2004 is the twentieth anniversary of the Bhopal gas disaster. Twenty years is a very long time. For the victims of the disaster, twenty years has also been a very hard time. But, for the rest of the world, it is time to start asking hard and difficult questions: questions not only about Union Carbide and Corporations, but also about our own lives.

Like high-altitude bombers, ultimate decision makers in the Global Village rarely need be confronted by the consequences of their actions or inactions.
- Jan Knippers Black

2004 is the twentieth anniversary of the Bhopal gas disaster. Twenty years is a very long time. For the victims of the disaster, twenty years has also been a very hard time. But, for the rest of the world, it is time to start asking hard and difficult questions: questions not only about Union Carbide and Corporations, but also about our own lives. It is time to ask ourselves: What is it that we want? How do we want to live? How do we live our lives? What is our contribution to Bhopal? How does Bhopal figure in the choices we make? What does Bhopal mean in this era of globalization?

In 1991, under the Narasimha Rao government, India enlisted the support of the World Bank to get out of a major financial crisis. The World Bank offered aid. In return, India was asked to allow foreign investment. Under the directives of the World Bank and IMF, the finance minister, Manmohan Singh, introduced reforms that attracted foreign investment and liberalized the economy. Once India had complied with the demands of the World Bank and IMF, decision making moved out of communities and regions to New Delhi, from New Delhi to Washington D.C. and Geneva, and from there to the headquarters of transnational corporations.

In the last decade, global corporations have found India a viable market only because of
1. cheap labor costs
2. weak environmental and public health protections
3. a huge consumer market
4. a large commodity base where everything is up for sale - water, grain, turmeric, land, people, and even accents

And thus, a new era of globalization, consumerism and commodification has begun.

The prime rationale advanced for globalization is the economic advancement of the societies that participate in it. But the reality is that it is only about the advancement of select societies and groups; an advancement controlled largely by corporations. It is this reality that the former Indian President R. K. Narayan warned of during his Republic Day speech as he pointed to the growing gap between the rich and the poor. That gap continues to widen.

But corporate control is not a phenomenon of the 90s. You can trace it to the Green Revolution in the 1960s when multi national companies promised the “Third World” a “better” future. In 1961, Union Carbide, as a "partner in progress" in the Green Revolution offered to “build a new India.” When its pesticide plant resulted in the gas disaster, the corporation walked away unaccountable for its actions. The major change that has occurred since the 60s is that multi national corporations are now transnational corporations, which also means that they are not responsible for any mishap that occurs outside the “national” base. Even today, there is no international body to hold corporations responsible for abuse or misconduct. Seen only for the market value, Wall Street followed the case against Union Carbide very carefully and the day the settlement was announced, Union Carbide's stock price rose. And with its merger with DOW in 2000, it has become one of the world’s biggest chemical industries, sending out a very clear message – while corporations have the rights and responsibilities of “a legal person,” they have greater value and protection than people themselves. For twenty long years, the victims of the gas disaster have relentlessly fought for justice.

The tragedy has sparked a debate about the work ethics of corporations whose every move is directed at enhancing profit. Satinath Sarangi, a Bhopal activist, says India has learnt very little from the tragedy. If there are any lessons that have been learnt from the disaster they are lessons of management of consequences and not prevention, with legislative adjustments made to absolve industries of corporate responsibility. Over the last decade, in this “free market enterprise,” the government of India has been promoting investments by transnational corporations, particularly U.S. based corporations. All those who are unquestioning devotees of the “free market” should take a good look at how free market zones really function. How is it that governments adopt neoliberal economic policies giving transnational corporations a big leeway, allowing them to act independently with no question of liability? As Eric Schossler explains, “the free market always seeks a work force that is hungry desperate and cheap. A work force that is anything but free" (Reefer Madness). And, the “free market” is about winners and losers. “Winners” refer to economies in the geographic South that have emerged/are emerging as strong competitors in the global market. “Losers”, on the other hand, are not confined to national economies alone, but include a broader range of economic sectors, groups of people, or regions within countries, that have become/remained poor and marginalized. Bhopal is an example of a “loser” in the “free trade” world order. But, the winner is not just Union Carbide. The winner is the New World Order - the way in which people’s lives are dictated by the global market.

When "globalization" and "liberalization" became buzz words, India started churning out even more engineers to create a solid work force for the software industry. It cannot be denied that a whole new job market has been created by transnational corporations. Transnational corporations have worked for the rich. Managers and executives earn first world salaries. They have worked specially for those in the software industry creating a new ‘upper middle class software’ group. But, the fact is that there is a large group outside this "growth" equation. The average worker still does not get more than $400 a year. The globalization rhetoric counts only those who can be measured in a value system within a framework of market place economics. “Development” is always measured in monetary terms and the labor of a particular economic group is ignored and unaccounted for in the calculation of the country's GDP. What of this group that exists outside this market place? With 350 million people living below the poverty line, what does this kind of poverty mean? What does it mean to know that most of the Bhopal gas victims who lived in the vicinity of the Union Carbide plant lived within that poverty line? The slums around the railway stations metropolitan cities have gotten bigger, but it is an easy sight to ignore because we can literally fly past them. What does it mean to understand that our mobility is possible only at the expense of another's immobility? That our choices are almost always at the expense of others?

Today, in this “business” of development, poor women and Dalits specially, have lost out in the game. Looking at labor structures, P.Sainath says, there are 63 million female workers in India. Of these, 45% are agricultural laborers and around 67% of the female agricultural laborers are Dalits. These women are paid only half of what men are paid and with little or no control over resources or land, they have no means to bargain for fair wages. The Dalits are at an even lower pay scale (Visible work, Invisible Women). What does globalization mean for these women and communities? What does opening the market and offering different opportunities mean to poor women who finish all their household chores and go to work for a transnational corporation? That they who have always been viewed as a cheap source of labor, are now toiling not only for the well being of their families or communities but for the growth of a corporation and people in another continent? The cost to these women is really not one of changing occupations but of changing ownerships which ultimately means they are exploited further by more laws, policies, norms and conditions that they again had no say in creating. Many Indians think that a nation's primary responsibility is to become prosperous. It is not that it is an inconsequential thought, but the question is: Prosperous at whose expense?

The Narmada Dam is being built at the cost of the people living in the Valley. Luharia who lives in the Narmada Valley says "it doesn't matter what happens to us because we are Adivasis, we are the expendable group, we are the human cost of development." When the most peaceful democratic struggle of the largest people’s movement in the world – the NBA – failed, it signifies not a failure of the organization but the failure of the majority that did not care, the failure of people who believe that lives of others are expendable for the “greater common good,” the failure of Indians who have yet to respect life, who have yet to understand the right to self-determination, who have yet to know what it means to fight for twenty years of one’s life.

So, Bhopal, I believe is not just a question of corporate responsibility. It’s also a question of social responsibility. When we examine and question why Bhopal really happened, the questions should at this point be directed at ourselves. What in my attitude and behavior created this situation? Because in the final analysis, every corporation is nothing but an amoral transformation of a resource for a market. Our own part in the enabling and creation of these three key words, the transformation, the resource and the market should not go unexamined. Questioning our lives, lifestyles, our decisions and changing our individual contributions is the first act of social change.

Democracy doesn't work without citizen activism and participation, starting at the community. Trickle down politics doesn't work much better than trickle down economics. It's also a fact that civilization happens because we don't leave things to other people. What's right and good doesn't come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it – as if the cause depends on you, because it does. Allow yourself that conceit - to believe that the flame of democracy will never go out as long as there's one candle in your hand.
- Bill Moyers

The end note…

I thank Sanat Mohanty for reading, commenting and taking this conversation online.

http://www.studentsforbhopal.org/ gives details, information and updates about Bhopal.

To understand the Narmada Dam argument, the Friends of River Narmada site http://www.narmada.org/index.html is a good place to start.

In the recent elections (May 2004) in India, the votes that upset governments that had catered only to the upper class, has ironically resulted in Manmohan Singh, the man who introduced neo-liberal policies into the country, becoming the Prime Minister of India. Maybe the past 13 years has given him the time to think about the direction the economic policies have taken the country. Though Singh is still very gung-ho about India being a major market force: "No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come. The emergence of India as a major global economic power happens to be one such idea whose time has come," he promises that now economic reforms will continue with a "human face" – “I will build new opportunities for the poor and downtrodden to participate in the economic process."

A disturbing fact in the election results is that the stock markets crashed because the Left emerged as a strong force. The present Indian government is a coalition government with the Left as an ally. The fear was that neo-liberal policies would face even greater opposition, that “trade” across borders would be affected, and “privatization” would not happen. After taking office, the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, assuaged the fears of the likes of Wall Street and said that he had “no problem in dealing with the communists and had great faith in their inherent patriotism.” The question is: Since when has patriotism come to be defined by the market and political affiliations? We have come to link conservatism and neo-liberal policies with nationalism and every “liberal” and “left inclined” is faced with this question of patriotism. As Sanat Mohanty says, “being political has become defined best as engaging in access to economic resources or policies of modes and production and distribution and the role of an individual is largely tied to activities of production, distribution, services and consumption. One is no longer human; economic reality has reduced us to homo economicus.”

On “privatization” the Prime Minister has said that the new government will pursue a "selective approach" - "Wherever privatization is in the national interest, it will be carried out."

While the focus in this piece is largely on India, the questions do not exclude the rest of the world. Our lives are interdependent. We have interdependent economies, markets and governments, and policy decisions no longer have only a localized effect. I believe it is important to understand how markets and people have come to be defined as poorer or richer than others, if we are to understand how our lives are what they are.

The more we take, the less we become
A fortune of one that means less for some
– Song “World on Fire”

This piece was a talk delivered by the author, Pavithra Narayanan, at the Bhopal Solidarity Meeting on Feb 21st, 2004 at the University of Cincinnati, OH, organized by AID-Cincinnati. She also examines Bhopal within a globalization discourse in her film "India and Free Trade: A Closer Look at Bhopal." Pavithra is an Assistant Professor of English/Film/Women’s Studies and can be reached by e-mail at zen.wat@gmail.com.