Bhopal : A Prayer for Rain

Bhopal : A Prayer for Rain, a film on the Bhopal gas tragedy of 1984, was declared tax-free in Madhya Pradesh by chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. "Such tragedy should never take place in any city of the world and development should never take place at the cost of human being's existence," he said after watching its premiere at Ashima Mall, a local Cineplex on the occasion of 30th anniversary of the world's worst industrial disaster. Chouhan also praised the director and actors of the film for their "heart-rending" performance. However Mr. Babulal Gaur, Home Minister of the state, accompaning the Chief Minister claimed that the film was in favour of Warren Anderson. He said that the film praised Warren Anderson and blamed the local officers of the factory for the mishap. He also said that the film depicts Union Carbide adhering to the local laws in all other countries of operation, which is wrong.

Bhopal The Carbide Timeline

Artist Pete Dunne's Untitled. Dunne was living in a small town less than 100km from Bhopal at the time of the disaster

Tweeter session from 3rd December 2014   tinyurl.com/n8r49dz  

In 1917, a merger of four companies in USA creates the Union Carbide & Carbon Corp., makers of carbon rods for street lights, electrodes for furnaces and Eveready batteries.

1920 Expanding into chemicals, Union Carbide establishes the first commercial ethylene plant.

1947 The company acquires a facility in Institute, West Virginia. The Kanawha River Valley site will be dubbed “Chemical Valley” as chemical companies cluster there.

1960 Production of the trademarked insecticides Sevin (carbaryl) and, later, Temik (aldicarb) commences at the Institute plant. A key intermediate chemical is the highly reactive MIC, or methyl isocyanate.

1969 Union Carbide India Ltd. (UCIL) opens a facility in Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh state, producing insecticides for the agricultural market in India. The formulations are made with imported chemicals.

The Ghosts Of Bhopal - Part Four

Part Four: Mass Tort

John P. Coale, lawyer, behind his desk at his 22nd Street office. Dudley Brooks/The Washington Post via Getty Images

John Coale was in the back of a taxicab, riding down Washington, D.C.’s Massachusetts Avenue. The radio was on, the news announcer relating details of a catastrophic gas leak in India at a facility owned by Union Carbide, total casualties as yet unknown.

Coale didn’t need to know the final number. What was running through his head like an old stock ticker tape was this thought: “That’s a huge American legal case and I want to be a part of it.” This was before Big Tobacco, a colossus of a suit. Coale was a key member of the so-called Castano litigation, a class-action that went after the tobacco companies for fraud, deceit and negligent misrepresentation in not informing smokers of the addictive properties of cigarettes. That action, which Coale would deem “the mother of all lawsuits,” launched a decade after Bhopal.

The Ghosts Of Bhopal - Part Three

Part Three: Post Mortem

Dr. Satpathy ordered that each unclaimed body be photographed and identified by number.

Dec. 3, 1984.

Stones tapping at the window.

What time is it?

Certainly past midnight.

The sound is loud enough and persistent enough to rouse Dr. D.K. Satpathy from his slumbers.

Fie. The man throwing these stones is a known drunkard. This is what the pathologist thinks to himself. The doctor cannot be bothered with such nonsense at this hour.

Dr. Satpathy was certainly not lazy. He would want the world to understand this. Though his workweeks were long, he prided himself on his readiness to conduct a post-mortem at a moment’s notice. Sundays. Holidays. Diwali. Such occasions mean nothing to a true professional. Suppose a mother has lost her son and it is Good Friday. (This is how he would phrase it.) If he were not to conduct a post-mortem in the instant, the body could not then be prepared for burial and the whole day will be a black day for her.

How long does an autopsy take? To incise a Y formation, from the clavicle, coming to a single rill down the torso to the pubis, an examination of viscera. One hour? Two at most. And then, the pathologist may resume his private affairs. His day remains to be enjoyed. (This is also how he would phrase it.)

The Ghosts of Bhopal - Part Two

Part Two: Building a New India

Daulat Singh Rajput, a local farmer

The village square in Dhamarra, 30 kilometres north of Bhopal, is centred by a vibrantly painted Hindu temple (hibiscus pinks and sea blues), a russet-coloured made-in-India Massey Ferguson 1035 DI tractor, and two cows.

In a moment, the tractor will taka-taka-taka out to the fields, the two cows will amble behind and farmer Daulat Singh Rajput will wade into his soybean and chick pea acreage to recount the story of a rural revolution.

The acrid heart of the world’s worst industrial disaster lies within the corrosive skeleton of the Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal.

But in a way, its soul lies here, in rural India.

The Ghosts of Bhopal - Part One

Part One: Wedding Season 

Nadir Khan

The night was black as batwings and the winds were growing colder as Nadir Khan clocked out of his job at the Union Carbide factory, strode past the security guard station, then through the front gate and headed for home.

Sunday, Dec. 2, 1984. The date carried no significance when Khan commenced his shift at 3 p.m. It was a Sunday like any other. Eight hours later, as he returned to his rough shanty in the bustee of Jaiprakash Nagar, there was little to remark upon. Or at least little that was known to Khan.

It was wedding season in Bhopal, the lake city of Madhya Pradesh, the state that lies in the very heart of India. If a bejeweled white stallion had cantered along Berasia Road that December night and disappeared like an apparition into the wind, no one would have batted an eye, least of all Nadir Khan. Baraats, or wedding processions, reach their peak in the winter months and Khan had come to know this as a seasonal commonplace.

To see Khan that night would be to observe a 35-year-old, slight of build, medium height, with a full head of dark hair and a pencil moustache that arced dashingly above his plush upper lip. He walked south on Berasia, then east along what had come to be known as Union Carbide Road. He was not the type to hurry his walk.

Bhopal - Thirty Years Later

Thirty years are enough to heal wounds and rebuild lives. But for the people of Bhopal, their past haunts them and clouds their future. From the photographs of long lost loved ones on their walls, to the constant trips to hospitals, every day comes with a reminder of 3rd December, 1984.

“I lost my son and husband...people continue to die.
 There is poison in our bodies.”
 - Shamshad Begum Survivor and activist

That day, poisonous methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas leaked from the plant of Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) and killed up to 10,000 people. Hundreds of thousands more were left with permanent disabilities. The effects have now trickled down to the second generation.

BusinessLine travelled to Bhopal on the 30th anniversary of the industrial disaster and found a city that was helpless about its past but was clinging on to a slim hope of a better future.

Matchbox Museum Bhopal

Something drew him to the colour, vibrancy and intricate pictorials on small wooden boxes which held safety matches. Lure of a phosphorus burst, smell of sulphur with every strike of a match and a fire was lit, the flame tamed and the box crushed or tossed into the waste bin, but it sparked off a passion in Sunil Bhatt. He picked up the pieces while smoke encircled the doused matchstick. Bhatt turned matchboxes into his museum of fame. He became a phillumenist without being aware of it. Bhopal's first matchbox, the Hamidia brand, vintage World War II matches used by soldiers in trenches, is part of his rare collectibles.

Warren Anderson - The Villain Of Bhopal

WARREN M. ANDERSON, the chairman of the Union Carbide Corporation, has not taken his wife Lillian out to dinner much in the past five months. "I kind of felt that if somebody caught me laughing over in the corner over something," he said, "they might not think it was appropriate." 

Warren M. Anderson (November 29, 1921 – September 29, 2014) Chairman and CEO, Union Carbide Corporation at the time of the Bhopal disaster in 1984

To be sure, since Dec. 3, 1984 when a chemical accident at a Union Carbide plant killed more than 2,000 people and injured thousands more in Bhopal, India, the 63-year-old Mr. Anderson has not felt much like laughing anyway. "It must be like when someone loses a son or a daughter," he said. "You wake up in the morning thinking, can it possibly have occurred? And then you know it has and you know it's something you're going to have to struggle with for a long time." The public ordeal of the Union Carbide Corporation since the Bhopal tragedy has been well-chronicled. The huge chemical concern has seen its stock plummet, its financial health challenged by multibillion-dollar lawsuits and the pace of its strategic acquisitions slow due to problems in raising cash. But obscured amid the corporate concerns has been the personal trauma of the one man who bears ultimate responsibility for his corporation's actions. He would willingly avoid the aftermaths of that reponsibility, but cannot. 

In fact, he offered to resign in return for "a golden handshake" - a lucrative severance package - but was turned down. He recalls one board member saying, "You got us into this, you've got to hang around and get us out." A picture of the toll that the trauma is taking emerged during an unusually candid 6 1/2-hour conversation spread over two days in Mr. Anderson's simply furnished office at Union Carbide's headquarters in Danbury, Conn. And it was reinforced by a two-hour talk with Lillian Anderson, a soft-spoken former schoolteacher who had never been previously interviewed by a reporter, in the living room of their Greenwich, Conn., home, overlooking a small garden of geraniums, azaleas and other flowers that she had planted. The discussions provided a glimpse of how an unprecedented corporate crisis looks from the inside and of how a huge company coped with a disaster in the first days after it hit. They revealed a formerly low-profile chief executive who suddenly must balance the conflicting demands of stockholders, company attorneys, reporters, employees, Congressmen, foreign government officials and other constituencies, all in the glare of the public eye.

Act Four Take One

"Arre Sahu miyan, I was looking for you", startled by the call, Dinesh Sahu looked back to find Azim Bhai waving frantically for him. Catching up Azim narrated the matter "You remember Ezaz, son of Jamila Bia ? He has become arrangement assistant for the film studio, and was asking for a person in early fifties, short with a balding head. I immediately recalled you and suggested your name to him. There is a bit role in the shooting going on at old jail, and they will pay you for it". 

Now this was god sent for Dinesh Sahu. God knows, he was in desperate need for money. Once a prosporous video shop owner, his fortunes had dwindled with the lost business of videos. He tried to revive his fortunes by shifting into CDs but the advancement of Internet killed even that market. Since the last five years he spent much more than he brought home, merely to exist. 

Shakeela Bano Bhopali

“Duniya ko laat maro… (to hell with the world),” sang nine-year-old Shakeela Bano Bhopali at the last Nawab of Bhopal’s palace innocently kicking in the Nawab’s direction, with her father nervously gesturing her to stop. But Shakeela continued to sing, never sparing the high or the mighty. 

Shakeela was a rage in Bhopal from very young age. Her mother Jameela Bano was opposed to the idea and, according to Shakeela’s younger brother Anees, tied her hands and feet to scare her. But Shakeela did not relent. She joined the Variety Theatre and played lead roles. Later, when she became a big name in Bhopal, her mother learnt to play the harmonium for her.

Her entry to the world of professional singing was accidental. One night, while B R Chopra was filming NAYA DAUR near Bhopal with Dilip Kumar, Vyjayanti Mala and Johny Walker, the shoot had to be cancelled due to rains. Someone suggested Bhopali's name to Chopra who invited her to perform a qawwali mehfil. Bhopali, then barely in her teens, mesmerized the audience, and the event that was supposed to be of an hour lasted whole night. Dilip Kumar said to her:"Aap Bhopal ki cheez nahin hain. Bombay aa jaaiye (You are not Bhopal material. Come to Bombay." 

Intermarriage is not Jihad, It is India

I am the son of a sportsman, I grew up in England, Bhopal, Pataudi, Delhi and Mumbai, and I am more Indian than any Hindu or Muslim I know because I am both. I wrote this piece not to comment on the masses or the problems of communalism in India and its villages, but because this is an issue that concerns my friends and their families.

It wasn’t peacefully accepted by anyone, initially, when my parents wanted to marry. The royals had their issues; the Brahmins theirs. And, of course, extremists on both religious sides issued death threats. But the marriage still happened — the fact that my grandmother also had to fight to marry the not-as-wealthy and therefore not-so-suitable nawab of Pataudi might have helped things along. We grew up on real-life romantic stories about our elders marrying for love and not worrying too much about tradition. And we were brought up to believe that god is one, with many names.

When Kareena and I married, there were similar death threats, with people on the Net saying ridiculous things about “love jihad”. We follow whatever religion or spiritual practice we believe in. We talk about them and respect each other’s views. I hope our children will do the same.

Blood in Koh-E-Fiza Bhopal

Shehla Masood, an upwardly mobile educated Muslim girl from Bhopal who graduated from an event manager to a RTI activist/animal rights activist/anti corruption crusader, was gunned down outside her house in the Kohefiza area of Bhopal on August 16, 2011 seconds after she boarded her car to leave for Anna Hazare's India Against Corruption campaign. What seemed like a politically motivated killing of an RTI activist, was referred to the CBI by Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan on the third day of murder.

It took a little more than six months for the CBI to finally crack the case. Joint Director Mr Keshav Kumar and Deputy Inspector General of police Mr Arun Bothra preferred doing most of the legwork themselves. No angle was left un-probed and finally it so turned out that Zahida Parvez, an interior designer, with assistance from her employee and friend Saba Farooque plotted to kill Shehla Masood. Shakib Danger, a ladies tailor who had more than one dozen serious cases pending against him, got the killers from Kanpur for Rs 3 lakhs.

Ama Khan Bhopali - The Orkut Group

Once upon a time, in the era of pre high speed internet, their used to be a phonomena called Yahoo Chat. Yahoo! Chat was not just about making connections. It actually fueled the economy, by building the cybercafe business in India. College and school kids would come to cybercafes, in groups, and huddle over one Pentium machine, giggling and nudging each other. 

Soon Yahoo!, the company itself began to die under the onslaught of Google. By then however, another heavy weight of social networking was rising. Orkut. With its profile pictures and real names, considered more trustworthy than Yahoo!, flourished during this time. Orkut brought a whole set of new vocabulary like Friending, Unfriending, Blocking, Scrapping, Testimonials.

Sharadiya Bhopal 2014

It is Navratri time in Bhopal. Time for Dandias, time for Mata rani, time for devotion and fasting. The hidden motifs of that promotion, that land deal or business deal, that college admission or campus placement - everything can wait, let us get down to devotion of ten days first. Surely "Mata rani" will take note, she knows all desires of every heart, right ?

For the Bengali community of the city though, it’s "that" time of the year - Durga Pujo.

So what is different, apart from the spelling ? The Bengali community, most of whom are second generation Bengali whose father had migrated into the city of Bhopal, try to follow the traditions of Bengal as closely as possible.To start with, the Pujo starts from the sixth day - the Shashthi. The preparations for the Puja are made complete on this day. Preparations on Sasthi consists of three aspects Kalparambha, Bodhan, Adhivas and Amantran.

Ghantiwale baba

So, you wan't a story ?

Okay, so one and only one you will get. Then you go to sleep. Fine ?

In olden days,when the djinns and darvishes roamed freely in the world, there lived a farmer named Salim. Salim was a hard working man, who used to toil on his fields, did not gamble, did not even go to the village tari shop, saving all his money to bring true his only passion. He wanted his son - Ibrahim - to get employed with the Nawabs.

Ibrahim, the preteen handsome son of Salim, knew of this over whelming dream of his Abbujaan and prepared well to fulfill his dream.

           Looking at the growing young boy, Salim fondly recollected the times, when as a restless toddler, Ibrahim would run out of the house so often that Salim had to tie a cow bell on his torso. Ibrahim used to be traced by the sound of this bell, earning him the title "Ghantiwale baba". 

AIIMS BHOPAL

As per the official website

"AIIMS Bhopal is one of the SIX AIIMS like apex healthcare institutes being established by the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India under the Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojna(PMSSY). With the aim of correcting regional imbalances in quality tertiary level healthcare in the country, and attaining self sufficiency in graduate and postgraduate medical education and training the PMSSY planned to set up 6 new AIIMS like institutions in under served areas of the country.

These institutions are being established by an Act of Parliament on the lines of the original All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi which imparts both undergraduate and postgraduate medical education in all its branches and related fields, along with nursing and paramedical training. to bring together in one place educational facilities of the highest order for the training of personnel in all branches of health care activity."

Bringing true the worst fears of the above "sarkari" declaration, AIIMS Bhopal is the proverbial government "work in progress" since Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government announced on 15th August 2003 establishment of new hospitals on the lines of New Delhi's AIIMS. The foundation stone was laid on 20th January 2004. Soon after UPA-I government was formed, which luckily decided to go ahead with these institutes.

Dr Harshvardan - the Central Health Minister - visited AIIMS Bhopal on 16th June 2014. The work seems to have picked up after this visit.

AAP ka Bhopal

After taking the National capital by storm, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is all set to contest the Lok Sabha 2014 across India. The way Arvind Kejriwal - head of AAP and  Chief Minister of Delhi - has gone about his politics has fired the imagination of people. Luminaries like Mr. Chetan Bhagat and Mr. Digvijay Singh has started acknowledging this new phenomenon in Indian politics. In arun up to Lok Sabh aelection 2014, hunt for worthy candidates to contest on AAP tickets for Lok Sabha 2014 has started in Madhya Pradesh too.

Madhya Pradesh State Secretary of Aam Aadmi Party Mr. Akshay Hunka joined Bhopale for a informal chat on Bhopal ka Patiya

Assembly Elections 2013

The voters of Madhya Pradesh are being given a stark choice: pick between a caring Mama (maternal uncle) and a man whom the masses address as Maharaj (king) because of his royal roots. BJP chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, 54, is projecting himself as a “farmer’s son” who will “serve” and not “rule”. He is seeking a third term saying kings in their palaces know or care little about the people. Jyotiraditya Scindia, 42, a royal scion educated at Harvard and Stanford, is silently countering the charge by cultivating the image of a mass leader. The Congress chief campaigner moves around in an open jeep, leaning across and stretching his arms out to shake hands with people in the streets. His plea: throw out the corrupt Shivraj government. Each has distinct advantages and weaknesses. The “tried and tested” Shivraj acquired the “Mama” tag after the success of his Ladli Laxmi Yojna, under which the state gives a girl child over Rs 1 lakh in instalments till she turns 21. His problem is that most of his colleagues are seen as corrupt. “Shivraj is in our hearts but his ministers and MLAs are thieves,” said Banwarilal Shak in Gwalior city.
Jyotiraditya’s problem is that a faction-ridden Congress, despite putting up a united face in recent months, has balked at declaring him its candidate for chief minister.

“As chief minister, he will certainly do well, but will the Congress make him the chief minister? It has too many kings in its ranks,” said a doubtful Suraj Singh, sarpanch of Baretha gram panchayat in Gwalior. His allusion was to the known differences between Jyotiraditya and fellow Congress royal Digvijaya Singh. Shivraj knows his ministers are pulling him down; so he is trying to blur his team out of the picture. “If you don’t elect the MLAs, how will I become chief minister?” he pleads with folded hands. But while some of his government’s schemes have been popular, the failure of many others has earned Shivraj the nickname of “Sapno ka saudagar” (seller of dreams). So, Shivraj has been left playing the Mama vs Maharaj card. “All the kings have joined hands (in the Congress). But they live in forts while I am your servant and live among you,” he says.

The Man Who Would Be King

Background recommended reading: French Connection and Bourbons Of Bhopal

Anon—so beginneth the tale of Balthazar Napoleon de Bourbon, with an angel swooping o’er the earth. The angel flew over the green pastures and sunflower fields that were Europe, above the burnt highland that is Asia Minor, and then out across an emerald ocean, the Indian, to the lush shores of its namesake. The angel’s silver wings were those of a jetliner, and he sat inside the machine of his being, reclining in splendor, perchance sipping some fine wine. In the course of flight, the angel’s shadow fell over spired castles and well-appointed châteaus, exquisite alcazars and fortresses made of red clay. In the interior of India, he passed over a resplendent marble mausoleum engraved in jasper known as the Taj Mahal, built during a seventeen-year span by a king named Shah Jahan as a tribute to his third wife, who died in childbirth. (For his troubles, he was dethroned and imprisoned by his son and left in a cell to die, though one that permitted a view of his glorious creation.)

The angel’s destination was a city on the Malwa Plateau called Bhopal. 

Bhopal—built atop volcanic rock, its own ancient palace crumbling upon itself, streets clogged with cows and goats and sari-clouds of color, birds circling at dusk in the pinkish-orange gloaming like the slow movement of a dark scythe. Looming over the lower city was a giant mosque, Taj-ul-Masajid, its pale white domes hovering in the shimmery heat like an extraterrestrial incursion, its minarets reaching to heaven, its tiny rooms full of boys memorizing the Koran, their voices murmuring across the hot stones of the vast inner courtyard. And there was one other notable landmark, a death memorial really, the abandoned chemical plant—that of Union Carbide—on the north edge of town that on a particular December day twenty-two years earlier oozed methyl isocyanate, a toxic plague that ultimately caused 22,000 deaths.