Working Class Problems & Agitations :
Bhopal Gas Disaster – Exposed the Sovereignty of our Country INDIA
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The industrial disaster occurred in the premises of the Union Carbide Factory of Bhopal is a manmade disaster , symbolising the eternal culpability of despicable capitalist system and its inhuman and callous methods of capitalist production , exclusively to gain super-profits at the cost of humanity and precarious environment through ruthless exploitation .
This Bhopal gas disaster is the worst industrial disaster ever occurred in the history of the world . Neither the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 nor the nuclear accident at Fukushima in 2011 were so intense , ferocious and devastating in comparison with the Bhopal gas disaster .
On the intervening night of 2-3 December , 1984 , forty metric tons of Methyl Isocyanate ( MIC ) a lethal chemical was released in to the atmosphere , that devastated Bhopal and surrounding areas , instantly killing more than 3,000 people and more than 20,000 people in the subsequent time . More than half a million survivors impaired with breathing difficulties , vision problems , spell of unconsciousness and psychological disorders . Women suffer a high rate of miscarriages and children are prone to birth defects . The environment in and around Bhopal is polluted and contaminated dangerously , endangering the lives of all living organisms .
Even after 40 yrs of this worst Bhopal industrial disaster , even today , in the cheap housing colony in the old city of Bhopal , we can see women with the twisted limbs , the men who lost their families , children turned schizophrenic and unusually with large head . Even after 40 years , the premises of the Bhopal factory of the Union Carbide India December-2024
Ltd , the toxic and lethal waste including the poisonous gas stored underground is not removed and the premises in not remediated . Even now the toxic substances are seeping into the earth and water polluting the environment in Bhopal and surrounding ares , further continuing the menace unrestricted and arrested .
This Bhopal industrial disaster is not the last ever that occurred in our country . Now the menace of such possible hundred more Bhopals are lurking in the form of secrecy – shrouded nuclear plants and river damaging projects , of pharanoic , ozymandian monuments rising from the valleys and the mountains .
This is not a mere occasion of simple commemoration of the 41 st anniversary of the Bhopal industrial disaster and its victims . But this is also an occasion for finding out and reckoning how this could happen and the class-nature of the political , economic and social ruling system , ruling-classes and the rulers - the representatives of ruling classes - but not of the people . The people of our recent generations and the educated should particularly understand about our system by studying and examining the Bhopal industrial disaster - a classic example . They must know about the nature of Indian state .
The Union Carbide Corporation founded in 1917 in America had its presence from the colonial rule of the British in India . Like Nestle and Unilever the other giant multinational corporations , even after 1947 transfer of power , it concentrated on all kinds of things needed in India . Union Carbide Corporation of America , established its Indian subsidiary Union Carbide India Limited with 50.9 percent stock
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a controlling stake and the senior positions at UCIL were filled on the instructions of New York , the head quarters of Union Carbide Corporation . It emphasized its spurious Indianness by packing the board of directors and senior management with Indian industrialists and relatives of Indian politicians belonging to ruling parties .
UCIL ’ s most profitable group was the battery divisions - ‘ Eveready ’ batteries , with a virtual monopoly in India .
But with the beginning of PL-480 funds used for successful establishment of American industries in India , and the American aid to India ’ s efforts to increase food production and India adopting the so-called green revolution , in 1969 the Bhopal factory was set up to manufacture pesticide carbonyl under the brand name of SEVIN and also TEMIK in small quantities . SEVIN was sold as a white power in paper bags of twenty five kilos each .
Though the technology ( use of chemical fertilizer and pesticides ) adopted in the green revolution technology has been called in to question as unsafe and unsustainable for both land and people who farm it , the Indian government had treated technology represented by SEVIN as advanced western science and permitted its production by UCIL . The UCIL was also fed with naphtha by the two foreign subsidiaries in arraigning ESSO and Burma shell . UCIL was one of the 33 companies that drew financial assistance from financial institutions like IDBI and others .
The Union Carbide Corporation , which has been exporting SEVIN to
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