Bhopal gas leak & BP oil spill: Indian lives cheap?

New Delhi: Eight people accused of criminal negligence in the Bhopal gas tragedy of 1984 on Monday were jailed for two years but promptly got bail and walked away. If that’s outrageous, then the compensation paid to victims of the gas leak will have you fuming.

About 2,000 more deaths were directly attributed to the gas leak from the Union Carbide chemical plant, and government records indicate that 578,000 people were affected. Union Carbide India Ltd (UCIL) paid $ 470 million to settle with the victims, with each getting an average of $ 550.

Compare that to the compensation being demanded for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster. US President Barack Obama has pushed British Petroleum to pay for the environmental disaster, and the company is liable to pay a fine of up to $ 4,300 per barrel. The final compensation may be in billions of dollars.

Out of the eight people convicted and sentenced, seven attended the hearing in Bhopal and immediately got bail on a surety of Rs 25,000each. The court also fined UCIL Rs 5 lakh.

Activists and lawyers associated with the litigation over the tragedy on Monday alleged that in the initial years after the disaster, the government rather than pursuing the criminal charges against Union Carbide and its American parent company Union Carbide Corp, entered into a zero-liability pact with it.

Sati Nath Sarangi, an advocate for the victims, characterized the verdict as "the world's worst industrial disaster reduced to a traffic accident."

Indian authorities tried unsuccessfully to prosecute Warren M. Anderson, chairman of Union Carbide at the time of the leak. Anderson, now approaching 90, came to India after the disaster and was briefly arrested, then released on bail. He now lives in New York, and the US has indicated that there is no possibility of extradition.

The accident site, in the middle of Bhopal, was given back to the state government. It still has 425 tons of hazardous waste that have yet to be cleared. Union Carbide was bought by Dow Chemical Company in 2001, and activists are seeking to get Dow to clean up the site.

(With inputs from IANS and AP)