Cloud over Bhopal

A Cloud Still Hangs Over Bhopal by Suketu Mehta in New York Times is the best article that I read so far about Bhopal tragedy.

All over India, when misfortune strikes — when a child is ill, for example — people burn chilies to drive away the evil eye. The gas smelled like chilies burning, and people said to one another, it must be a powerfully evil eye that’s being driven away, the stench is so strong.

Fleeing the gas, the Bhopalis clutched their children. Some babies fell, gasping, and their parents had to choose which ones to carry on their shoulders. One image still comes up over and over in their dreams: in the stampede, a thousand people are stepping on their child’s body.

Read it in full here.

Bhopal: Never Forget

Amir Khan02

25 years on, and the poisoning in Bhopal continues…

Let us not forget…

  • A company that still refuses to take legal responsibility of the disaster, and to provide enough health damages (Rs. 25000 for life-long suffering?) and clean up the disaster site
  • Our politicians (planning to secure $1bn of investment from Dow) who want us to believe that the place is now safe, when the private institutional studies reports that the place is still highly contaminated by dangerous toxins
  • A company CEO who has fled India and was declared “untraceable” by Indian authorities although his address in a New York suburb is publicly listed
  • Generations of people, including many kids like the one in the picture above (I have excluded some very disturbing pics of the kids, go to bhopal.org to see them),  continue to suffer because of the disaster

Guardian article
Amnesty USA’s article
Riding the Elephant

(Image courtesy: Bhopal.org)