Saturday, November 24, 2012
Bhopal (Chemical leak)

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
Updated: Jan. 13, 2011
In December 1984, a plume of toxic gas from an American-owned Union Carbide pesticide plant wafted over the city of Bhopal, India.
The leak killed 2,000 people almost instantly, and thousands more died later from the aftereffects of the toxic gas, an ingredient in pesticides the plant produced.
By the official reckoning, 578,000 people were affected. That was the number finally awarded compensation by specially created claims tribunals.
There were no criminal convictions stemming from the leak until June 7, 2010, when eight former executives of the company's Indian subsidiary were convicted of negligence. The men were sentenced two years in prison and fined 100,000 rupees, or $2,100.
Victims groups and activists, who had sought more serious charges, immediately criticized the verdict.
The defendants, one of whom is dead, were all senior officials of the company at the time of the leak, India's deadliest industrial disaster.
The contrast with the BP oil disaster was inescapable. Indians could not help but marvel — and envy — the alacrity with which the United States government had responded to the BP oil spill disaster in 2010.
In the face of public outrage prompted by the light criminal sentences, the Indian government is trying shake off the shadow of Bhopal, an episode that has become synonymous with ineffectual governance and humiliation at the hands of Western capital.
Indeed, the disaster and its aftermath are a reminder that even as India aspires to superpower status, it still struggles to provide its 1.2 billion people with some of life’s most basic necessities.
Indian government officials in June 2010 announced a raft of measures, including increased compensation for victims and a fresh effort to extradite Warren M. Anderson, the