What stands out is that Indian institutions are incapable of resolving conflicts. But there is learning for activists and non-profits. In no way should the fight become an end in itself so that issues remain unresolved. Perhaps, this is why we have not seen another Bhopal-like disaster in the past 30 years.
But the work is not over yet. In India we continue to see smaller industrial accidents—mini-Bhopals. Hazardous wastes are piling up in many parts, contaminating land and water and endangering lives. But we do not have the means or methods to remediate these toxic sites. How do we prevent not just another Bhopal but also the mini-Bhopals from happening? It is also an enabling law, which delegates wide powers to the executive, allowing it to make rules to manage different issues.
Over the years, EPA has been translated into a range of Central rules and regulations, laying down pollution norms and setting rules for the management of hazardous waste. By , the country got the Hazardous Waste Management and Handling Rules for management, storage and import of hazardous chemicals. Even the protection of coastal areas is done under EPA as its subordinate rules. In , amendments were made in the Factories Act, , which empowers states to appoint site appraisal committees to advise on the location of factories using hazardous processes.
It also sets up systems for the safety of workers and residents nearby and specifies emergency disaster control plans.
In , the Public Liability Insurance Act was enacted to provide for immediate relief to persons affected by accidents while handling hazardous substances. Under the Act, an environment relief fund was set up to compensate affected people. Despite these legislation in place, India is fast losing the battle of environmental protection and management of hazardous waste. Take the Factories Act. According to the latest data published by the Ministry of Labour and Employment, in , the total dead and injured in were 10, That year, over 1, people lost their lives in factory accidents.
Not surprising that the states with the worst worker safety records were the industrialised Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. Gujarat was the worst, with close to dead and 3, injured. Just in the 10 months of , there are reports of as many as eight industrial incidents, where workers have died or been hospitalised. Many more cases would have gone unreported. In addition, there is the problem of growing toxic contamination of land and water.
This means, even though hazardous waste management rules provide for inventories, storage and safe disposal of such toxic substances, these work more in the breach. As waste continues to stockpile, more areas are contaminated. A total of 10 toxic sites were identified. Consultants were hired to plan for remediation and the matter has stopped there.
The problem is institutional management provisions of legislation remain only on paper. For instance, the Chemical Accidents Rule provides for setting up a central crisis group. The information on the website of MoEF, its nodal ministry, shows just how inconsequential this has become for the government. The name and phone number of the head of the crisis group is given as T K A Nair, who was secretary in the mids. But the group does not exist, not even on paper.
This is the real crisis of India. We have set up the framework but have nothing to fill it up with. The state pollution control boards are required to give the industry consent to establish and then consent to operate. In addition, they must give authorisations under various EPA rules for plastic, battery, municipal waste and, now, e-waste. But all that the pollution boards do is to process the consent and authorisation. They do not have time to monitor compliance with standards for pollution or enforce their directions.
This paperwork—processing consent applications—brings them their main source of income. Our analysis shows that on an average, a state pollution board collects about one water sample per factory and surveys less than 25 per cent of the units for air quality.
In fact, the entire environmental monitoring depends on self-reporting by industries, which are required to get samples of effluents tested in private laboratories and submit the data to the pollution board.
It is another matter that the laboratories are, in many cases, extremely inadequate and unskilled. It is another matter that the pollution board officials do not even have time to look at the reports. It is about paperwork, not about controlling pollution. It is not about enforcement. What really hurts is these self-monitored samples cannot even be used for enforcement. So, even if a report submitted by an industry shows that it exceeds the norms, the board cannot use this for enforcement.
Instead, what is required is a cumbersome and highly suspect sampling protocol under which the board officials first have to inform the industry that they will be visiting—time and place—for inspection, and only this sample can be used for enforcement. It is, therefore, no surprise that only 2 per cent of the show cause notices get converted into legal action.
There is also no deterrence in the system. But only courts can impose this penalty. So all the boards can do is to either deny the consent to operate or issue closure notice for 30 days.
Both options are not feasible. So, very little is done to act against the polluter. Without effective enforcement, the system is not even worth the paper on which the many forms are filled and filed.
This is the case with clearances—environment, forest, coastal and wildlife—required for projects. These key instruments ensure that environmental damage is mitigated. These procedures have become riddled with processes, but no outcome. In the case of environmental clearances there is a near-zero rejection rate; instead, conditions are set at the time of sanctioning a project knowing fully well that there is no capacity or will to monitor compliance.
Forest clearance is an even bigger paper tiger—94 per cent of projects are cleared without an impact assessment of the project in terms of forest, biodiversity or livelihoods of the many who live in these habitats.
Then, it is stipulated that compensatory afforestation will be done for each hectare diverted. But nobody really knows if the trees are even planted, let alone if they survive. The system continues with this farce of taking action—as if laws and processes are enough to make a difference.
This can be fixed. Changing this requires strengthening institutions. This is the agenda for environmental governance 30 years after Bhopal. Today pollution boards have high number of vacancies—from 30 per cent in states like Andhra Pradesh, Haryana and Odisha to 60 per cent in Bihar and Karnataka. The Central Pollution Control Board is without a full time chairperson for the past some years.
Working conditions across these institutions is poor. But all governments run away from this agenda. Instead of fixing what is broken, they make new institutions, adding to multiplicity and confusion. UCIL designed, built, managed and operated the plant using Indian consultants and workers. This was corporate falsehood. This is the beginning of our story. The project was being set up to produce a methyl isocyanate MIC -based pesticide, viz, sevin. What was the link and how did it come about?
The US major which was known for its political clout through its White House connection, campaign funding, etc, stepped up relentless pressure on the GoI. The government which has always been solicitous to foreign investors bowed to US diplomatic pressures. The FERA guidelines were tweaked amplified as it was called!
From the affidavits and other documents filled by UCC and the GoI, it was clear that the progress of the sevin project was anything but smooth. It entered into separate agreements with the parent company.
There were doubts about the capacity planned and also designs to keep huge quantities of MIC in storage. By international standards, the storage planned was considered excessive and highly risky. By the winter of , when the project was half way through, there were worries about overruns and potential demand for pesticides in India.
Even the feasibility of scaling down the plant was discussed in New York and given up as the project had already reached an advanced stage. It was also seen from these documents that within UCC there were inter-departmental differences and squabbles. Its agriculture department was keen to maintain its exports of sevin to India as it had reached overcapacity in the US.
A Bhopal task force of UCC was formed to iron out the differences. It could not ban the exports. Sadly, it could not find other commercially viable alternative uses for MIC. Ultimately, it was decided to go ahead and complete the project solely for the purpose of retaining the subsidiary status of UCIL. This was on 5 July It did not prove to be a moment of victory. Demand for sevin did not pick up and stocks began to pile up.
Sevin was efficacious in very large US farms covering thousands of hectares. Not so in small patches of land as in India. Insects treated with sevin ravaged the neighbouring untreated farms! Moreover, the country faced severe drought and farming was substantially reduced. Other competitive pesticides had entered the market. The Bhopal plant had become sick and was beyond redemption.
In keeping with the US corporate tradition, UCC began to engage in savage cost cuts to salvage the plant. The 7. In the fall of , steel from the ruins of the World Trade Center was exported to India apparently without first being tested for contamination from asbestos and heavy metals present in the twin tower debris.
Other examples of poor environmental stewardship and economic considerations taking precedence over public health concerns abound [ 24 ]. The Bhopal disaster could have changed the nature of the chemical industry and caused a reexamination of the necessity to produce such potentially harmful products in the first place. However the lessons of acute and chronic effects of exposure to pesticides and their precursors in Bhopal has not changed agricultural practice patterns.
An estimated 3 million people per year suffer the consequences of pesticide poisoning with most exposure occurring in the agricultural developing world.
It is reported to be the cause of at least 22, deaths in India each year. In the state of Kerala, significant mortality and morbidity have been reported following exposure to Endosulfan, a toxic pesticide whose use continued for 15 years after the events of Bhopal [ 25 ]. Aggressive marketing of asbestos continues in developing countries as a result of restrictions being placed on its use in developed nations due to the well-established link between asbestos products and respiratory diseases.
Mining, production and use of asbestos in India is very loosely regulated despite the health hazards. Reports have shown morbidity and mortality from asbestos related disease will continue in India without enforcement of a ban or significantly tighter controls [ 26 , 27 ]. UCC has shrunk to one sixth of its size since the Bhopal disaster in an effort to restructure and divest itself. By doing so, the company avoided a hostile takeover, placed a significant portion of UCC's assets out of legal reach of the victims and gave its shareholder and top executives bountiful profits [ 1 ].
The company still operates under the ownership of Dow Chemicals and still states on its website that the Bhopal disaster was "cause by deliberate sabotage".
Some positive changes were seen following the Bhopal disaster. The British chemical company, ICI, whose Indian subsidiary manufactured pesticides, increased attention to health, safety and environmental issues following the events of December However, they still do not adhere to standards as strict as their parent company in the UK. In its early negotiations with the Indian government, DuPont had sought and won a remarkable clause in its investment agreement that absolved it from all liabilities in case of an accident.
But the people of Goa were not willing to acquiesce while an important ecological site was cleared for a heavy polluting industry. After nearly a decade of protesting by Goa's residents, DuPont was forced to scuttle plans there. Chennai was the next proposed site for the plastics plant.
The state government there made significantly greater demand on DuPont for concessions on public health and environmental protection. Eventually, these plans were also aborted due to what the company called "financial concerns". The tragedy of Bhopal continues to be a warning sign at once ignored and heeded. Bhopal and its aftermath were a warning that the path to industrialization, for developing countries in general and India in particular, is fraught with human, environmental and economic perils.
Some moves by the Indian government, including the formation of the MoEF, have served to offer some protection of the public's health from the harmful practices of local and multinational heavy industry and grassroots organizations that have also played a part in opposing rampant development. The Indian economy is growing at a tremendous rate but at significant cost in environmental health and public safety as large and small companies throughout the subcontinent continue to pollute.
Far more remains to be done for public health in the context of industrialization to show that the lessons of the countless thousands dead in Bhopal have truly been heeded.
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