Seen as Proof That Bhopal Wasn’t Due to Sabotage or Local Mismanagement : W. Va. Leak Brings New Trouble for Carbide in India
Union Carbide Corp., already the target of boycotts, labor actions and legal suits in India because of the disastrous gas leak last December at Bhopal, has come under attack again here since the toxic gas leak Sunday from the Union Carbide plant at Institute, W. Va.
Indian newspapers, in strongly worded editorials and news stories, say that Sunday’s incident, in which more than 130 persons sought treatment, disproves the firm’s contention that the Dec. 3 incident at Bhopal, in which at least 2,000 persons died, was the result of sabotage or local mismanagement.
‘Doubly Difficult Position’
“Now that the U.S. authorities have been made wiser after the mishap (in West Virginia), Union Carbide will be in a doubly difficult position to explain away the inherent dangers in operating such plants,” the Hindustan Times said in an editorial Wednesday. “Surely, the management cannot cook up another sabotage theory as it did in the case of Bhopal.”
The Washington correspondent of the Times of India commented: “(The) leakage of the poisonous gas has given the lie to the Carbide management’s oft-repeated claim that the Bhopal gas disaster was caused primarily by the inefficiency of the Indian management of the Bhopal plant.”
Because of the Bhopal disaster, the public image in India of Union Carbide and its subsidiary, Union Carbide India, has been severely damaged. The American company, based at Danbury, Conn., owns 50.9% of the Indian company.
Aided Birth Control
Before Bhopal, Union Carbide India had a positive reputation for public service because of its annual free distribution of more than 100 million condoms in connection with the government’s birth control program. The decline in its prestige is considered significant because the company is also the largest American-owned business in India, and India is opening its doors to more outside businesses.
Union Carbide India is relatively small in the overall $9-billion-a-year Union Carbide picture, accounting for less than 2% of total revenues. However, it ranks about 15th among all Indian companies in annual sales, with most of its profits coming from the sale of Eveready batteries.
Since the gas leak at Bhopal, several groups have called for a nationwide boycott of Union Carbide products, including batteries.
The most active of these groups, the Kerala Sastra Sahithya Parishad, has produced a wall poster showing a cat, like one that appears on Eveready batteries, with a vicious expression and blood dripping from its teeth. So far, the poster campaign has been limited to university campuses and walls near Union Carbide’s 13 factories in India.
A group that calls itself the Bhopal Gas Action Front has sponsored demonstrations and hunger strikes in Bhopal on behalf of victims still suffering from the effects of the methyl isocyanate gas released from the plant there. Still another group, the Delhi Committee on the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, was formed by civil liberties organizations in the capital after a Bhopal police crackdown on leaders of the Gas Action Front.
The Delhi Committee sent a delegation to Bhopal to investigate the arrests of 40 of the front’s members, and it returned with a report condemning the state government of Madhya Pradesh. One of the most serious charges against the government was that it was spreading false rumors that leaders of the Gas Action Front had connections with Union Carbide and that the wife of one of the front’s leaders was involved with a Union Carbide executive.
The Delhi Committee report suggested that the worst thing that could be said about anyone in India was that he or she worked for Union Carbide.
Labor Agitation
V. Sagar, a production manager at the Eveready Flashlight Co. in Lucknow, where the company is facing prolonged labor agitation and where walls are covered with accusations that Sagar and other executives are CIA agents, said: “To tell you the truth, for the first few months we avoided going to parties or outside our homes, except to very close friends.”
A seven-month labor dispute at the flashlight factory, which employs 960 persons, is centered on wage and job classification demands, but the union has used Bhopal-related issues to publicize its cause. Workers began a hunger strike at the plant two days after the Bhopal gas leak.
Union leader Uma Shankar Misra has charged that the plant, which uses cyanide in a zinc-plating process and produces a poisonous chromium byproduct in its chrome-plating operation, has poisoned workers and farm animals with its emissions.
Not long ago, the Statesman newspaper printed a picture of a flashlight factory employee sitting in the living room of his home with a dazed expression on his face. The accompanying article said that the worker, identified as Chote Lal Maurya, was one of 12 Union Carbide employees who had been driven insane at the Lucknow plant.
However, in an interview at the factory, where he has resumed work as a machine operator, Maurya said that he has had mental problems for two years and that they have nothing to do with his work at the plant.
An inspection of the plant showed that its zinc-plating and chrome-plating facilities are similar to those in U.S. plants. Also, the Lucknow plant is one of the few in India with a full waste treatment facility, including a process that neutralizes the chromium byproduct (hexavalent chromium).
Union Leader Fasting
In the latest union action at Lucknow, Misra, the union leader, has begun a hunger strike in front of the flashlight factory.
