he world's worst industrial accident happened in the Indian city of Bhopal around midnight on December 3 1984. The date and scale of the disaster are among the few undisputed facts. But [Bhopal] didn't just happen in 1984: it has been happening ever since. Babies are born with monstrous deformities. Young people are physically twisted and brain damaged by the ongoing contamination. Older people are spluttering out their lives, their lungs, eyes and other organs corrupted by the gas that spewed from the Union Carbide pesticide plant, after a tank containing 40 tonnes of lethal methyl isocyanate (MIC) exploded.
The most commonly quoted statistic is that around 4,000 people were killed in the hours after the gas leak, and another 200,000 subsequently affected. Even now, however, there are any number of counter-bids in the grisly auction of death and suffering. Some put the initial death toll at 2,000; others at 8,000. (The latter is more plausible, given that around 7,000 shrouds were sold in Bhopal in the three days after the leak.) The office of Bhopal's medical commissioner registered 22,149 directly related deaths up to December 1999. But the fact is, we will never know the exact figure. Whole families were wiped out, and had no living relatives to report their passing. Others were buried or cremated quickly. At the railway station, where a tribe of Gypsies was encamped, everyone perished; no one was left alive to say who they were.
Indian officials, at both state and national level, seem to share the corporate world's desire for Bhopal and all it stands for simply to fade away. After all, they've done their bit: they used part of what little compensation Union Carbide has paid on municipal improvements. They have even addressed local medical needs, building the Malikhedi hospital and a more grandiose complex run by the Bhopal Medical Hospital Trust (BMHT), which was established through the sale of Union Carbide shares in India.
he world's worst industrial accident happened in the Indian city of Bhopal around midnight on December 3 1984. The date and scale of the disaster are among the few undisputed facts. But [Bhopal] didn't just happen in 1984: it has been happening ever since. Babies are born with monstrous deformities. Young people are physically twisted and brain damaged by the ongoing contamination. Older people are spluttering out their lives, their lungs, eyes and other organs corrupted by the gas that spewed from the Union Carbide pesticide plant, after a tank containing 40 tonnes of lethal methyl isocyanate (MIC) exploded.
The most commonly quoted statistic is that around 4,000 people were killed in the hours after the gas leak, and another 200,000 subsequently affected. Even now, however, there are any number of counter-bids in the grisly auction of death and suffering. Some put the initial death toll at 2,000; others at 8,000. (The latter is more plausible, given that around 7,000 shrouds were sold in Bhopal in the three days after the leak.) The office of Bhopal's medical commissioner registered 22,149 directly related deaths up to December 1999. But the fact is, we will never know the exact figure. Whole families were wiped out, and had no living relatives to report their passing. Others were buried or cremated quickly. At the railway station, where a tribe of Gypsies was encamped, everyone perished; no one was left alive to say who they were.
Indian officials, at both state and national level, seem to share the corporate world's desire for Bhopal and all it stands for simply to fade away. After all, they've done their bit: they used part of what little compensation Union Carbide has paid on municipal improvements. They have even addressed local medical needs, building the Malikhedi hospital and a more grandiose complex run by the Bhopal Medical Hospital Trust (BMHT), which was established through the sale of Union Carbide shares in India.
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