Opinion Thirty years later

Bhopal 1984 has become shorthand for a powerful indictment of the Indian state’s indulgence of reckless and unregulated industry and the government’s cavalier attitude to accountability and compensation. Thirty years later, is India any better prepared to deal with a similar disaster? Are the legislative changes made in its aftermath sufficient to discourage future incidents and put in place a framework that fixes responsibility and allows for victims to receive damages? As a series of reports in this paper has highlighted, the answers are troubling.

Official statistics suggest that several states have witnessed an increase in industrial fatalities over the last three years for which data is available. And these only account for accidents in the organised sector — analysts estimate that the actual numbers could be 10 times higher if incidents in the unorganised sector are included. Safety norms exist, and were indeed updated after Bhopal. But they are regularly flouted, despite the fact that several laws — such as Chapter IV-A of the Factories Act, which was added in response to Bhopal — clearly spell out the disaster control measures a factory must undertake. The state, it seems, lacks the resources and expertise to implement its own safety regulations, even in the public sector enterprises it manages. For instance, the inquiry report for a June Gail pipeline blast that killed 22 people blamed a gap in safety features for the disaster. Health facilities at factories are inadequate and those found guilty of committing violations are rarely punished.

Advertisement

The Public Liability Insurance Act, another Bhopal legacy and passed in 1991, was supposed to provide immediate and interim relief to victims until compensation could be decided. But the law is half-hearted and inadequate — and, given that the amount it mandates is not inflation-indexed, desperately outdated. The Supreme Court’s directive to the Law Commission to examine if India should adopt a comprehensive tort liability law, such as in the UK, US and Australia, to better recompense victims in case of harm, is a welcome corrective, one the government should work to incorporate into law as soon as possible.