Survivors Still Suffer in Bhopal : Anger Rises in India City as Effects of Gas Linger

The survivors have returned to their neighborhoods near the Union Carbide plant here, and in some cases, coming home has been traumatic. Psychiatrists at Hamadia Hospital have reported instances of hysteria.

Several women collapsed when they saw their homes for the first time since Dec. 3, when a fog of deadly methyl isocyanate was accidentally released from the American-owned pesticide plant. More than 2,000 people are believed to have died, and an estimated 200,000 more were affected to some extent.

Now, though, life has come again to the streets amid the huts and shanties that surround the factory--streets that were silent and empty for weeks after the worst industrial poisoning in history. Children are at play in dusty lots. Tea stalls and public benches are filled with men sitting and talking.

Vegetable farmers say they have healthy crops of radishes and eggplant. And to everyone’s delight, new leaves have sprouted on the limbs of trees--the neem, the Indian jujube and the sacred pipal--that had been barren.

In some ways, the fact that a community so devastated can come to life again is testimony to the remarkable Indian ability to absorb the effects of calamity. In many ways, though, the signs of normality are deceptive.

Six emergency clinics are still operating in the area, and every day they treat about 1,000 people still suffering from the poisoning. Many old peoples’ eyes are cloudy with corneal opacity caused by the gas. To the usual street sounds has been added the echo of constant coughing. Hundreds of people continue to complain that they are short of breath.

“I was a carpenter before the gas,” Bhagwan Dasojha, 40, told a reporter. “Now I am not doing any job. When I try to work, I get dizzy and breathless. I cannot carry a heavy load.”

Unable to Walk

Dr. S.R. Kamat said that another victim, a 28-year-old woman, is still unable to walk 10 feet without collapsing.

Kamat, who is the director of one of the few properly equipped respiratory clinics in India, said doctors are beginning to detect longer-term symptoms similar to those suffered by 35 firemen in Wales after they were exposed to a similar gas (toluene di-isocyanate) in 1965. The firemen were studied closely for five years and were found to suffer long-term memory loss, persistent headaches and diminished mental capacity.

“We are finding similar changes in our patients, including difficulty in concentration, poor memory, headaches and tingling and numbness,” Kamat said.

The continuing medical problems among the victims of the gas poisoning suggest that earlier, hopeful reports by several American doctors who visited Bhopal may have been overly optimistic.

The victims’ frustrations with the continuing physical reminders of their plight are being expressed increasingly in anger and bitterness that not even the new leaves on the pipal tree can do much to lessen.

“The leaves of the trees are coming back, but as far as our own health goes, there is not much hope,” said Ayub Khan, a bicycle repairman. Khan, 46, was unconscious for two hours after inhaling the gas. He still complains of breathlessness after the slightest exertion.

Union Carbide Corp.--both the American-based parent company and its Indian subsidiary, Union Carbide India Ltd.--is the target of much anger here.

Four days after the accident at the plant, five men, including Union Carbide’s board chairman, Warren M. Anderson of the United States, were charged by state authorities with crimes ranging from culpable homicide resulting in death by negligence to mischief in the killing of livestock.

Charged with Anderson, who posted a $2,000 bond after his surprise arrest during an attempt to visit the plant, were leading Bombay industrialist Keshub Mohindra, chairman of the board of Union Carbide India; V.P. Gokhale, the Indian firm’s managing director, the plant’s works manager and a deputy works manager. All have now been released on bond.

The charges, some of which carry life sentences upon conviction, are still pending. More charges are expected over safety and management errors that surfaced in the government investigation that followed the accident.

None of the plant’s safety procedures was fully functioning at the time of the accident, investigators have said. Workmen ran away rather than attempt to stop the flow of deadly gas, and company officials did not attempt to warn nearby residents of the danger even hours after the gas began leaking, it was reported.

Because Anderson was promised immunity from arrest by Indian officials before his trip here, it is not likely that the charges against him will ever be pursued. He was permitted to return to the United States after posting bond.

Several hundred billion dollars in lawsuits against Union Carbide have been filed in U.S. courts. The Madhya Pradesh state government is also considering a suit in U.S. courts on behalf of its citizens, and the attorney general of India recently visited the United States to negotiate a possible settlement.

The government, as it routinely does when fatal accidents occur, is awarding $9,000 to families of people who died in the Bhopal gas leak. State officials say people with serious injuries have been awarded $1,800; those with less serious injuries, a total of 5,724 so far, have been given a lesser form of financial assistance.

A government relief program is providing people in the neighborhoods involved with wheat, rice, edible oil and milk. However, the people are in no mood to be placated by the free food.

“We cannot look after our health with kilograms of food grains,” Khan said.

Moti Singh, a local government official, said the shock of the accident is gradually disappearing and being replaced by anger. “The people want long-term rehabilitation programs,” he said.

The anger is reflected in demonstrations and hunger strikes against Union Carbide and the state government.

“They have been stopping all traffic on some of the roads,” said Singh, who is responsible for distributing emergency financial assistance to families of victims.

Some of the demonstrations have been organized by groups with goals that go beyond the gas incident. An organization of students called the Poisonous Gas Episode Struggle Front has moved into a tiny flat in the area and is trying to help the community get additional relief, including jobs.

“We equally blame the multinational corporation and the Indian state for the accident,” said Alok Pratab Singh, a member of the front’s steering committee. “We must also fight the poison of state corruption in our fight against poison gas.”

For the 600 people who worked in the pesticide plant, there is a double indignity. Not only are they outcasts in their community because of their association with the source of the deadly gas, they are out of work because the plant is closed.

Only Union Carbide’s small research and development facility, with 65 employees, continues to operate. The research director, B.P. Srivastava, called a press conference to deny charges that the facility is involved in research related to chemical warfare.

“For us to be involved in chemical warfare research we would need laboratory animals,” Srivastava, who has a doctorate in entomology from Kansas State University, told the press. “I don’t have any rabbits or rats here.”

Although the research center conducted many tests on pesticides produced at the Union Carbide plant, Srivastava said, it never tested methyl isocyanate, which is used in an intermediate stage in the production of pesticides.

Regarding the gas poisoning, he said, “I don’t expect any long-term effects because it (methyl isocyanate) reacts so quickly with water.”

In fact, he said, if everyone in the neighborhoods around the plant on the morning of the gas leak had placed wet towels over their heads “they all would have been saved.”

He said an executive of the plant had driven two miles through the gas fog with a wet towel over his mouth and had suffered no ill effects.

Why had the community not been told of this simple measure?

“I would not be able to answer that question,” Srivastava said.