For the thousands of people of the central Indian city of Bhopal who survived the world’s worst industrial disaster only to end up with permanent disabilities, the government of India’s decision last week to increase their financial compensation as well as revise the survivor lists before the 30th anniversary of the catastrophe is thin salve over a bone-deep wound. But it deserves to be commended nevertheless.
For the survivors, the memories of the night of December 2, 1984, when they woke up to a deadly gas leaking from the Union Carbide pesticide plant that killed more than 16,000 people and forever impaired over 500,000, are irreducible. Nothing can turn the clock back for them, but what can touch their lives with dignity is an acknowledgement of their incalculable suffering and its partial alleviation, even if it is through money. The labyrinthine international litigations that followed the Bhopal gas tragedy resulted in an out-of-court $750 million (Dh2.75 billion) compensation package in 1989, considered highly inadequate given the monumental scale of the catastrophe and suffering. The acknowledgement of that inadequacy, however belated, is what the victims of Bhopal have been waiting for all these years.
