it could be a massive radiation leak from a foreign-built nuclear plant in India. The nuclear liability bill, awaiting approval by Indian Parliamentarians, provide only a 'token punishment' to the tune of $ 100 million or Rs. 500 crore to nuclear suppliers or plant operators in case of big disaster leading to mass killing. Who cares? The innocent will die. The country will carry on, proudly displaying its annual economic growth datas. (IPA Service)