After 26 years

The conviction of eight people for “causing death by negligence” by a court in Bhopal is the first time that any verdict has been handed down in a matter related to the 1984 gas leak. That it has taken this long is truly scandalous. If it was believed this would allow the world to forget what happened in Bhopal,then that was a serious miscalculation. Appeals and arguments could continue; and throughout that time,Bhopal will continue to be thought of as little more than the location of the gas tragedy.

That is deeply unfortunate. The people of Bhopal continue to suffer from the 1984 leak and its botched aftermath — if not actually physiologically,then in terms of the dark shadows that have undeservedly become attached to their city’s reputation. The accident,after all,could have happened anywhere in this country. Yet it’s Bhopal that is instantly associated with the idea “industrial accident”; consequently,any corporation,across the world,would be forced to think twice before proudly announcing to its shareholders that it has set up an ancillary unit in Bhopal. This state of affairs cannot be expected to continue. Had questions of compensation and guilt been sorted out in time,then it is entirely possible to imagine that Bhopal may have been not just the pensioners’ paradise that Bangalore was but the city of the cutting-edge that Bangalore is as well.

Instead,Bhopal is a forgotten capital. Some of the people who watched Prakash Jha’s Rajneeti this past weekend will have been startled by the beauty of the film’s backdrop,the graceful city by the lakes that wears its years well and has the unique advantage of being situated at the heart of India. Too often forgotten in the desire to keep the issue of culpability for the leak alive as long as possible are these,the very real costs to not moving on. This verdict should galvanise us into ensuring that Bhopal’s natural advantages — weather,location,solid communities — aren’t blockaded by a refusal to court closure. For all of us,there should perhaps be constructed a memorial to what happened on that dark night in December 1984,to remind us of the human costs of lackadaisical industrial security,to focus our mind on the loss of life. But the entire city cannot stand as a memorial. And it cannot be frozen in time by an activist industry that continues to milk the tragedy. Bhopal needs to be given its own future,free of the dark clouds in its past.