[Reader-list] "Bhopal Gas Tragedy: Endless nightmare"

[Kshmendra Kaul]

"Bhopal Gas Tragedy: Endless nightmare"
 
Subodh Varma, TNN 3 December 2009
 
Twenty-five years have passed since that night of terror and death in Bhopal, which saw a cloud of deadly gases explode out of a faulty tank in a pesticide factory and silently spread into the homes of sleeping people. Although no official count of casualties has ever been done, estimates based on hospital and rehabilitation records show that about 20,000 people died and about 5.7 lakh suffered bodily damage, making it by far the world's worst industrial disaster ever. 

Many who breathed the highly toxic cocktail that night suffered a horrible death with multiple organ failure. Those who survived have suffered multiple diseases for 25 years. A report of the Gas Tragedy Relief Department of the state says that the morbidity rate (occurrence of ailments) is nearly 20% among gas-affected persons compared to about 5% among the unaffected population. 

Following the disaster, there was an international outcry for relief for the victims and punishment to those responsible for the gas leakage. The pesticide plant from where the gas leaked belonged to Union Carbide India, a subsidiary of the US-based Union Carbide Company. They were asked to pay compensation and arrange for medical treatment. The matter immediately got embroiled in legal controversies. Thus began a long and painful struggle of the victims for compensation, medical attention and rehabilitation that has spluttered along for a quarter century. 

In February 1989, the Supreme Court announced that it was approving a settlement for Bhopal victims under which Union Carbide agreed to pay Rs 713 crore for compensation to victims, while the government agreed to drop all criminal cases against it. However, due to intense public shock and anger at letting off the culprits, the court agreed to reopen the criminal cases in 1991. Two installments of compensation - of up to Rs 25,000 each - have been given till now to the injured, one in 1994 and the next in 2004. 

N D Jayaprakash of the Bhopal Gas Peedit Sangharsh Sahyog Samiti (BGPSSS), one of the groups fighting for the rights of gas victims, calls this a massive fraud because the number of gas-affected persons was arbitrarily fixed by the government at 105,000, including about 3,000 dead. In reality, nearly 20,000 people have died, and 5.7 lakh have suffered injuries. The compensation amount - Rs 713 crore, paid by Union Carbide - was meant for about 1 lakh persons but has been distributed among nearly 6 lakh people. Of the Rs 713 crores, Rs 113 crores was for loss of livestock and property. The balance Rs 600 crore distributed among 5.74 lakh persons works out to about Rs 12,410 per victim on average. In contrast, in the Uphaar tragedy in Delhi, families of those who died got between Rs 15 lakh to Rs 18 lakh each, while injured persons got Rs 1 lakh each. In addition, they got interest at the rate of 9% per annum for the roughly six years that the legal
 proceedings took. 

Stung by this injustice, the victims approached the apex court, which told them to approach the state government. In Bhopal, the Welfare Commissioner rejected their demand. They appealed to the MP high court. On November 30 this year, the HC too dismissed the petition. "We will go back to the Supreme Court," says Jayaprakash. 

Even after 25 years, gas victims are suffering serious health problems. On an average, 6,000 gas-affected patients visit hospitals in Bhopal every day, that is, about 2 million visits per year. The government adopted a one-size-fits-all policy for categorisation of injuries — a person with compromised lungs may ultimately develop other diseases, besides being unable to work fully. But such distinctions were not maintained and meagre compensation was doled out. Sadhana Pradhan, who has worked among the gas victims since the disaster in 1984 points out that no line of treatment was ever evolved. "The government has treated the victims on an ad hoc basis," she says. Medical records are yet not centralized as recommended by the monitoring committee set up by the Supreme Court in 2004. As a result, doctors have no idea about the patients' history. "This has led to development of multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB in many cases," says Dr Saxena, who spent 11
 years in the government's TB hospital in Bhopal. 

Another dimension of the ongoing tragedy of Bhopal is the poisonous chemical waste lying around in the abandoned premises of the pesticide plant. Several committees have inspected it and found 44,000 kgs of tarry residues and 25,000 kgs of alpha naphthol lying in the open since 1984. Various studies have established that the soil, ground water, vegetables and even breast milk have traces of toxic chemicals. 

Abdul Jabbar Khan of the Bhopal Gas Peedith Mahila Udyog Sangathan (BGPMUS) says that actually there is much more poisonous waste, which the company used to routinely bury in the premises since 1969. "There is no piped water supply. People still use contaminated groundwater daily," he says.
 
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Bhopal-Gas-Tragedy-Endless-nightmare/articleshow/5294330.cms