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? 

 

Big media’s strange self-censorship of Cricket World Cup, and why it mustn’t now forget ‘rat-hole mining’

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on December 1, 2023

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2023/12/01/big-medias-strange-self-censorship-of-cricket-world-cup-and-why-it-mustnt-now-forget-rat-hole-mining

In the good old days, when print was king, people got all their news from newspapers. Depending on your preoccupations or interests, you could start with page one, or turn to the back of the newspaper.  Page one, as now, consisted of headline news – mostly politics, some business, disasters, wars, and sometimes sports, if an Indian team or sportsperson won a tournament.

The back page, then as now, was exclusively sports. No place for politics here. Or so you would think.

But there is politics in sports. That has always been the case. Especially, in the most popular of Indian sports, that is cricket. The difference today is that in the newspaper age, sports journalists also wrote about the politics in sports, about the politics behind team selection, the politics that resulted in certain people dominating certain sports. They also reported on tournaments and wrote about individual sportspersons. The sports pages had space for all of this.

Not any more, it appears. Although, I am one of those who still reads page one first when I pick up a newspaper, I am conscious of the changes in the way the world of sports is reported on today.

At no time has this been more evident than in the reporting on the recently concluded ICC Cricket World Cup, leading up to India’s loss to Australia in the finals on November 19 at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad.

Reporting on any sport in print has been compelled to change because people can now watch the sports events live as they happen. Readers look for nuance, for the back story, for something that was not obvious as you sat before your television screen and watched. And many of the excellent sports reporters in major Indian newspapers do provide the kind of copy that makes for good reading, even if you’re not passionate about that particular sport.

But during the recently concluded Cricket World Cup, it is intriguing that practically none of these sports reporters in mainstream newspapers, as far as I can tell, reported on crowd behaviour. We learned about this only from the international media covering the matches, from social media and from independent digital platforms that carried some critical articles.

The usual controversies about the choice of the pitch chosen for a particular fixture were also barely reported. Once again, it was the international press that picked this up, such as this report in Britain’s Daily Mail. And as for the politics around the Board of Control for Cricket in India, the richest and most powerful sporting body in the world, we have yet to read a more perceptive piece than this one by one of India’s best sports journalists, Sharda Ugra in Caravanmagazine. 

It was also Sharda Ugra who informed us on the curious matter of the politics behind the colours the Indian team would wear for fixtures. Apparently, there was talk of changing the colour to saffron or orange from blue as she writes in this article in The India Forum. 

My short point about the coverage of sports in India’s mainstream newspapers is to ask whether it too has been infected by the self-censorship bug that has become the norm in other coverage? Why else would the unsporting behaviour of crowds at the Modi stadium, for instance, not be reported where ultra-nationalism seemed to overwhelm love for the sport to the point spectators would not applaud a batsman from the other side scoring a century, and senselessly booed the umpires when they were felicitated? Several reports in the international press referred to this such as The Guardian and this from an Australian website.

Since that Sunday, when most of India seemed to have been pushed into gloom barring those who don’t follow cricket, a minuscule minority I admit, the rescue of the 41 workers trapped in the Silkyara tunnel in Uttarakhand has provided some solace.  

In fact, the country has been introduced to a new phrase: “rat-hole mining.” Most people who heard or read this term on the day of the rescue would not have known what it means. Since then, most newspapers have run explanatory articles that inform us about what this entails, including the dangers and the skill required. 

There is little so far about what these men, who come from the most marginalised communities, in this case all Muslim or Dalit, are paid for this hazardous work. Rat-hole mining was banned by the National Green Tribunal in 2014 and then partially permitted in 2019. The abject poverty of the workers is evident from some of the reports such this in The Hindu, where one of them asks for a “pucca” house, and is then reprimanded by his mate for asking a favour of the government.

We must wait and see if the media follows up on this important story of rat-hole mining, of the lives of those who are engaged in it, and whether there are any regulations that apply to the kind of work they do and the hazards they face. The Telegraph, in its editorial on the lessons to be learned from the tunnel collapse, brings this out.

An equally relevant issue that the media must pursue is the environmental angle. The Silkyara tunnel, which is part of the Char Dham project of building wider roads in Uttarakhand to facilitate pilgrimage to Hindu holy sites, apparently did not get an environmental clearance as this editorial in Times of India points out. The region where such projects are taking place is ecologically extremely fragile. This has been pointed out repeatedly by several expert committees. Yet these warnings are not heeded. 

It is incumbent on the media, that has been reporting continuously for 17 days as the 41 workers remained stuck in the collapsed tunnel, to now follow up on these infrastructure projects. Are they safe for the workers, and for the terrain in which they are being built? Have they received environmental clearance? If not, why not? Who is responsible for cutting corners? 

One report suggested that even the plan to construct a rescue tunnel alongside the main one was not implemented in this case. Surely, there must be accountability. And if the government prefers to sit back and soak in the glory of the successful rescue, without holding an inquiry, it is the job of the media to build up the pressure so that this is done, and we don’t have to report on more such tunnel collapses. 

This year has been marked by the terrible consequences of unchecked building of roads and other structures in fragile mountain environments in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Too many lives have been lost due to this push to build without pausing to consider environmental sustainability. While several independent digital platforms, despite limited resources, have been writing about this, it is time mainstream media woke up and assigned reporters to investigate, rather than waiting until tragedy strikes again.