Is it enough to say that there was no 24×7 media there and absolve ourselves of the near total amnesia that most of India had on the Bhopal gas disaster? The world?s largest industrial accident, which at conservative estimates killed more people than all other such accidents in the 20th century, became just another anniversary. Outside Bhopal, people forgot. Successive governments?the sole arbiter in the case when they governed?and the judiciary have much to explain. The corporation might have preferred to forget. The media evolved, and moved on.
But just what has been forgotten? The 1979 Three Mile Island is purported to be US? most major industrial accident, one that caused a global rethink on the nuclear power. After the incident, there was a perceptible decline in the number of nuclear reactors, and the hesitation about nuclear power that built in, exists till date. The immediate death toll in that incident? None (Sceptics point to lingering impacts though).
In 1986, the only level 7 event on the International Nuclear Event Scale, the Chernobyl disaster in the then USSR, resulted in ?less than 50 direct deaths?, though 4,000 related deaths are estimated to have occurred after the incident. The zone of exclusion that was enforced in the nearby town of Pripyat remains to this day.
Compare that to the acknowledged 5,74,000-odd victims who were affected in Bhopal. Besides an increasing death toll, many lost their ability to work, losing livelihoods. Even activists working on the case have acknowledged that they have not been able to build a campaign around Bhopal. ?We have to take this forward,? says ND Jaiprakash of the Bhopal Gas Peedith Sangharsh Sahayog Samiti, who has been working actively on the case since the 1989 judgment and now plans a wider campaign with an hour-long film called The Betrayal of Bhopal by UK?s Granada Television.
D Raghunandan of Delhi Science Forum is glad for the resurgence of interest and points out that many are ?discovering? what has already been known. He points out, however, that ?what has got pushed back are the day to day concerns of the victims,? of whom he says no one has bothered all these years.
Ironic as it may be, for those pushing for justice on Bhopal, the oil spill from a BP oilwell in the Gulf of Mexico could hardly have been more opportune to revive the issue. $20 billion is what US president Barack Obama has already got the corporation to commit where 11 people were killed. Bhopal is recognised as the world?s largest industrial disaster. Neither coverage, nor compensation seem adequate. With such collective amnesia and injustice, Bhopal can also lay claim to being the world?s largest humanitarian disaster.