Bhopal Disaster Civil Action and the Right to Know Doctrine Book Review

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Review of The Bhopal Tragedy: What Really Happened and What It Means for American Workers and Communities at Risk by M. Arun SubramaniamFormMorehouse, W., & Subramaniam, M. A. (1986). The Bhopal tragedy: What reallyhappened and what it means for American workers and communities at risk. Council on International and Public Affairs. 208 pp.IntroductionThe Bhopal Tragedy was one of the worst industrial disasters in the world. It killed an estimated 5000 to 30000 people and poisoned more than half a million. Had the disaster occurred anywhere but in the developing world, it likely would have been a much bigger scandal; however, because it happened in India and US courts refused to hear cases brought against Union Carbide it remained an Indian affair. The relevance of the book is this: it takes what was an “Indian affair” and conveys it as a much larger tragedy that could have and should have been prevented but was not because of negligence. It points a finger at the guilty who have gone unpunished because of they operate behind a wall of corporate power.The book was written in 1986, two years after the disaster occurred, just as the first cases began to circulate the courts in the US but before they would be redirected to Indian courts. It is a book largely written in the cautionary tale genre, doubling as a work of journalism. The book is intended not just for American audiences but for all audiences around the world, because in a global society, all are stakeholders in the tragedy. The school represented by the author is that of the school of journalistic critique. The purpose of the book is to persuade the reader a tragic injustice was done to the people at Bhopal and that a similar injustice could be done to the reader in his own community if the world should permit the perpetrators to go unpunished. Unpunished, they will be sure to do it again. The book begins first by describing what happened at Bhopal in 1984, then moves on to discussing the impact of the disaster. It shifts to a demand for justice for the Bhopal victims and then describes the complex litigation ongoing. Another shift brings the topic home when the author asks whether a similar tragedy could occur in the US. The topic of prevention is then discussed and a call for citizen action is given.OverviewThe author approaches the subject of the tragedy with a certain amount of righteous indignation. The facts of the case are given, blame is placed, and justice is demanded. It is a work of activist literature as much as it is a work of journalism. It makes a call for social justice and warns one and all that what happened in Bhopal could easily happen in their own communities if the Big Industrialists are not held accountable for their actions. The author’s method is thus one of identifying the facts of the case and then using the lens of social justice to judge the guilty parties and advocate for change.

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There are no assumptions baked into the piece, but there is the sense of righteous anger that can seem like presumption to others. The main thesis of the work is that the Bhopal disaster could have been prevented but that through arrogance, neglect and detachment, Union Carbide failed to implement safeguards and conduct proper maintenance, which virtually guaranteed a disaster.The book is structured into 9 parts including 7 chapters, a preface and an epilogue. A forward introduces the book and describes the Bhopal tragedy as the “Hiroshima of the chemical industry,” which is a reference…

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…judging from reviews of Amazon, and it should be regarded as a classic of corporate negligence.SummaryWhat the book does well is to lay out the subject by first framing it in terms of colonialism, with the history of Union Carbide described in the opening. The company is depicted as coming to India in 1905 and making a name for itself with its line of Eveready batteries. It began manufacturing pesticides and other chemicals over the decades and expanded its manufacturing in the years leading up to the disaster. The author essentially pulls the curtain back on what happened and shows the reader the real-life behind-the-scenes situation, describing a village gassed, thousands dead, all because one company failed to handle with care and precaution its plant. Even the aftermath, in which there was no care to handle evidence or to protect information showed a conspiracy of sorts to keep the truth from ever coming to light. More to the point, the author shows that communities have a right to know what dangerous chemicals are being used in nearby manufacturing plants. The book does all of this excellently well and does not have any weaknesses.The overall significance of the book is that it is like David taking on Goliath—Union Carbide—and calling it out as well as the justice system for dragging its feet on the matter and seeming to back the corporation over the people harmed by the corporation. This was no brave attempt gone wrong but rather a single stone hurled powerfully towards its opponent. Union Carbide would indeed drop—if not from this one single stone of a book then from repeated call-outs from other authors and activists, and the company would be taken over and picked apart by other corporations, as it goes when the wolves come out to eat their….....

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