Bhopal tragedy, Delhi haze, Assam mine deaths: One thread binds them all

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on January 16, 2025

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2025/01/16/bhopal-tragedy-delhi-haze-assam-mine-deaths-one-thread-binds-them-all

A haze hangs over many cities in India, including New Delhi. It contains poisons that can permanently debilitate millions of people; in fact it has already done that.

But it is nothing like the haze, the cloud of poison, that enveloped Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh late night on December 2, 1984. That night thousands died even as they tried to escape the cloud to avoid breathing in the poison. And they fell as they ran, because the poison entered their lungs. Those who survived continue to suffer the consequences of that night.

What links the current state of Indian cities, some of the most polluted in the world, and that night in Bhopal are several factors: negligence, indifference of those with the power to make things right, and the fact that the worst hit are also the poorest.

We have been compelled to remember the Bhopal disaster, when deadly methyl isocyanate (MIC) escaped from the fertiliser plant run by the Indian subsidiary of the US-based multinational company Union Carbide because after 40 years of campaigning and judicial intervention, some of the poisons that remain in the soil of the abandoned site have now been moved out, 337 tonnes to be exact.

The fact that this waste had to be moved out of Bhopal to the outskirts of another city, Indore, tells us a story that has not been reported. That the long-suffering population of Bhopal, that has lived with the consequences of being present when one of the world’s worst industrial accidents took place, would never have permitted a waste treatment plant in the city to deal with these poisons. So accompanied by high drama, the waste was transported to Pithampur outside Indore. Only to be met by stiff resistance from the population living there. And with good reason as explained here.

For the media, the Bhopal story reached a crescendo in the immediate aftermath of the terrible catastrophe but then ebbed and almost disappeared. Thereafter, it raised its head only when the victims of the disaster spoke up, demanding the disbursal of compensation and medical assistance, or to expose the fact that the poisons in the abandoned factory site were polluting the ground water in the areas around, and affecting the health of more people.

The problem with reporting only events, such as the moving out of waste from the Bhopal plant, without informing readers about the context, is that our understanding of what the Bhopal disaster really represented remains limited. At a time of distraction and diminished attention spans, there are generations that have grown up without knowing anything about the Bhopal disaster. 

The Bhopal Gas Tragedy, as it is often called, was not just another accident. It was a story of negligence, exposed by brave local journalists like the late Raj Kumar Keswani, of the indifference of the state government in allowing people to inhabit areas around a plant using hazardous chemicals, and the shameful manner in which the central government reached a settlement with Union Carbide for what was considered even then a pittance: US $470 million. A powerful multinational company escaped criminal liability because it operated through a subsidiary in India. In the country of its origin, the US, it would not have escaped so lightly. 

Meanwhile, the media has dropped the ball on tracking hazardous industries as it did in the years immediately after Bhopal. Then you would see some investigative stories about hazardous industries. These reports exposed how many of these industries were getting away with discharging toxic effluents into local water bodies without being monitored or checked. Journalists asked questions of pollution control boards. They exposed how inspectors were paid off by small and bigger industries to give them a clean chit. Some of this did result in pressure on hazardous industries to conform.

Forty years later, we do not read such stories. Does this mean industrial pollution has disappeared? Are our water bodies, especially in rural areas away from the media spotlight, free of such pollution? If people in these areas ask questions, or protest, do we hear about it?

These questions appear almost rhetorical because the answers are obvious. In small print, inside the city pages of some newspapers, you sometimes read stories about how in industrial estates, surrounded by settlements, there has been an explosion, or a leakage of hazardous chemicals. The locals protest. There is minimal coverage. And then nothing more. Was the company fined? Taken to court? Who inspected the factory? Why was the leak not detected? Who is responsible for the negligence? Was there any accountability? 

Once again, the answers to these questions are obvious. Forty years after Bhopal, we have laws like the Environment Protection Act 1986. We have systems to check hazardous industries like pollution control boards. But essentially, it is business as usual.

Apart from the continued indifference of governments, at the state and central level, what remains true today as it was 40 years ago is that without civic activism and an empathetic media, nothing changes.  

The other incident that ought to set off some introspection in the media is that of the tragic accident in Dima Hasao in Assam where nine miners were stuck inside a flooded “rat-hole” coal mine.

The description of such a mine, a “rat-hole”, illustrates the callous, almost murderous method, of retrieving coal because using machines is too expensive. Men are pushed down these holes with barely space to move and must manually dig out the coal, the black gold that will make some people rich. But in the process, these men, desperate for any kind of work, risk life and limb without much by way of compensation.

In 2014, the National Green Tribunal banned such rat-hole mines. There were no ifs and buts. They were banned. And yet, today we are reading about yet another disaster. As with Bhopal, in the post ban period, were there investigative stories to expose whether the ban was being observed at all? Were state governments doing anything to stop it? 

Does the media always need a disaster, or the intervention of the court, to report on such environmentally dangerous and callous methods of mining? Will our media take its gaze away from politics and politicians for a moment to think about the continuance of rat-hole mining and what this means for the families of the men who drowned in the Dima Hasao rat-hole coal mine? 

This column has asked questions because I believe that is the media’s job, one that it is barely doing today. The absence of such questioning reflects the same indifference for which we blame governments. 

As always, there are honourable exceptions. But glance at your daily newspaper, and if you have the stomach for it, watch news on any television channel, and you would have to ask: Is there nothing else happening in India for the media to report apart from elections, politics and the exhortations of politicians? 

 

India faces an environmental crisis, but this season’s election coverage is set to ignore it

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on March 4, 2021

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2021/03/04/india-faces-an-environmental-crisis-but-this-seasons-election-coverage-is-set-to-ignore-it

Once again, election season is upon us. In fact, in India, it never seems to end. And for some political parties, it's perennial.

From now until the results are declared for the Assembly elections in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Assam, and Puducherry on May 2, we can expect little else in media coverage apart from the political circus.

For the news media, the electoral battlefield provides endless possibilities and a chance to increase readership and viewership. Elections are guaranteed to be entertaining with every politician extracting the maximum advantage from media attention. Yet, increasingly, elections have been reduced to a few personalities; the issues that matter to the majority of voters slip into the background.

No doubt, despite the election frenzy, the coronavirus pandemic and the effort to vaccinate a large section of India's population will continue to be a part of the news cycle for some time to come as this crisis shows few signs of abating at present.

Yet, the political tamasha unleashed with the announcement of elections should not let us forget the perennials, the stories that are either told in passing, or only when there is a tragedy of such overwhelming proportions that they cannot be ignored.

Issues like hunger, poverty, unemployment, caste discrimination, inequality, atrocities against women, human rights, and persecution of minorities – the list is long. We remember, and the media addresses these, when there are atrocities, like the disturbing number of incidents involving Dalit girls being killed in Uttar Pradesh, or reports that remind us that almost a third of Indian children continue to be stunted and malnourished.

When a natural disaster occurs, such as in Uttarakhand on February 7, we are reminded that global warming and climate change are not academic issues but a living reality for people in fragile ecological zones as this interview with Ravi Chopra of the People's Science Institute in Dehradun spells out.

We remember then that these very areas have suffered in the past, that we in the media investigated and reported about those disasters and that the government appointed committees to investigate and recommend policies that kept in mind ecological factors. And that after all that, the developmental plans put in place, such as building hydroelectric projects in this fragile ecosystem, continued as if nothing had happened. Until it did again.

Even if governments have short memories and choose to forget lessons from previous disasters, the job of the media to continue to focus on some of these issues cannot be overemphasised. These issues slip from popular consciousness if our focus shifts, or disappears altogether, making it virtually impossible for the people living in such perennial disaster zones to be heard by those who make policy.

The same argument can be applied to industrial pollution and neglect of safety measures by industries using hazardous materials.

On May 7, 2020, poisonous styrene gas leaked out of the LG Polymer chemical plant at R R Venkatapuram in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. Eleven people died and hundreds were affected by the gas in the villages around the plant. The reason was malfunction in the cooling system in two chemical tanks that had been left unattended.

In the wake of the accident, the media woke up. Stories were written. We were also reminded that this accident was smaller in scale but similar in several ways to what is still called the world's worst industrial disaster: the Bhopal gas tragedy where 40 tonnes of methyl isocyanate escaped from a Union Carbide plant in December 1984. Thousands of people were killed that night and many more in subsequent months and years. The health of those who survived was permanently impaired. And till today these victims of the Bhopal tragedy feel they never got justice.

But the point about remembering Bhopal was that it brought up the issue of location of industries using hazardous chemicals. The people most affected that night in Bhopal were those living in a dense settlement literally outside the gates of Union Carbide. Thirty six years later, those who suffered in Visakhapatnam were those living in close proximity to the LG Polymers plant. What has changed?

This unchanging scenario of industrial location is replicated in the way industries continue to pollute air, water and land despite environmental laws, and the existence of institutions that are tasked to ensure their implementation. This is one of the more distressing facts to emerge from the latest State of India's Environment 2021 report released by the Centre for Science and Environment, or CSE.

The Central Pollution Control Board set up a Comprehensive Environment Pollution Index, or CEPI, in 2009 with a view to monitor industrial clusters and the pollution levels around them.

Between 2009 and 2018, reports the CSE, rather than an improvement in these levels, there has been a sharp deterioration. Of the 88 industrial clusters that were monitored in this period, air quality had deteriorated in 33, water quality in 45, and land pollution had increased in 17. In other words, despite a system that kept track of whether the industries located in these places were following pollution control norms, the environmental parameters had become worse.

Surely, this is a statement not just about the inefficiency of pollution control boards, or rather their inability to enforce environmental regulation, but also the attitude of those owning industries that continue to pollute and stop only if caught and/or penalised. We also need to investigate how badly the health of people living near these polluted industrial clusters has been affected.

Going back to Uttarakhand, in 2010 the National Green Tribunal Act was passed. This was done expressly so that people affected by developmental projects, such as thermal power plants, or mining, could have a say before these projects were cleared under provisions of the Environment Protection Act 1986.

However, often poor communities do not hear about a project, or that it has been cleared, until the process is almost complete. By the time they can get organised and summon up the resources to file an appeal against such a project before the National Green Tribunal, it is often too late because a time limit has been set.

This story by Jay Mazoomdaar in the Indian Express points out how the NGT continues to dismiss appeals on minor technical grounds rather than being sympathetic to the people who turn to it. It had replaced the earlier National Environmental Appellate Authority precisely because an independent and fair system was needed to hear the complaints of project-affected communities that are often also the most marginalised. In this instance too, there is a story still waiting to be told about the groups that turned to the NGT, who they are, and how they see the future.

Environmental journalism is at the cross-section of politics, policies and people. It is challenging precisely for that reason as it asks of journalists an understanding of all this as well as technical aspects. Gone are the days when newspapers had environmental correspondents tasked to investigate and write such stories. Now it is left to dedicated organisations like CSE and its journal, Down to Earth, Mongabay India, a portal specialising in environmental and conservation related stories, or the Third Pole.

The deterioration in our natural environment, and the continuing and willful pollution of our water, air and land, takes the heaviest toll on the poor, but ultimately affects everyone. Despite this, environmental concerns have hardly ever featured in election talk or on the agenda of political parties. It is highly doubtful that the election season we have entered will see a change in this.

Should news media use the picture of the Sopore child with his grandfather’s body?

Broken News

https://www.newslaundry.com/2020/07/02/should-news-media-use-the-picture-of-the-sopore-child-with-his-grandfathers-body

Questions are being asked about the photograph of a child sitting on his grandfather’s dead body in Sopore, Kashmir. It was released on social media on July 1 after a gunfight between security forces and militants in the town. The security forces insist the man was killed by militants, while his family point out that there are no bullet marks on his car and that the image shows him lying on the ground next to it.

The human rights group Amnesty International has asked why the name of the minor was revealed and why his face was not blurred in the picture as required by the Juvenile Justice Act.

Another question: who clicked the picture? There were no journalists at the site of the killing. The picture was not taken by a professional photographer.

If a security forces personnel took the picture with his phone, why was it released on social media with details such as the child’s name? Who released it? We know that the Bharatiya Janata Party's IT Cell made full use of it on Twitter. In the context of Kashmir, many believe this is part of a propaganda war that is being waged even as shootings and killings continue.

For us in the media, clear lines have to be drawn. A picture provided by someone who aims to use it for propaganda and not a professional journalist cannot and should not be used. Most English language newspapers haven’t used it this morning, although they have carried reports on the killing.

But I can think of several instances in the past where the mainstream media has used such pictures without raising questions. Remember the 2004 picture of the body of Ishrat Jahan and three associates lying on a road near Ahmedabad? The police claimed they were "terrorists" on their way to assassinate Narendra Modi, then chief minister of Gujarat.

This is a longer debate that we in the media must engage in. But the picture from Sopore frames several issues for the media. First, the obvious need to check the source of a picture before using it. Second, unless we have permission to do so, we should always obscure the image of a civilian, especially a minor, in respect for the dead and the living. Third, particularly in a conflict situation such as in Kashmir when life itself is precarious, the choice of pictures used requires greater sensitivity.

The debate over this picture from Kashmir illustrates some other points that I make in this column.

A casualty of times such as these, when one or two issues dominate news cycles, is that other equally important subjects are either overlooked entirely, or covered in passing.
The media takes its eyes off these subjects because the immediate is always more compelling than the long-term.

Environmental issues have immediacy but also long-term consequences. The event – such as an accident, or a natural disaster – gets covered, especially when there is loss of human life. But the main story lies in the before, and the after. And this is often not pursued.
There was a time when space and time were given to researching the past and following up such stories. Beginning in the mid-1980s, major newspapers had full-time environment correspondents whose job it was to do precisely this. The aftermath of a disaster and what preceded it, the stories of negligence, of delay, of callous disregard for human life, of the conditions of the displaced, the injured, whether medical relief had reached them in time – these were as much a part of the story as the actual disaster. Such information couldn’t be marshalled in a few days. It required months of diligent follow-up, something that was actively encouraged by editors.

The environmental disaster that triggered an interest and investment in this kind of reporting was likely the Bhopal gas tragedy. On the night of December 3, 1984, nearly 60 tonnes of the deadly methyl isocyanate escaped from a tank in the Union Carbide plant, killing thousands of people and impairing many more. It’s still regarded as one of the worst industrial accidents in the world.

The story didn’t end in a day. It continued for years. It also resulted in a whole slew of environmental laws culminating in the Environment Protection Act, 1986.

The Bhopal gas tragedy also generated interest in environmental reporting and led to the emergence of many dedicated journalists who followed up on such stories. In the late 1980s, I remember, younger journalists were so fired up that they were willing to spend their own money to investigate environmental stories such as monitoring hazardous industries in the vicinity of urban centres, even if their newspapers did not back them.

In 2020, apart from dedicated environmental portals like the Centre for Science and Environment and Mongabay India, you have to look hard to find the full story behind an environmental disaster.

Take the May 7 styrene leak at the LG Polymer plant outside Visakhapatnam. Twelve people died and several hundred took ill. More than 2,000 people were evacuated from the adjoining RR Venkatapuram village.

In the immediate aftermath, partly because the plant is close to an urban centre, all media covered the accident. But there is a before and after here that's equally important because it tells us how environmental laws are routinely flouted.

When the National Green Tribunal took suo moto notice of the accident, it emerged that the plant, owned by the South Korean LG Chem, had been operating without the requisite environmental clearance from 1997 to 2019, a full 23 years. And this was no fly-by-night operator. It is the biggest chemical company in South Korea.

Also, while the original plant, established in 1961, had hardly any population in its vicinity, Visakhapatnam has since grown and spread like other cities leading to an estimated 40,000 people living near a plant that uses hazardous chemicals, something that runs contrary to environmental regulations detailed in this story in the Hindu.

The parallels to Bhopal are striking. The Union Carbide plant was established in an area that had few houses nearby. By the time the accident occurred, there was a densely populated settlement literally outside its gates. Most who lived there couldn’t escape the deadly gas that night and either died or suffered from chronic health problems. Even today, 36 years after the tragedy, there are reports that the survivors have been affected disproportionately by Covid-19 because their lungs were permanently damaged by inhaling the hazardous chemical.

The bigger industrial accidents are reported, especially when there is loss of life. But if you monitor the media closely, you find every now and then reports about some gas leak, boiler explosion, chemicals dumped in water bodies that disappear from view after the first report.

For instance, on July 1, a boiler exploded at the Neyveli Lignite Corporation’s thermal power plant in Neyveli, Cuddalore district, Tamil Nadu. At the time of writing, six workers had died and 17 were injured.

Yet, on May 7, when the media had turned the spotlight on the LG Polymer plant in Visakhapatnam, a boiler blast had taken place at this same NLC thermal plant, leading to eight workers being injured. Is this a coincidence or is there a deeper story here that needs to be pursued? In this instance, it probably will be because disruption in power supply affects cities where the media is located. But had this plant been in a remote area, and not so big, one wonders if this too would have been buried after some time.

Another example of this is the leak leading to a fire at the Oil India Limited gas well in Baghjan in Assam on June 9. The backstory, documented here, tells us yet again of how environmental regulations were flouted. And the follow up stories are what happens now to the people who were displaced, to the biodiversity damaged as the operations were taking place within a 10 km radius of a national park, and whether any corrective measures will be taken in the future.

This kind of reporting will be an even greater challenge in the emerging media scene in India. Media houses are laying off scores of journalists as this article documents. Newspapers have shrunk in size and their print versions are almost unrecognisable from what they were just three months ago. Most of them are now running with a skeleton staff, all of whom are doing multiple stories. There is no room for specialisation, leave alone the kind of investigative follow-up that these kinds of stories need.

Newspapers, it was once said, were “the first rough draft of history". Unfortunately, when the environmental history of this period in India is written, there will be many gaps that perhaps will never be filled.

Bhopal's night of terror

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, November 29, 2009

THE OTHER HALF

Twenty-five years after the Bhopal Gas Disaster, justice still eludes the victims…

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There are many smaller Bhopals that have occurred since 1984 and keep on taking place, often unreported.

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Ongoing struggle: Victims of the world's worst industrial disaster still haven't got their due. Photo: S. Subramanium

This past week has been one where one anniversary has dominated the news — that of the terror attack on Mumbai on November 26, 2008. The date is like a permanent scar on the memory of not only Mumbai but also on the collective memory of the rest of India that watched the 60-hour siege and battle as it unfolded on television.

But in the coming week there is another anniversary that unfortunately will not draw the same kind of media attention. Twenty-five years ago, on a winter night of December 2/3 1984, deadly poisonous gas leaked out from the tanks of the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal and killed over 3,000 people. The factory was located in a densely populated area. As the sirens went off in its premises, indicating an emergency, the mostly poor people living around it rushed out to witness a dense cloud of smoke emerging from the factory. In no time, the cloud had spread to the areas close by and beyond. As terrified men, women, children ran in panic, not knowing what this was or where they should run, they inhaled vast quantities of the poisons contained in that cloud. The immediate sensations were burning eyes, breathing difficulties and vomiting. Those who found a quick way to move out of the area survived; the others, including children and the elderly, died on the spot.

Denial

As morning broke, the poison had a name. It was methyl isocyanate (MIC), used by Union Carbide to produce a fertilizer. A runaway reaction inside a tank containing 42 tonnes of this deadly chemical resulted in it spewing out of the tank. Local hospitals, inundated with thousands of panicked residents, had no knowledge of what to administer and the company provided no information or antidote. Indeed, for years it argued that MIC would not lead to any long-term effects. The story of Bhopal has conclusively proved this wrong. An estimated 20,000 people have died from complications resulting from inhaling MIC and other chemicals released into the air that night.

On any count, this is one of the worst stories of callousness. The Bhopal Gas Disaster is still known as the world's worst industrial accident. The accident itself, what followed immediately afterwards, the manner in which the case against Union Carbide was hastily settled by the Indian government for an unconscionably low amount of just $470 million, the desperate struggle of survivors for payment of that settlement and for medical treatment, the callous and cavalier manner in which the rotting plant continued to stand as a reminder of that night of horror, the fact that it successfully poisoned all the water sources in its surroundings, thereby punishing the victims yet again — the list of crimes and misdemeanors is long and will leave you breathless. Yet, the indifference continues even today. The pleas, demonstrations, petitions of thousands of women, men and children make little difference.

Twenty-five years is a long time. At the time of the accident, the government accepted that the affected population could be over 500,000. It was also known then, that a large proportion of these would be young. Thousands of pregnant women were amongst those affected. Inevitably, the symptoms would appear over time and would need to be treated. If people were unable to work as a result, they would need to be rehabilitated.

The government at the Centre and in Madhya Pradesh can claim that it has done all this. But the reality on the ground is that the survivors have had to struggle every inch of the way to get their entitlements — compensation, healthcare, work and a clean environment. To compound the tragedy, the rotting plant remained where it was with no one prepared to accept responsibility for the poisons that still continued to leach out from its soil. Over time, these poisons made their way into the wells and water supply in the surrounding area, adding to the burden of illness that the unfortunate people living around the plant have had to live with.

(To read the rest of the article, click on the link above)