Union Carbide Case Bhopal India Ahmed Saud Q1.

What does this tell you about the sense of social responsibility by UCIL? The Union Carbide disaster and the implementation of control systems as well as protection against disaster was very poor causing ultimately the disaster in the history of industry. The case communicates the massive double standards, self interest and the greed of the corporate sector ignoring the poor workers as well as the local population for greater profits. The sense of social responsibility was lacking that caused the community to suffer huge costs in terms of human lives and suffering. Q2. Was the government of India justified in letting UCIL off so easily only to discourage foreign investment? Why? No! The government of India is clearly not justified because most of the countries in the third worlds allow foreign investment but not at the cost of immense losses to the local populations. The Indian government should have allowed foreign investment while protecting the lives and basic rights of the local population where business is based. The laws should have been tight in terms of processing and all the industrial standards must have been followed to avoid the incident. Q3. Where do you place the blame for: a) The accident and b) What happened after the accident? Why? The blame goes directly to the government of India for the accident as well as the carelessness on the discretion of the company and lack of responsibility to the place and people where the operations of the organization take place. The blame could be placed on the government because it did allow the establishment of the factory but does not implement the rules that would have constrained the company for the establishment of standard procedures for the operations of such a company. The company is blamed for what it should have implemented without the local laws and the standards of protections against such leakages would have been borrowed from their parent plant at the institute.

What happened after the accident is also blamed on two actors. The government because it did not disburse the money allocated for the affectees and also did not adjust the future sums for the interest earned by their money at the Reserve Bank. The company could have done better for the site, affected people as well as the second generation affectees born with birth problems. Q4. Do you agree with the views expressed by Shamsahd Bokhari and to what extent? Yes, because the failures mentioned by Bokhari are accurate and the company should have expressed a sense of social responsibility, ethics as well as responsibility to the shareholders of the company. But the lack could be attributed to negligence and other factors that have contributed to the disaster. The three key areas identified by Bokhari are extremely relevant but there are other factors which should be taken into account including the negligence on the part of Indian industrial standards for factories, local company laws, and carelessness of the management and others which can potentially have a role in creating the problem. Q5. Do you think if a similar incident had occurred in an Indian owned company, the stance taken by the Indian government and Judiciary would have been different? If so, how, and to what extent? As far as the government is concerned it was forced to take action from other pro-human rights actors and judiciary is supposed to provide justice which did not happen in the current case. But if a similar incident would have occurred with an Indian-owned company the stance would have been similar. But the people could have been provided justice and not left for the suffering. The justice would have been provided by taking into account the damages to the site, wildlife and other property and plants. The most important aspect of the case is the human damage and the compensation to the survivors which would have been better because the government is forced to take care of their own people. In UCIL case the company was foreign which was made liable for a fraction of the damages cause by the gas leak.