This December 3 marked the 25th anniversary of the world’s worst industrial disaster. In 1984, just after the stroke of midnight in the city of Bhopal, India tonnes of toxic gas leaked from the Union Carbide pesticide factory, killing thousands instantly. But now the town is grappling with a host of medical, social and environmental problems. Two new generations have since been born, some with crippling birth defects due to the gas their parents enhaled, others sick due to drinking contaminated water.
Survivors continue to suffer from ongoing illnesses and families have sunk deeper into poverty due to medical expenses and having lost their sole breadwinners. Still the cleanup of the contaminated area which continues to make new Bhopalis ill has yet to take place.
I went there in October to write a story about the town 25 years on. You can read the full story at New Matilda
Below is my diary of my time spent there.
Day 1
I don’t know what I was expecting of Bhopal. Perhaps a city with a bombsite at the centre or skulls and crossbones viciously warning visitors. But what we found was just a normal Indian city, dusty and full of life.
- A survivor of the Bhopal gas tragedy
Like any town off the tourist track we are as much as an oddity for locals as India is a source of bafflement for us. We were magnets for street hawkers and auto rickshaw drivers, and even had a regular run in with our hotel. Although we had booked a room for 495 rupees only three days before arriving at Hotel Ranjeet, the guy at the front desk was now telling us the rooms had gone up to 750.
I asked whether they had just changed the prices.
His answer: ‘No, yes’.
It was 10pm, we had spent over 13 hours on a train and so I felt justified in replying, ‘No, yes, no, yes, no, yes, this is bullshit’.
We soon found a smaller hotel just opposite called Hotel Manjeet, which was a little more modest. They assure me it has 24-hour hot water. We check in. I turn on the shower. No hot water. I call reception.
“The hot water is turned off Ma’am, it won’t come on until 5am.”
I have a horrendous head cold and I plug tissues up my nose in an attempt to steal some sleep.
It’s ugly and I’m uncomfortable but I’m certain that tomorrow will show the insignificance of my complaints.
Day 2
We are to start our day at Chingari Trust, a charitable organisation established in 2005 to provide proper medical treatment for children of gas survivors or those sick due to drinking contaminated water.
The trust is a 15minute auto rickshaw ride from our hotel. It’s on a dusty, unpaved road where cows lounge around and goats look on, bored. Kids walk pass beaming their pearly whites like they are rehearsing for a Colgate commercial. They chant ‘Hello, yes, no, what is your name’ in a stream of consciousness, without understanding. It’s quiet and peaceful.
The trust runs rehabilitation programs for 171 children – a small number compared to the thousands apparently need help but it’s a start. The rehabilitation clinic is homely and colourful and the kids obviously go through a range of emotions here – from happiness and contentment to pain and fear during physiotherapy.
- Aadil Khan, 18, crippled by the effects of cerebral palsy
Mostly the kids we saw here have cerebral palsy. Their bodies have betrayed them. Legs and feet cross over and arms clasp up. The doctors here spend hours each day tenderly trying to strengthen weakened legs and arms through exercises or gently unfurling cramped fingers and toes. It’s heartbreaking seeing the little kids screaming out in pain. The mothers look healthy and unharmed, making their children’s twisted bodies all the more confronting.
Then we spend a lot of time waiting for our next interview. The perils of journalism here is that it’s hard to pin someone down to a meeting at an exact time. Everyone is on Indian time, which is a frustratingly fluid concept.
Finally, a few hours we meet the two women who started Chingari Trust, Rashida Bee and Champadevi Shukla. They continue to suffer from respiratory illnesses and insomnia. Five of Rashida’s family members have died of cancer since the disaster.
Their stories are confronting and painful, but also inspiring. They come from low socio-economic backgrounds. Their dreams and purpose until the disaster probably consisted of looking after their husbands, children and extended family. Now they are taking on governments and multi-national corporations. They won the prestigious Goldmans Environmental prize in 2004 and used the money to create The Chingari Trust.
Day 3
At 7.30am the dust cloud that usually envelops the city due to unsealed roads and hordes of traffic hasn’t arrived yet. It’s peaceful – the roads are relatively empty and the shop’s still have their eyes closed.
We head out to Sambhvana Clinic, which was built in 2005 close to the former Union Carbide site, giving patients in some of the worst affect areas easy access.
There’s a garden where medicinal plants, herbs and flowers grow, used for Aryuvedic medicine. The whole site is powered by solar panels and the compost used in the garden is chemical free and produced on site. This isn’t surprising considering the gas that has effected three generations was due to the toxins produced by Union carbide making pesticide. At the clinic they are trying to prove the world can exist without such chemicals.
- A patient receives treatment at the clinic
It’s only 9am, but the waiting areas at the clinic are already packed. Hundreds of people are already here. They treat more than 22,000 patients and see about 170 people per day.
The treatment received here is a mixture of yoga, Ayurveda and modern medicine. They even use leeches, which I’m not so sure about, as it reminds me of the Tudor period in Britian, but according to them it works.
Before clients came to the clinic they reported taking huge quantities of antibiotics, prescribed by Government hospitals and private practioners. According to the doctors at the clinic patients measure this in kilograms, not tablets. Some say they have taken 20 kg of steroids or other powerfully chemical drugs.
The guy behind it all is Satinath Sarangi he came here to offer help after the disaster struck. He was planning to stay for a couple of weeks. Two and a half decades later he now calls it home. He has one major thing in common with the victims and survivors – one moment changed the course of his life entirely. He often thinks about that.
After speaking with Satinath we headed out to two of the most affected colonies – just a stones throw from the abandoned Union Carbide factory.
Here at the slums kids crowd around us, grabbing my hands, touching my hair and laughing. The colony now has drinking water that comes from water tanks supplied by the government but this tank was only installed two years ago, leaving many kids with problems. In summer the tanks often run dry, leaving families to use contaminated water.
Mohd Asgas Rain’s son is four years old. For two years of his life he drunk contaminated water, his muscles in his legs are now weak. His legs look like an orange crammed between two twigs. Mohd Atif can’t run or walk very far, so he can’t go to school.
Nineteen-year-old Rubina Sha Dlo Nanne Sha has feet that bend outwardly at the angles. She walks with difficulty and is in constant pain. She believes it is from drinking contaminated water. She stands near eight, 10 and 12 year old kids, and apart from her face you would think she is the same age.
It seems a cruel irony that the worst affected areas are also the poorest. The kids hold up their only possessions – little chicks and baby goats with pride. Houses are single roomed shacks. If they are lucky they have tin roofs. The compensation paid out has already gone in medicines. Due to illness and death, many families have lost their sole breadwinners, sinking them deeper into poverty.
- Kids at the slums
Emit Aziza Khan’s son died one year after the accident, he was only a baby she says. We have a strange moment as I’m taking her photograph, she is talking in Hindi and crying. I talk back in English. We have absolutely no idea what each other but we keep talking. It’s difficult to retain my professionalism. It’s clear she is still mourning the little boy whom she never got the chance to know.
In the afternoon we meet Swaraj Puri the ex head of chief of police here in Bhopal. He still remembers the night of the accident. He says it’s like closing his eyes and having a movie played back to him. His throat clenching up, and feeling needles in his eyes and lungs.
One of the biggest problems he says was the lack of emergency procedures that were put in place by Union Carbide in the event of a disaster. He said the government and police had never once had a conversation with the corporation about what they would do if something like this happened.
After the disaster Union Carbide refused to release information as to the toxins and chemical reactions that were released at the site. It’s a trade secret they say. This has meant that treatment of victims has been hampered for 25 years. He said one of the best antidotes on the day would have been water, but they didn’t know this. Everyone was just trying to help but not knowing how.
Day 4
Today was spent fighting Indian bureaucracy and the perils of wasting time. In India five minutes becomes 30 and then 45, and at the end you can never figure out why there was a delay.
We wanted to see the old Union Carbide factory and take photographs. We had two options – either to bribe a guard on duty or to go to the collector’s office and ask for permission.
So we head to the collectors office to find four middle-aged tubby men amid filing cabinets that have been arranged to look like a defensive wall. The men’s eyes have glazed over from years of diminished neuron activity and under work. After 10 minutes I had a handle on the finely tuned machine of the collectors office.
The first person does most of the work, filling out the documents and organising the letters. The second fetches what the first requests, like staplers and folders for said documents. The third walks from room to room with said doc to get stamped. The fourth provides conversation – the topic of today the cricket match between Australia and India.
- Kids play in the shadows of the abandoned Union Carbide factory
So we sit and wait. An hour passes and then we get a sheet of paper granting permission.
When we get to the factory I wondered why we bothered. Locals are walking through the old site, which is supposed to be heavily contaminated, using certain areas to go to the toilet. Little kids play around. Security here clearly isn’t a priority.
The site itself looks like something out of A Little Shop of Horrors. Vines strangle old pipes and weeds stand tall over conquered land. There’s a fowl smell emanating from the old pipes and everything is corroded and rusted. Most of the buildings have been demolished. The guards tell us that after the disaster thieves came into the factory, scavenged metal and sold it in local markets.
The contaminated chemicals are shut up in a large warehouse on site. According to the guards there is talk of turning the old site into a highway.
No full surveys have been taken that give an accurate picture of the full spread of the contamination.
I can’t help but think back at my time at the Village Voice where I reported on the contamination and remediation plans in Sydney Harbour. Even here in an affluent, developed country clean up efforts always fell short due to the enormous costs of remediation. So in Bhopal where the communities are desperately poor, the government is showing little political will, and polluting companies are refusing to take responsibility, I wonder what hope they have.
As Satinath Sarangi says, “It’s environmental racism. We are lesser people, our skin is not the right colour. It’s very clear.
“Even within the USA. We went on a special toxic tour of the US and we visited 14 states and without single exception, it was the poor and black people and the extremely poor white people, but mostly black people and Hispanic people and Native American people who are getting the load of the toxic waste. All other marginalized people, along the Mississippi a lot of the sex workers, the load paid sex workers live next to the PCP dump. So it’s like almost the levels and extremes of exposure you can always find a correlation with your place on the social power matrix. That is what is happening on a large scale.
“These double standards were the cause of the gas disaster in the first place. And this again is the same cause for the continuance of the contamination problem. I mean Dow clearly has accepted responsibility for damaged caused by UC to asbestos victims in Texas but in this case it says no, we will play American claims but not Indian.”
Tags: Bhopal, Central Government, India, industrial disaster, social justice, UCIL, Union Carbide
