I bumped into an article in Business week and I was surprised to note what's happening.
In 1984, Bhopal gas tragedy happened. Union Carbide was completely responsible for everything that happened and they were liable to make any clean up that's required. They paid some money to the victims and then everything was left as it is. Neither the government nor Union Carbide did anything more to address the environmental impact that the leak had created.
Dow Chemical bought whatever was left of the Union Carbide plant. They bought the company shares.
And now, a bunch of people are holding their hands, shouting at Dow Chemical to spend millions of dollars to clean the water table.
The law ministry is also sending wrong signals and supporting this stupid idea.
I seriously don't understand. Why are these people blaming Dow? Just because an international company decided to buy a rundown plant, can you just blame them for whatever happened before?
On top of this, some students at the IITs are objecting to an institutional tie-up with Dow Chemical. That's stupidity to the highest level. Don't these students ever think at all? This is what happens when respected institutions are influenced by reservation policies, the Ministry and a bunch of uneducated politicians.
There is also an NGO that is fighting against Dow Chemical. The Chemicals Ministry has told - "the polluter should pay". What a statement. Damn it! Everyone knows that the polluter was Union Carbide and they were supposed to do the clean up. All these people kept quiet, got bribes once in a while, and now when a renowned firm entered the country, they have decided to put the blame on it. Maybe, someone gave them an idea that if we blame an international firm, they will immediately do what's required to prevent any damage to their brand value at the world market.
Do any of these parties understand that its the responsibility of the government and Union Carbide officials to solve this problem?
If we told that going forward, Dow has to be responsible for whatever happens, then its okay. Why do we have to pass our own inefficiencies to someone who is quiet?
3 comments:
Dow, when they bought Union Carbide, also bought their assets and liabilities. On the latter column you have Bhopal. And Warren Anderson, the dude who ran Union Carbide, is yet to appear in an Indian court and face a proper trial. The plant itself is still polluting Bhopal's water supply. If you've seen pictures of the tragedy, and the aftermaths that are still apparent today, in children born twenty years after the event took place, you'd not be exonerating Dow one bit. And dig a little deeper into Dow's past, and you see a history of chemical weaponry used in Vietnam and so forth. This position you've taken is unbelievably ill-informed and naive. Read this: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20040524/hertsgaard
Maybe Dow's stand is not justified. But ours is an inefficiency problem. The Chemicals Ministry, Law Ministry and Ministry of Agriculture have taken enough money from Dow and have given sanctions that they shouldn't be giving. After having done all that why keep protesting to show that we are concerned?
Of course the people who have been scarred for life (and generations beyond) will protest. Because they are part of the country those 'inefficient' people are running. It isn't inefficiency, it's a sickening indifference to the hundreds of millions of people who haven't been touched by IT, ISB or a frisbee.
Witness how concerned everyone is about fuel prices - that is at such a high because there isn't too much crude oil underfoot anymore. If you keep fuel prices up, while subsidising essentials like foodgrains, there'll be knock-on effects elsewhere - More money pumped into alternative energy by companies who currently don't care as long as China, India and the US will guzzle gazillions of gallons of fuel happily. Look at France - there was an article in Frontline yesterday about the city of Lille and how 70 per cent of their buses run not on diesel, CNG or LPG, but on biogas produced from domestic waste. 70 per cent. Not too hard with our population to create a hell a lot of biogas with the waste we generate.
I'm deviating terribly, but does anyone care about farm input prices like they do about fuel - an example being fertiliser prices that have shot up at least ten-fold simply because American seed giants Monsanto and Cargill dictate prices now, and the government won't subsidise farmers at all? And guess what Dow is going to manufacture here? Pesticides. And maybe outsource their chemical weapon plants to India, 'creating thousands of jobs'...
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