The media outrage following the mild two-year jail sentences for criminal negligence recently imposed upon the directors of the former Union Carbide (India) Ltd (UCL) who were managing the company in December 1984, when deadly methyl isocynate gas escaped from its Bhopal factory killing 20,000 and wounding and maiming over 550,000 people in one of the worst industrial disasters, is a telling indicator of the proclivity of Indias much-trumpeted free press to go after symbolic and/or soft targets. A quarter century after this catastrophe, the major preoccupation of the media is the whys and wherefores of the safe passage assurance and rapid exit without arrest or trial from India of Warren Anderson, the then US-based chairman of the parent Union Carbide Corporation (UCC), who came visiting in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy.Admittedly as chief executive, Anderson has to bear constructive responsibility. But only a limited symbolic purpose will be served if Anderson and Keshub Mahindra, who was the non-executive chairman of the now defunct Indian company, are made to stand trial on the more serious charge of culpable homicide, instead of criminal negligence under which they were convicted on June 7. More important is to demand accountability from several directly-involved domestic actors of Bhopals man-made disaster who are guilty of aiding and abetting the companys criminal negligence in managing its dangerous business, and compounding the suffering of UCLs victims. This is necessary to ensure that the citizenry is spared future disasters and consequential suffering of the Bhopal gas tragedy proportions.
Among the questions that need to be posed and answered are: What is the extent of culpability of the Bhopal municipal government which allowed slum and unauthorised dwellings to spring up around UCLs Bhopal factory which was initially sited beyond civic limits? Why did the Union government which is surely aware of the sloth and inertia of the Indian judicial system make a plea to the US Supreme Court to transfer the civil liability claim for $3.3 billion (Rs.15,510 crore) filed in the US on behalf of the victims, to be transferred to India? Moreover why did the learned justices of the Supreme Court of India approve of and sanctify the paltry settlement amount of $470 million (Rs.2,209 crore) offered by UCC to the Bhopal gas tragedy victims, and wash its hands off its speedy disbursement? And whos to blame that even 26 years after the settlement amount was paid into the Supreme Court, it hasnt yet been fully disbursed to the victims, and that the factory area still hasnt been cleaned up and detoxified, posing danger to air and water of the entire city?
Regretably within sentient Indian society as well as in the media, when great calamities occur there is a depressing tendency to vent xenophobic passions and look for the foreign hand — multinationals, Pakistan, China, Washington. Grave dereliction of duty and heinous acts of omission and commission of domestic public officials sworn to provide good governance and protect the public interest, are routinely ignored or brushed aside. In the Bhopal gas tragedy case, the local government, the judicial system and Madhya Pradesh state governments relief agencies have as much to answer for as UCC and Warren Anderson.
Wake-up call to respect children’s rights
The huge commotion and sensationalisation of the tragic suicide of Rouvanjit Rawla, a 13-year-old class VIII student of La Martiniere Boys — Kolkatas premier day school (estb.1836) according to the EducationWorld-C fore Indias Most Respected Schools Survey 2009 — has exposed the ugly face of Indias new media, particularly television. Buoyed by the encomiums they have rightly received for their high-decibel broadcast campaigns to re-open several cases in which well-connected criminals had got away with murder, the major English language television news channels have launched similar Justice for Rouvanjit campaigns. According to them, Sunirmal Chakravarthy, principal of La Martiniere Boys, prompted the young students suicide on February 12 by visiting cruel and unusual punishment upon him.
The facts of the case are as follows. On February 8 Rouvanjit was administered two strokes of the cane by Chakravarthy (and also allegedly by two other teachers of the school) for disruptive classroom behaviour. Three days later, after attending school in the interim and showing no signs of obvious distress, he took the extreme step of ending his life at home. Subsequent perusal of his personal papers and diary indicated that he had been subjected to bullying by La Martinieres teachers which prompted Rouvanjits father to file complaints with the National Commission for Protection of Children and the Kolkata police — four months after the suicide. In his complaints Rawla charged that four teachers of the school and Chakravarthy had indulged in abuse, ridicule and humiliation combined with beating, of Rouvanjit, triggering his tragic suicide.
Prima facie, the facts of the case and sequence of events indicate culpability of the institutional management. Yet the issues involved in this case are more complex than appears at first sight. First, theres the matter of the three-day gap between the caning and the suicide. This necessitates investigation whether other factors, including the angle of possible domestic abuse of the child — a live possibility in a society which has scant respect for childrens rights and in-house democracy — and third party harassment were causative factors. Moreover formal caning has been a long established tradition of Indias most respected public (i.e, private, exclusive) schools.
Nevertheless Chakravarthys refusal to step down pending the outcome of police enquiry into the incident is as inexplicable as his pathetic public apologia for caning Rouvanjit. Instead of citing the conflict of institutional tradition with recently enacted legislation banning corporal punishment, he allowed himself to be mercilessly badgered by self-righteous television anchors who seem oblivious that corporal punishment is more prevalent in government than private schools. However for the teachers community as much as for parents, Rouvanjits tragic suicide is a wake-up call to respect childrens rights, and to practice inner-family democracy at home.