The first impulse of Union Carbide (USA) was to tell the truth, namely, "We know nothing." But the press and public will not accept "nothing" for an answer and will start to compose their own version of events. They ask about the designs of the plants in Bhopal and around the world, about specific personnel, profits, past decisions, etc., until it is quite obvious that "nothing" is actually "much", or at least a good beginning. At this point (and we are speaking of a day or so, or even hours) Union Carbide begins to think in terms of secrecy. "Anything we say, and that means information, too, will be used against us." So secrecy is imposed on all officers and employees, to the extent possible.
Enter the attorneys and public relations staff and matters are made worse. Secrecy is a direct function of the sum of public relations and legal talents engaged. The more of one, the more of the others. The pressures to know cannot be resisted and a press conference near, not at, company headquarters in Danbury, Connecticut, and a tour of the West Virginia plant, the "twin" of the Bhopal installation, are arranged for the press. The media and public relations element in both arrangements prevails. The New York Times complains politely of the excessive caution, the restrictions imposed on camera crews, the failure to answer practically any questions of import. Thus the West Virginia plant is declared safe but its operations were not describable, it seems. A computer system collects information, but how and for what is not stated. Surprise was manifested, too, when the ability of the system to handle a Bhopal-sized vapor release was questioned. Nor would the guides tell reporters whether automated safety features, purportedly present in West Virginia, were incorporated in the Bhopal operations. A hasty Congressional hearing brought out expressions of sympathy and concern for safety by the UC Chairman and others, but little hard information.
The security syndrome spread, and one could witness the next phase of secrecy shaping up, whereby a direct relationship occurs between the extent of secretiveness and the growth of self-deception and fear on the corporate side and the negative attitudes towards the "bad guys" on the press and public side. Also one sees an evolving relationship between secretiveness and the slowness of response all-around (legal, corporate, governmental, voluntary) to the needs of the victims. And further, as secretiveness is pursued, active help from outside quarters and constructive ideas of responding to and resolving the crisis are suppressed.
The U.S. corporate leadership is not alone in secretiveness and suffering the effects thereof. The State government arrests the Indian corporate leaders and prevents them from agreeing upon a story with their U.S. counterparts. (Clever, but perhaps they might disagree!) The Indian executives become incommunicado and uncommunicative, resentful at their arrest. They are finally released, and of course communications with the U.S. side resume. What can they be saying? Not much, I believe. It is not easy to agree on such a big story, and the motives for disagreement are as obvious as for agreement. They are not all in the same boat.
The State government, City of Bhopal, and the Indian government also impose secrecy on all whom they command. They shut down the plant as well, opening it only to exhibit the processing of the remaining MIC. The governments even engage the doctors and hospitals in the game. These are instructed to repel reporters seeking news. The Chief Secretary says that the government did not want too many medical opinions floating around, for they created confusion and apprehension among the population. However, just the opposite occurred : the more the secrecy, the more wild rumors circulated and were printed.
The results of all this secrecy are not promising. Victims find their cases at law deteriorating because they can find no one to make determinations of their original condition and describe its progress or decline. They cannot produce a blood test to show that their blood did or did not contain MIC. Their cures also lapse, because, as secrecy increases, treatment and issues of therapy become undiscussable. S. Khandekar, writing in India Today, reported that the Secretary of the State Legal Aid Board was handling with alacrity the rush of people to fill out forms for the State to pursue their legal cases, but had little or no regard for the need for medical documentation in these cases.
The public is not given a steady flow of information to maintain its equilibrium. It is unable to learn the lessons of Bhopal and to demand that they be applied domestically and throughout the world. Voluntary public efforts are discouraged, because the governments and corporations imply that these are misguided or unnecessary "if only they knew the facts."
Science suffers, too. A petition by a Bhopal citizen, presented by his lawyer before the High Court of Jabalpur, asked that the State Government be directed to preserve, in its operation to detoxify MIC, a sample of the contents of the tanks and to not tamper with the equipment employed at the plant. The Judge did so direct that 15 kilograms be kept in 3 containers and enter the custody of the court at Bhopal. Union Carbide (India) and the State opposed this, asserting the procedure was not feasible and was dangerous. The Judge reduced the amount to 1.5 kilograms. Still the Company and State argued that it was not safe. An appeals court of two justices upheld this amount and directed that the sample he analyzed by the chief government scientist on the project and a scientist of the petitioner's choice.
The Indian Council of Medical Research advised individual investigators not to publicize their findings prematurely and individually; confusion and panic might thus be avoided. It favored collating reliable and authentic findings for communication to the public and medical profession. This statement would indicate, to the critical mind, that victims would have to wait a long time and offbeat findings would be exorcised if the 'scientific process" as defined here were accepted.
The net gain, looking at secrecy from the standpoint of the corporate executives and politicians, is nil, and quite possibly a net loss. Besides being ineffectual, misleading, irritating, and presumptuous, it prevents the kind of creative basic rethinking of the problems that should be inspired by the immensity of the tragedy and its implications. If the heads of Union Carbide in both countries and of the governments let the processes of free discussion operate, better ideas for resolving all the issues would occur to them, and they would be helping the total cause of freedom of information and free political systems in the world.
The press, both American and Indian, did a creditable job of reporting and analyzing the Bhopal disaster and its aftermath. It continues to do so, despite the curtain of secrecy dropped quickly over the case by the authorities and maintained in place to this day. Coverage has dropped because of lack of resources, because of the secrecy, and because to say anything more one would have to venture into vast areas not defined as "news." To mention only several, the New York Times, the Times of India, and India Today have presented extensive material of high quality. That the New York Times will ultimately have spent half a million dollars to treat the Bhopal disaster is in line with the serious nature and ample resources of that journal. The reports of volunteer groups, quite another genre, such as the People's Movement, the Delhi Science Forum, and the Eklavya group also contributed valuable services.
At an extreme from the New York Times in every material regard would be the Hitavada, a diligent newspaper published in the English language in some 12,000 copies a day at Bhopal. Here one can find the archetype of so many American stories and films about a bygone day, authentic folk heroes, the fighting editor with the couple of reporters, operating in a corner of a cavernous cement room where hand fonts and antique linotypes feed composition to loosely clacking presses under pale weak lights.
What has the Hitavada done? It has covered the great story from hour to hour with profound compassion and solicitude for the victims. It has been a troublemaker for the authorities and experts, pointing out many contradictions without regard to party, asking probing questions (sometimes far-fetched), venturing pessimistic opinions, and pressing for medical help and compensation.
Another dimension of the press in Indian society, as in America, is its symbiotic relationship with the voluntary sector. One provides news; the other publicizes the activity. Thus can the poor swing their weight about with some effect. Despite their seemingly hopeless problems of numbers and scarce resources, the Indian people energetically "petition for a redress of grievances" and act "peacefully to assemble," if I may employ U.S. terms. Environmentalists quickly responded from several centers, such as "The people's Initiative" of Bhopal, Zahrili Gas Kand Sangharsh Morcha. From several cities like Delhi and Ahmedabad, environmentalists responded with all too scarce resources and the U.S. groups were totally caught off guard; the charities (Red Cross, Catholic charities, et al) responded, but much response was of the "Just think if it had happened here" kind, and much of the Bhopal coverage in the U.S. news was actually coverage of the non-news that nothing was happening, and why a disaster was or was not going to happen at the Union Carbide plant in West Virginia.
"People's Movements" were generated promptly in India. When relief was delayed, street demonstrations were held. Film-makers were among their leaders -- "participant observation" would be the sociological term for it. Pickets marched before the government offices. Manifestations of a public opinion that would not have been heard, if left to the victims alone to voice, or to the governments or the corporations, were publicized in advance and afterwards in the newspapers. Authorities made light of the agitation, but with the press writing about it and about the governmental response, some help came fast.
Precursor to the thousand reporters who descended upon Bhopal after December 3 was a solitary journalist from Bhopal, Rajkumar Keswani, who in several articles beginning in 1982 attacked safety precautions at the Union Carbide installation as inadequate, and predicted a general disaster to the City. He began his one-man campaign in a weekly Hindi newspaper on September 26, 1982. On October 5, several days after another of his articles appeared, eighteen workers at the plant were injured by gas leakage. In November he wrote to the Chief Minister to admonish him. To this letter no response was received, he claims, but the office of the Chief Minister denies having any record of such a letter.
In a large Hindi newspaper, Jansatta, on June 16, 1984, Keswani published details of the highly critical American experts report of May. 1982, and warned that the Bhopal population could be wiped out. Further, he revealed that the leak of October 5 had sent thousands of residents from the nearby shanties fleeing, to return only after many hours of anxious waiting. (I would note that this incident demonstrates that the neighborhoods nearby did have an awareness that great danger was housed in the plant; still no action was taken by the company or authorities to explain anything to the people to advice them how to behave in a larger incident, or to ready the governmental and company personnel for emergency duties in connection with the community.
When one considers newspapers such as Hitavada and reporters like Keswani, and what would exist in their place if they were eliminated -- as in fact has happened in many nations of the world -- one comes to understand better the role of the press in forestalling the death of worthy causes; this occurs at the same time as, and despite the tendency of, the press to drop a story as soon as the story moves into the process of resolution and abstraction. Without the free Indian and world press, and despite the worthy pugnacity of the victims' lawyers from the USA the substance and meaning of Bhopal would already be markedly reduced. Carrying forward and dramatising the news, significance, and symbol of Bhopal, the press transformed the tragedy into the form needed if there was to be a full hearing, large help and illuminating history.
The same Rajkumar Keswani explained in the Free Press Journal (16 December 1984) the failure of his solitary battle against unsafe conditions at Union Carbide Bhopal :
Mr. (name withheld by the present author) former Inspector General of State police was employed by Carbide as security adviser after his retirement. This shielded them from the police. A Congress (I) Leader is their lawyer. The posh Union Carbide guesthouse was always at the disposal of the ruling party. A separate suite was reserved for Chief Minister----------. Mr. --------- used to stay there whenever in Bhopal. During the Congress (I) regional conference, all central Ministers were accommodated there.
Senior politicians and civil servants were obliged to the company for employing their sons and relatives on fat salaries. On its payroll are the nephews of former Education Minister---------and Irrigation Minister---------..
This symbiosis or business, bureaucrats, and politicians can hardly strengthen the technological heart of industrial enterprise.
Several forces operated to reduce the dimensions, meaning and treatment of the case. Hardly had the first deaths been reported when denials were generated concerning the scope of the accident, and of any possible negligence, whether of individuals, systems, governments, or companies. Most of this was motivated by self-interest. But even among the unaffected liberal public one met up with psychic denial, a collective amnesia at work, telling one "Let's not make too much of it." Attacks on American lawyers also tended to divert attention or reduce the issue by ridicule and displaced indignation. In several instances I observed well-intentioned friends switching their attention from the plight of the victims to righteous anger against the "bloodsucking lawyers."
Conservative reductions of the deaths, injuries and massive social dislocation were commonly encountered. Hardly disguised was the hope of some that by some mysterious means those who survived the disaster would wander home to their villages (which are presumed to exist as some Happy Home ready to receive their errant children). Then, too, some medical experts were joined by many others in reducing the gravity of the illness, and in exaggerating the hypochondriac behavior of some of the patients, who had, it must be remembered, deep psychological wounds as well as suffering and agony, such that, after being seen in thousands of cases, make even a sympathetic doctor wonder if some play-acting is going on. In their exhaustion, the immense drama becomes surreal, just as it does for soldiers caught in the middle of a great battle.
Comparisons are made with disasters such as Hiroshima both to reduce and inflate the importance of Bhopal. Some people wish right away to put Bhopal out of mind and begin discussing marvelous new "safe" pesticides and natural ways of fighting pests. Others wish, "Naturally, turn the matter over to the government involved." Some say that the Corporations cannot pay the damages involved and so mentally they reduce the allegations against the companies and thus the compensation foreseen. Others accuse the victims of being illegally in the path of the poisonous gases, of being "illegal squatters," as if they had no business existing or should have been on holiday at the seashore when the cloud came over Bhopal.
The poorest of people have at least the sensibilities of the well-to-do for sorrow. Grief among the well-to-do and the secularized gentry of modern times is often an arrogant feeling of being insulted; expecting very much from the world, they feel chagrined when the world seems to turn against them. By contrast, the very poor, already inured to insult and injury, grieve more sincerely than many of the rich for the loss of their loved ones. They have little in life besides their loved ones -- a few clothes, several pots, a goat, and sticks of furniture in a room that they can only hopefully regard as their very own. They have no job guarantees, no welfare system to speak of save family and friends; they may be allowed to lie on a mat on the hospital floor if seriously ill, or they will squat there tending to a dying relative. The ill now must live on, partially blinded, with coughs and weakness of the limbs, musing upon the dead. Even the workers of Union Carbide, once they will be left go by Union Carbide, will become the instant poor, living on next to nothing and flooding into the crowded slums.
Hope can actually rise in the breasts of some people as they announce their happy discovery that the victims were largely the poorest of the poor and were almost surely illiterate, probably degenerate, and had too many children, and so on, just as they would have spoken of Jesus Christ, that "he was probably well crucified since he owned nothing but a cloak," which, we might as well add, even that was stripped from his body and parceled out.
Another view found in American circles, is that the Bhopal tragedy was a Indian affair, the Indians will botch it, they will settle cheaply and, them, paradoxically, at the same time they will say that the Indians are the only ones competent to handle it.
There is a constant tendency, among parties as diverse as the poorest of victims and learned American environmentalists, to reduce the Bhopal problem to a particular safety failure for which an assignment of responsibility and quick compensation are the proper resolution. To the contrary, I would say that the meaning of Bhopal needs to be preserved and enlarged. It is a jolting reminder of the gas ovens of Belsen, the radiation cloud of Hiroshima, the burned women shirt-makers of a New York City sweatshop whose death began a new chapter in the history of safety and better working conditions. Bhopal can be a watershed in industrial, even in world, history if the victims receive fair treatment and full justice, and if a new code of conduct comes to govern transnational business operations.