New Delhi:
For three years, Bhopal journalist Rajkumar Keswani kept warning the administration that the Union Carbide plant was unsafe. His last article Bhopal Sitting on a Volcano was published just months before the tragedy.
But all his article and letters of concern to the Chief Minister were ignored.
In fact, the then Chief Minister Arjun Singh assured the Madhya Pradesh Assembly that he personally inspected the Carbide plant, and all is well.
But clearly, that was not the case. Following evidence clearly suggest that the tragedy could have been averted:
- In 1979, zonal regulations in Bhopal were changed so that Carbide could set up a plant, manufacturing deadly pesticides in the heart of the city's most densely populated areas.
- In December 1981, a gas leak at the Union Carbide plant killed one worker.
- A year later, in January 1982, there was another gas leak in which 25 workers were hospitalised. Workers protested that there was design defect in the plant that made it unsafe but the protests were ignored.
- Two years later Union Carbide sent its US experts to do an audit. The team noticed leakage in the plant.
- In September 1982, UCIL de-linked the alarm from the siren warning system so that only their employees would be warned about the leakage, and not the neighbouring residents.
- A year later, another leak was reported from the plant which left 100 residents hospitalised.
- On March 4, 1983, Bhopal lawyer Shahnawaz Khan served a legal notice on UCIL. But on April 29, 1983, in a written reply, UCIL's Works Manager denied the allegations as baseless.
- Between 1983 and 1984, the safety manuals were re-written to permit among other things switching off the units that cooled the Methyl Isocyanate (MIC) gas and prevent chemical reactions.
- On December 3, 1984, the disaster occurred when gas leaked in huge amounts. No warning given to the residents of the leak or what precautions to take.
Clearly, Union Carbide knew of these dangers; their own employees had been protesting. But most importantly, why did the government ignore such serious warnings?
Keswani and thousands of others in Bhopal have this view: "I have published a report in the state as to how many of the relatives of the politicians and bureaucrats were employed by Union Carbide. And apart from that, the guesthouse had a beautiful guesthouse which was being used by several people like Arjun Singh and Madhav Rao Scindia. At one instance, the Congress party held a convention in Bhopal and used it as a place of stay for several ministers. That only shows what kind of clout they had. Those were the times when a multinational company coming to India was greeted with open arms, they were given all kinds of concessions and treated like demigods. There was absolutely no question of anybody going against a powerful corporation like Union Carbide. The company was one of the biggest chemical companies in the world."