But still, a step towards closure on Bhopal

Business Standard / New Delhi Jul 11, 2012, 00:04 IST

Any news related to the Bhopal gas tragedy is usually of broken promises or of inaction. So last week’s Cabinet decision to approve Rs 25 crore to dispose of some of the waste from the ill-fated pesticide plant once owned by Union Carbide deserves kudos — even if it comes almost 28 years after the gas leak that killed over 5,000 people and maimed many thousands more. This amount will be paid to a German state agency, GIZ, to airlift roughly 350 tonnes of waste that has been collected and stored in bags in a state warehouse since 2005 to be eventually incinerated in Europe. Since almost any development on the tragedy generates fierce controversy, the fact that this waste will be disposed of outside Indian shores and in accordance with UN norms can be considered a win-win solution to a long-standing problem. Given the ease with which GIZ officials say they can dispose of this waste, it is difficult to understand why this solution took so long to finalise. According to GIZ officials, the company handles some three million tonnes of toxic waste annually; so Bhopal’s consignment is a speck in the garbage, so to speak. There is some indignation that the government, and not Union Carbide, has been made to foot the bill on the “polluter pays” principle. But given the cases that are now wending their labyrinthine way through the courts, last week’s Cabinet decision can be considered a sensible way of moving towards some sort of closure.
Indeed, it is puzzling why reaching this solution would take seven years. There is far too little urgency in addressing the continuing impact of the Bhopal tragedy. Showing that the impact of past disasters has been minimised is an essential task for the government. Consider how the United States handled the Deepwater Horizon disaster, one of the world’s worst oil spills. When an oil well exploded in April 2010, killing 11 people and spewing some 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, tourism and other local livelihoods were severely impacted. A few months later, in August, US President Barack Obama – who had paid five visits to the area since the disaster – took a much-publicised swim in the Gulf with his daughter to signal that the water was safe. The contrast with the lackadaisical approach of India’s government, state and central, is stark.

Worryingly, even this decision addresses only part of the problem. That’s because the GIZ contract only accounts for solid waste, which the German agency’s experts have pronounced as “lightly toxicated” — and, significantly, probably unrelated to the gas leak at the plant. The bigger question centres on the 25,000 to 35,000 tonnes of waste that reportedly lies buried in pits on the premises, allegedly seeping into the surrounding soil and groundwater and causing unknown amounts of public-health and environmental damage. On this, neither the Madhya Pradesh government nor the Centre appears ready to take any action.