It is our duty to compensate those we have wronged. Let us pay the money to the victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy and drop the ‘curative’ petition
On the night of December 2 and 3, 1984, the world’s worst industrial accident occurred at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal. The reverberations of that horrific incident continue in public memory because successive governments have dealt callously with the victims.
Three questions that have recently come up concern the adequacy of the compensation paid to the victims of the Bhopal tragedy, the extradition of Warren Anderson, then chief executive officer (CEO) of Union Carbide, from the US and the sentencing of Indian officials of Union Carbide.
In February 1989, the government of India and Union Carbide reached a comprehensive agreement. The compensation to the victims – a full, final and complete settlement – was to be $473 million, which at that time amounted to around Rs 615 crore. In addition, shorn of legalese, all charges/claims, civil and criminal, present and future, were dropped against Union Carbide and its group companies. This agreement and the compensation amount were blessed by the Supreme Court.
An attempt to reopen the compensation issue was rejected by the Supreme Court in 1991. This was to indicate to the government that if the compensation was inadequate, it was for the government to make up the difference. A similar response was given by the Supreme Court in 2007.
Twenty years after the settlement, the government wakes up again and says many more people were affected and has put up a “curative” petition before the Supreme Court asking for another Rs 7,844 crore from Dow Chemicals, which is not even the successor of Union Carbide — McLeod Russel is. The Supreme Court, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to admit the petition.
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Let us first look at the compensation amount of Rs 615 crore that was paid in 1989. The wholesale price index in December 2010 was 5.4 times that of 1989. So, currently Rs 615 crore is worth around Rs 3,300 crore.
But many people may take the entirely reasonable view that the compensation was inadequate. However, it was a solemn agreement reached between the company, the elected government of the day and the nation’s highest court. What kind of a message does a “want-to-globalise” India send to the rest of the world by asking for a solemn agreement to be revisited? And what would stop a government in 2015 from asking for another “curative” petition? And yet another one in 2020? Will there ever be a final “cure”?
Would anyone trust a banana republic-like government and a judicial system that is so capricious? As a nation, we would be the laughing stock of the civilised world and disgrace ourselves if we went back on a solemn agreement.
To top this we also want the 90-year-old Warren Anderson extradited. We need to ask ourselves whether the US would extradite him if we went to the court to rewrite the compensation judgement. Senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley’s written opinion is that the request would fail. Moreover, Anderson could go to the US courts and plead for the request to be turned down because it comes from a country whose government wishes to overturn its own agreement reached in concert with its highest court. He could very well question the possibility of getting justice from such a system? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the Indian government’s case would be tossed right into the waste-paper basket, a humiliation we could do without. Would we, India, extradite one of our own to face such a whimsical system?
On the extradition of Anderson, G E Vahanvati, the attorney general, inter alia, has opined: “the omission to take any rectification action despite such knowledge would constitute an offence under Section 304 Part II (of the IPC).”
The government has also appealed against the two-year sentence to officials of Union Carbide, including its non-executive chairman. Incidentally, in the BP case analogy, so beloved of our politicians, the BP CEO at that time has not been personally charged and Robert Dudley, who then headed BP’s US operations, has now become the CEO of BP! In that context, the persecution, yes persecution, of Keshub Mahindra is truly incomprehensible. Is it correct to charge a person who attends six meetings a year with such a serious offence?
Now let us look at an analogy — the Indian Railways. The Mumbai Mirror reported on June 12, 2010*, that “around 3,500 people die on the Mumbai suburban network every year” (emphasis added). The World Bank Team Leader wrote to the Mumbai Railway Vikas Corporation (MRVC) asking him to specify the action they were taking. The MRVC Chairman responded, in true bureaucratese, that he had written to IIT, Bombay and the JJ School of Art for suggestions – and people continue to die – as they have been for years. Now, does this not fit into Vahnvati’s interpretation of “the omission to take any rectification action despite such knowledge would constitute an offence under Section 304 Part II (of the IPC)”? Should the Chairmen of the MRVC and the Railway Board and the Minister of Railways not be charged under the same provision as Anderson? Or under the same provision as Mahindra? Or, is it that the government has the right to kill with impunity?
If we as a nation have perpetrated a wrong, then let us set it right — at our cost and without bringing disgrace and dishonour upon the nation. Surely we can afford Rs 7,844 crore. Even if we could not, it is our duty to spend the money on those we have wronged.
So, let us pay the money and drop the “curative” petition. It is a debasement of our legal-political system. The word of the government and the Supreme Court should not be so cheap. It is a matter of honour for India.
* http://epaper.timesofindia.com/APA26300/PrintArt.asp?SkinFolder=pastissues2