BHOPAL GAS TRAGEDY

By Pinkey Gupta

CIMS B-SCHOOL

Introduction:-

In the early morning hours of December 3rd ,1984 a poisonous grey cloud (40 tons of toxic gas) from UCIL’s pesticide plant at Bhopal spread through out the city of 120k residing near plant and 8 lac people in city. Water carrying catalytic material had entered methyl Isocyanate (MIC) storage tank no. 610. Dead body of humans and animals blocked the street, leaves turned black, the smell of burning chilly peppers lingered in the air. At least 2k people died immediately, although local estimation was 10k and 30k to 50k people are too ill to return to their job.

Root causes of the Disaster The pesticide factory was built in the midst of densely populated

settlement.

The MIC plant was not designed to handle a runaway reaction.

MIC in the tank was filled to 87% of its capacity while the maximum permissible was 50%.

MIC was not stored at 0 degree centigrade as prescribed & the refrigeration & cooling system had been shut down 5 months before the disaster, as per the UCC’s global economy drive.

As part of UCC’s drive to cut cost, the work force in the Bhopal factory was brought down by half 1980 to 1984. the maintenance supervisor position had been eliminated & there was no maintenance supervisor. Even the period of safety training of worker in the MIC plant was brought down from 6 months to 15 days.

A/c to the American engineers report who surveyed the plant in May 1982, that the surrounding of the site as being ‘strewn with oily old drums, used piping, pools of used oil & chemical waste likely to cause fire’. It also reported leaks of Phosgene, MIC & chloroform, ruptures in pipework & sealed joints, absence of any earth wire on 1 of the 3 MIC tanks & poor adjustment of certain devises where excessive pressure could lead to water entering the circuits.

Possibility of avoiding the disaster. Location of the factory should be at least 1:200 distance from residential area.

The hard core negligence is done in the proper maintenance of the factory and its equipment even after the inspection made and report submitted by the American engineers to cut the cost of production.

Being several accidents occurred inside the factory, the top management is changing the managing people instead of changing the equipment in factory. So, an conscious management can avoid the date.

Production is done more than its handling capacity (output > input).

The refrigeration and cooling system operation can cause the harm less but the blast occurred due to mismanagement of oily old drums which can be avoided by proper management of disposals.

The employee to workforce ratio is half to cut the cost with less experienced to handled the situation. Proper ratio of workforce employee with skills and safety training could avoid the date.

Legal Action. In the context of the Bhopal gas tragedy in 1984, the Indian penal code (IPC) was the only

relevant law specifically criminal liability for such incidents.

The CBI acting on behalf of the victim, filed charges against the accused under section 304 of the IPC section 304 deals with punishment for culpable homicide and requires of intension of causing death. In 1991, the government of India negotiated a deal with UCC on behalf of the victims which stipulated, that legal jurisdiction was restricted in India.

By the Judgement date September 13, 1996. The supreme Court held that there was no material to show that “Any of the accused had a knowledge that by operating the plant on that fateful night where at such dangerous and highly volatile substances like MIC was stored. They had the knowledge that by this very act itself they were likely to cause death of any human being”. The Supreme Court thus directed that the changes be reframed under section 304A of the IPC (causing death by negligence).

UCC paid $417 Million in compensation and accepted moral responsibility. In return, all pending Legal action against the company was dropped.

Impact of disaster on society & community at large.

By the end of October 2003, according to the Bhopal Gas Tragedy Relief and Rehabilitation Department, compensation had been awarded to 554,895 people for injuries received and 15,310 survivors of those killed. The average amount to families of the dead was $2,200 [9].

Major organs exposed were the eyes, respiratory tract, and skin. Although mortality was initially high, it declined over time, but remained elevated among the most severely exposed population.

Studies conducted during the early recovery period focused primarily on ocular and respiratory systems. Major findings included acute irritant effects on the eyes and respiratory tract.

In follow-up studies, investigators observed persistent irritant effects, including ocular lesions and respiratory impairment. Studies conducted during the late recovery period focused on various systemic health endpoints.

Significant neurological, reproductive, neurobehavioral, and psychological effects were also observed. Early and late recovery period studies suffered from several clinical and epidemiological limitations, including study design, bias, and exposure classification.

Ethics and Values. The Bhopal case typifies the complexity, mixed motives, and potential for benefit or

harm characteristic of contemporary business activity. Merely reciting the facts or reviewing the legal decisions will fail to tell us what values have priority and how we might approach difficult issues.

In the face of the intricacy of the various strands of thinking, it is critical that we can step back and work out a normative response, that is, what we should do.

In this case, the Indian government had made value-laden decisions about the desirability of foreign investment, and Union Carbide was looking to realize a profit for its shareholders.

The company’s actions reveal certain assumptions about safety and the environment, at least in the Indian context, because UCC appears to have applied less stringent safety standards than at their American plants. Therefore it will be valuable at the outset to seriously examine the conceptual foundations underlying business and how they are put into practice.

Ethics and Values A business may lay off workers without notice because it believes that employees who

know they will soon be out of a job will slack off and lower the morale of the firm. However, we might question the empirical claims involved and whether they will have the result management suspects.

We are often misled by clever rhetoric or invalid arguments, and one of the philosopher’s tasks is to sort out sound reasoning about any particular claim. In this case, the employer is making a causal claim about human behaviour and comes to a conclusion primarily based on the effect on company efficiency. That is, a slacking worker will lower profitability, and profitability is the thing that matters most.

Perhaps there are moral reasons to treat people decently that are independent of the bottom line. If layoffs are imminent, perhaps it might be appropriate to give employees some time to adjust and make plans rather than escorting them to the door on a Friday afternoon. Thus we need to look carefully at both the assumptions at work in an argument and at the way these assumptions are linked to come to a conclusion.

Conclusion

The rewards for prudential actions may not come soon or be measured easily, but that may not matter as long as the person involved believes in the reward system.

Hence a faithful believer might resist temptation and do charitable works because of a promise of eternal salvation, even though there is no evidence that will occur; as a practical matter the evidence is secondary to the individual’s belief.

We might say business dealings are analogous, because despite the difficulty in proving that a business will benefit by doing good works, it may become self-verifying if everyone involved in commerce adopts the belief as a matter of course.

A further confound is that companies that do a lot of good works and do well in the market – such as Johnson & Johnson, Merck, or Dayton-Hudson –tend to be well established, stable, and profitable anyway. This is not to deny that firms that act morally may do well in the marketplace, especially over time.

A NEW JOURNEY STARTED FOR US WITH NEW RULE’S IN BUSINESS …