The continuing disaster of the poisoning of Bhopal and its people

This night thirty years ago was the last, and the beginning of the end for 25 000 people in the central Indian town of Bhopal. The Union Carbide pesticide factory leaked poisonous gas into its nearby environment, immediately killing thousands. To this date the land has not been remediated and people still suffer from birth defects. The International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal states that 150 000 battle chronic illnesses. The build up and aftermath of the disaster provide a vivid example of how things can go so wrong, and stay wrong, and how difficult it is to hold corporate entities to account.

The factory had been established in 1970 and is typical Green Revolution fare. It was located in the middle of India with help from the Indian government and no little diplomatic grease. Near its ultimate end, the factory was undergoing cost cutting, which affected health and safety.

Indians farmers were not so interested in buying its pesticides at the time, Indira Gandhi had been assassinated and Anti-Sikh pogroms (8 000 +) had ravaged the country just a month earlier. Her assassination was in response to the terrible (and SAS supported) Operation Bluestar mounted against the Sikh's Golden Temple in Amritsar, which left up to 5000 people dead. Not to mention the Nellie Massacre of Muslims in Assam (2000-5000) that had unfolded the year before.

Corporate propaganda.

Warren Anderson, CEO of Union Carbide died this autumn, escaping justice in this life. He was more wanted figure in India than Osama Bin Laden for the USA. Makes you wonder what kinds of justice there are for situations like this.

Corporations continue to enjoy more-than-human rights.

I got to watch Ravi Kumar's Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain at #ReframingDisaster last weekend, and found it to be beautifully written, complex and saddening/maddening.

Dow Chemicals, who were involved in the manufacture of nuclear weapons, Agent Orange and Napalm aquired Union Carbide in 2001. Dow is a huge commercial concern, with 50k+ employees and $50billion + annual revenue. It is a pity that Fight Club is not real.

On another note, there is an ummahtic connection from the UK to the town, via its first purpose built mosque. Bhopal used to be ruled by Queens called Begums (Beg-Om: Mothers of Warriors)

The 1860 Pearl Mosque at the heart of Bhopal, built by Begum Sikander Jahan.

Woking Mosque in the 1930s, the first purpose built mosque in the United Kingdom (1889).
It was financed largely by Begum Shah Jehan, who it bears the name of to this day

Resources

Bhopal Medical Appeal
Good background info and campaign materials

Raj Keswani, 
Bhopal based journalist and Union Carbide whistle blower reflects on the tragedy (Hindi)

The Yes Men Sting Operation
Claiming to be Dow Chemicals, the social justice activists fooled the BBC into believing Dow, who had 3 years earlier acquired Union Carbide, was taking responsibility.

Bhopal: Facing 30
A photography project, that honours surviving families with regal portraits.

Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain (Trailer)

Martin Sheen interview, he plays Union Carbides CEO

[New Word] Trashmob

A long long time ago
I can still remember how
'Good' flashmobs used to make me smile
And I knew if we had our cause
That we might engineer a round of applause
And maybe feed the homeless for a while

But Repetition made me shiver
With every so-called Temporary Autonomous Zone The Man deliver
Commodified action on your doorstep
Ultimately there would not be one more step

I can't remember if I cried
When I read about Gangam contrived
Amongst Dhaka's westoxified
The day the flashmob died

The Trashmob is a spontaneous gathering and action of complete fuckwits who contrive to meet together and perform an action of immense idiocy, window dressing and neoliberalising enchantment.

A Halal Chicken returns an angry gaze

The halal chicken took her seat
Amongst the Conference of the Birds.
"Such great accomodation,
But my complaint you haven't heard."

I demand a joint action,
For my kith and my kin,
For these Muslims are collecting,
Great barrels of sin.

At two pounds we are valued,
Beak, feathers and all,
Our flesh is devoured,
Rememberance small.

They say that it is lawful, industrial, clean,
Let's wipe them out with their own damned machines.
Our living rights are curtailed in crates and conveyers,
Optimised, efficient, cheap perverted purveyors.

Claiming diminished,
Responsibility,
Believers come to me,
With tales of colonisation and skullduggery.

I bear witness that there is no creature as abominable as mankind.

Transparency International Bangladesh - National Household Survey 2010

So people are slightly miffed at Transparency International Bangladesh's (TIB) national household survey which fingers the judiciary as a highly corrupt sector, along with land administration, tax and customs, . You can read the breakdown in the executive summary here.

I wonder if TIB had to pay the court to find a technical fault in the plaintiff's application.

TIB has influenced knowledge-making on corruption for a long time. It considers itself a social movement yet in many ways is a case in point of the problems of NGOisation. However, whats interesting is that the findings concerning the judiciary come at a time in which the Government of Bangladesh and others would like to project the integrity of its judiciary.

A few years after the Caretaker Government adventure, its annoyingly clear that corruption is the carte blanch that apathetics use to stop giving a stuff about Bangladesh and what the World Bank uses to discipline and institute micro-surveillance on the Government of Bangladesh. 'Civil' society and the military used corruption as an important plank in their argument for the caretaker government. Quickly corruption becomes a dominating buzzword of disempowerment.

Ranking and surveying perceptions and experience with numbers within a eurocentric framework promoting 'transparency' has an audience of its own. But decolonial corruptionology must have other dimensions, sociological (eg. late Husain Alatas), embodied ethical and imaginal. I'm wondering what it might be.