Exposure: The Bhopal disaster

Peter Mac

Just after midnight on December 3, 1984 there was a gas leakage 
at Union Carbide's pesticide plant at Bhopal in India. The 
accident, which is said to have been triggered in part by a 
refrigeration plant being turned off as an economy measure, 
released 40 tonnes of toxic methyl isocyanate gas into the 
atmosphere, forming a cloud that covered an area of 40 square 
kilometres around the plant.

It was the world's worst industrial accident. Three thousand 
people died that night from the effects of the gas. There were 
8000 casualties in the three days after the accident, and another 
20,000 have died since. One hundred and twenty thousand people 
have survived, but with terrible injuries to the eyes, skin, 
lungs and other parts of the body. Since the disaster, the rates 
of cancer, infant mortality and deformities in and around Bhopal 
area have soared.

More than 572,000 survivors have now been officially classified 
as victims of the accident, either because of their injuries or 
because of loss of earning power or other ill effects.

Union Carbide declined to reveal the composition of the chemicals 
involved on the basis that this knowledge was their intellectual 
property. (This made it extremely difficult for medical 
authorities to treat the victims in the immediate aftermath of 
the blast.) Although only five years old, the plant had been 
losing money. After the accident the company simply abandoned it. 
The manager, Warren Anderson, was arrested but skipped bail and 
lives in great comfort in the US despite an Interpol warrant for 
his arrest.

The company later made a small compensation payment to the 
victims, but it was not until 1989, after a court case mounted by 
the Indian Government, that a legal settlement was reached. 

The company had chosen to contest the case in India, rather than 
in the US, where the damages were likely to be much larger. The 
Indian Government demanded US$15 billion in damages, but in the 
event only $US470 million was forthcoming.

Moreover, the victims did not receive anything until November 
this year, just under 20 years after the tragedy. The entitlement 
for each victim was some 25,000 rupees. At the current rate of 
exchange that is about A$757, or approximately $38 for each year 
the victims have had to wait.

Not surprisingly, many of the victims felt that this did not 
represent a just outcome. The environmental organisation 
Greenpeace and a coalition of survivor groups is now campaigning 
for adequate compensation, as well as for the company (which has 
been taken over by Dow Chemicals) to carry out remediation to the 
site, whose soil and water are still shockingly polluted.

An exhibition on the disaster is currently on display in Sydney. 
Shortly after the disaster, Indian photographer Raghu Rai visited 
the site to record its aftermath. Last year he again visited 
Bhopal to document the long-term impacts on the local residents. 
His haunting images, reminiscent of the post-Hiroshima 
photographs, form the basis of the exhibition.

The exhibition will be on display in Sydney, with half the 
photographs at the Tap Gallery at 278 Palmer St, Darlinghurst and 
the other half at the George Hannah Memorial Library in King St, 
Mascot, until January 30, 2005.