Bhopal Disaster – REAL ISSUES
Chetan Bhagat’s article does make the point about the culpability of the government, firstly, in preventing the disaster arising from corrupt enforcers or inept inspections and clearances of the production facility of Union Carbide Ltd plant at Bhopal and secondly, its failure to provide requisite relief to the sufferers. But this culpability and failure of our government is much bigger than that of UCL is not sufficiently emphasized by him. The electronic media in India is even more oblivious. It is spending ten times more time in talking about Anderson or about shaking down Dow, new owner of UCL, than about (a) the government’s flawed regulatory and safety enforcing systems and (b) the insensitiveness and dereliction of the government to provide relief to the innocent victims.
A civilized society should be more concerned about quickly providing necessary help to the injured and worry less about chasing a crook(s) or absconder(s) who, in this case, it appears were let off too lightly. Even the Ex-CJI JS Verma, in another article, is arguing about establishing culpability of the UCL management and not of the government’s responsibility before and after the disaster. Coming from the legal world, he is more concerned about persecution and bringing the culprits to book and he does not talk about the remedy to be made available to victims if the culprits succeed in outsmarting the government’s agencies and legal system.
It does appear that there exists a lot of evidence with CBI that UCL’s management was alerted about the lack of safeguards at the plant, therefore, they should have been held accountable. If they were not, then the investigations or the judge or both were inept or the due process was subverted. This is quite sad but according to me the real outrage is the government’s failure to stand up to its obligation to ordinary people and not the failure of the nine managers who were indicted and one who got away due to promise made to the Americans prior to Anderson's visit avowedly to assess the situation on the ground. Had we been smarter or more honest perhaps, we could have nailed UCL and got them to cough up many billions of dollars but what if the corporation did not have so much money? Would it not be government’s responsibility to chip in if the offender is not rich or capable of making the restitution?
Deepak Parekh is quoted as having said that non-executive chairman and board members should not be held liable for such accidents – I think again here the question is of being aware and having the ability and assigned duty to reduce risks. This is not always a black and white situation, often the degree of responsibility will vary and hence the punishment should also be proportionately changed. Is the plant manager not more responsible than Keshub Mahindra? May be may be not!
Also there is another fundamental question. What if all known precautions are taken by a corporation but still accident happens? Definitely, the corporation should do its utmost to provide restitution but the society should also pick up the tab. I think Tony Hayward, CEO of BP didn’t even argue that his company had taken all known precautions to prevent the oil leak because he knew if he took that line of defense before the US Government’s inquisitions he would completely grind the image of BP into dirt. It is not material if BP did not take adequate precautions, my case is that even if BP had taken adequate measures or even all known measures were taken and despite that if the accident had happened the blame and the cost it would have to face would be no less than it is now.
What we need is a new framework to deal with man-made disasters which may happen unfortunately with greater frequency due to engaging new and "dangerous" technologies (e.g. nuclear, chemical, bio-genetics and medical). There should be a stiff set of regulations and enforcement of safety standards (which also entail producing evidence of performance or else "rigorous testing"by regulators) and there should be defined costs to defray in the event of a disaster attributable to acts of omission or commission. Offender must be asked to meet costs of or mitigate damages but even more importantly, the government and the society should be ready and willing to chip in if the offender is not able to or not willing to defray the full cost. Specifically, there should be a cap on the liability of "responsible" service or product providers but no cap on responsibility of government/society which must bear the risk of consequences of disasters that happen despite due care and due diligence exercised while working with legally sanctioned activities. If the framework of limitations of liability can't be established then it would have the effect of excluding honest, capable but risk averse people contributing to our progress. Real issue to grapple: IMMEDIATE RESTITUTION is more important (it must be assured and provided by the government) than RETRIBUTION which can take its own time through various courts.
