Remembering the tragedy at Bhopal

A panel discussion will be held today to draw attention to the world’s biggest industry disaster, which occurred 25 years ago after a gas leak from a Union Carbide plant contaminated the area surrounding the central Indian city of Bhopal.

Speakers at “Bhopal Gas Tragedy: 25 years of struggle” will include a young survivor of the disaster, two activists from India and the United States, and UCLA Southeast Asian history Professor Vinay Lal, who will lend an academic perspective to the discussion.

“Forty tons of methyl isocyanate gas were leaked out into the atmosphere and about 500,000 people have been exposed to that toxic gas,” said 2008 alumnus Gaurav Shah, a volunteer for the Los Angeles chapter of the Association for India’s Development.

The leak caused soil and groundwater pollution that continues to cause deaths and birth defects in local residents, Lal said.

“More than 5,000 people died on the spot at the time of the leakage,” Shah said. “To date, 23,000 have died as a result, in addition to the tens of thousands who are afflicted with nonfatal disorders with injuries and handicaps.”

Shah added that the gas was leaked due to inadequate security measures by Union Carbide, which has since been bought by the U.S. multinational Dow Chemical Company and has yet to pay sufficient reparations.

The event was organized by the Los Angeles chapter of the Association for India’s Development in conjunction with the Students for Bhopal and the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal and is part of a two-month tour of the United States.

Sarita Malviya, a 16-year-old survivor who was raised in the polluted area, will give a firsthand account of her experiences. At the age of 14, she became an activist in order to speak about the tragedy and try to illicit a greater response from Dow Chemicals.

Lal and Malviya will be joined at the event today by two activists, Rachna Dhingra, the Indian coordinator for the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, and Shana Ortman, the U.S. coordinator for the campaign.

Together, Malviya, Dhingra and Ortman have spoken at various locations nationwide, including Washington, D.C., and UCLA, about the ongoing suffering felt by the victims of the Bhopal tragedy, Shah said.

“Bhopal is the most emblematic and largest example of where corporate greed has run amok and caused ongoing damage to the environment and community,” Ortman said. “This is a precedence-setting campaign to get corporations to be held liable for such damages.”

Lal said that the lack of corporate responsibility in this case is disturbing, especially given the international significance of the Bhopal gas tragedy.

“If it happened in Britain, Union Carbide would have had to pay billions and billions of dollars to the victims,” Lal said. “In this case, they paid virtually nothing.”

The Los Angeles chapter of the Association for India’s Development was unable to get a response from Dow Chemicals about providing a corporate representative to speak at the event, said Amarjeet Singh, a UCLA graduate student in electrical engineering who is involved with the student chapter of the Association for India’s Development.

“This involves policy issues, the response of corporations, environmental concerns and the broader situation of sustainability,” Singh said. “Anyone interested in sustainability from the environmental or social side would get a very good perspective from listening to the diverse experiences from these speakers.”

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