Bhopal gets promised a long awaited Rsl,503 crore For some, the figure of Rsl,503 crore may appear a bounty. But lakhs of people in Bhopal have been waiting anxiously for several years to get this money, and it's rightfully theirs for the taking. A Supreme Court diktat that would enable them to get the money had been eluding them. On 18 July, however, the Supreme Court directed that this sum should be distributed among the 570,000 injured and the next of kin of the 15,000 dead, in what was the world's worst industrial disaster. The disaster occurred in the pesticide formulation plant of Union Carbide on the outskirts of Bhopal, when the deadly methylisocyanate gas leaked on 23 December 1984, a cold wintry night. Thousands were killed immediately in their sleep. The Supreme Court directed that the money should be paid on a pro-rata basis, as per the compensation paid to the same persons earlier. It did not set out any scheme for this purpose, but directed the welfare commissioner to submit a report within three months. The old cliche justice delayed is justice denied has some virtue as well. When Union Carbide settled the claims of the victims of this disaster with a payment of $470 million in 1989, there was a universal feeling that the victims were cheated. But then the delay has ensured that this money has grown in size through the enhancement of the dollar/rupee exchange value and the interest that has been accumulated due to the non-payment of the claims. The dual impact of the exchange rate and interest has been so much that even after the compensation was paid to 570,000 persons for injuries and the kin of 15,000 dead victims, the welfare commissioner was left with a sum of Rsl,503 crore. "This obviously underscores the point that the compensation of Rs25,000 for the injured and Rsl lakh for the kin of the dead as per the initial scheme of settlement of claims was too meagre. Now that balance payment would be once again too little for the survivors and is clearly of no use to the people who died within years of the disaster," says Abdul Jab-bar Khan, convenor of the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Udyog Sanghatan, an organisation that has been fighting for the cause of the victims. Collectively, this amount of Rsl,503 crore is seen as a big bounty. The trading community hopes to profit from this huge influx of cash into the hands of people who have a lot of unfulfilled desires as consumers. It is expected that once the cash starts reaching into the bank accounts of these 570,000 people, there will be a flood of schemes to entice buyers. But this is not the end of the story. Even 20 years after the disaster, the criminal proceedings in the case continue, and these are still clogged at the stage of recording the evidence. The hopes of getting Warren Anderson, the then chairman of Union Carbide Corporation extradited to face the criminal charges were never bright, and these suffered another big blow when the US government turned down this demand, days after the Supreme Court ordered the release of the pending amount. The tragedy of not being able to see the guilty punished is compounded by the problems caused by the presence of the toxic residue around the plant site, and the resultant contamination of water. The Supreme Court has also directed the authorities to ensure that clean water is made available to the citizens in the affected areas. It is also likely that the cleanup of the site would also be undertaken soon, but there are still unresolved issues. The first one relates to the cost of the cleanup and the second centres around the responsibility for this job. Victims organisations, including Greenpeace, the international watchdog organisation for ecological issues, have been demanding that Dow Chemicals, the successor company to Union Carbide Corporation should pick-up the tab for this clean-up. But Dow maintains that it has nothing to do with Bhopal. Meanwhile, Jabbar has added another twist to the tale. "When the Supreme Court justified the $470 million compensation, it had taken a figure of 105,000 injured and 3,000 dead as the basis for computing the damage. Now, by its own admission, the number of injured is 570,000 and the deaths are 15,000. So the final compensation amount should actually go up by nearly five," he says. Sound logic, but hardly anyone would listen.