Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Should India learn a lesson from the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill ??

Not undermining the terrible tragedy of the oil leak in the gulf, this is some ways a more environmental disaster than humanitarian.

If you stop for a moment and give a thought to the Bhopal Gas Tragedy of 80's (at a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, read more here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster), that tragedy had taken lives of more than 3000 people, in addition to contaminating air and water around the place. The genetic effects of that appear to date. And I am not even counting the wounded/disabled due to that accident.

What happened there, from the point of view of compensation to the affected ? Well, nothing is my feeling, but if you count what was paid to the people, I wont be able to say more than, "peanuts", which is nothing anyway.

Here, you see, in the current context of the oil leak (where only 10-20 people have passed away, but lots more have lost jobs), the US govt is handling BP as if it has committed a genocide.

Well, I am sure the Indian govt and legal system can take a cue from this and start holding the business corporation behind Bhopal tragedy responsible for that too. In case of Bhopal, nobody was held accountable, and the CEO of that company was allowed to leave country hours after he was "formally" arrested. I wonder if bribery of govt officials and/or politicians was playing any role there ??

Seriosly, anybody at Indian govt offices listening ??

in reference to: BBC News - US Congress set to grill BP chief Tony Hayward (view on Google Sidewiki)