Bhopal has returned from the dead

The Union Government is set to buy silence through fresh payouts to keep the Congress’s guilty secrets under wraps


Unusually for an event that happened more than 25 years ago, the Bhopal gas tragedy has dominated mindspace for two full weeks since the trial court pronounced its verdict on the guilty men on Monday, June 7. Once the judgement came, skeletons began to tumble out of a range of cupboards, causing acute embarrassment to the Government in Delhi as well as the Congress. The Prime Minister acted with uncharacteristic political acumen by quickly constituting a Group of Ministers (GoM) under workaholic Home Minister P Chidambaram and it seems its report will indeed be submitted within the stipulated 10-day deadline.

The likely contents of the GoM report are not difficult to anticipate. In fact, the most important part has already emerged with the suggestion that the Planning Commission will release Rs 984 crore as grant for rehabilitation, compensation, cleaning up and other leftover jobs of the humungous tragedy. Two rounds of compensation have already been distributed to the victims, ranging between Rs 10 lakh for the families of the deceased to Rs 50,000 for those marginally affected.

The gas leak devastated some of the poorest parts of the city, inhabited largely by Muslims. It is a measure of their resilience, ironically moulded by fatalism that enabled them to revert to their homes and jobs as they tired of waiting for official largesse to come their way. Another dose of compensation will obviously be welcome but nearly 26 years after the event the money can hardly be expected to reach those who most needed it in the tragedy’s aftermath. In fact, over 3,000 listed victims are yet to collect their dues because they have left what they believed was an accursed city and migrated elsewhere.

Therefore, additional compensation is not the core issue as we revisit Bhopal 1984. Arguably, there are ongoing concerns over rehabilitation, reclamation of the devastated localities, relocation of toxic waste, and regeneration of groundwater contaminated by the seepage of chemicals. It is unbelievable that after more than two decades even the waste has not been shifted out of Bhopal because authorities continue to quibble over who should pay for it and where it should be dumped. While the Government contends that Union Carbide (now owned by Dow Chemicals) must bear the costs, the company cites various judgements to say that its responsibility is over. The Madhya Pradesh Government has started to remove the waste but the chosen location, on the outskirts of the industrial town of Pithampura, is being resisted.

NGOs continue to cry hoarse over groundwater contamination around the UCC plant, but the State Government says it spent Rs 14 crore laying pipelines to provide clean water to these colonies so that they don’t have to tap groundwater. Interestingly, property developers seem to have decided that the vicinity of the erstwhile factory is a perfect spot to construct high-rise apartment blocks. Accordingly land prices there have gone up significantly.

To my mind, these are nuts-and-bolts issues that should have been resolved long ago but weren’t thanks to proverbial bureaucratic sloth. Hopefully, the new package will pave the way for these matters to be sorted out without further delay. Basically, there are two facets to the reopening of the Bhopal case — administrative and political. While the administrative lapses have no doubt been Himalayan, we are probably heading towards closure on these issues. But the political aspect has got revived in a big way and till convincing answers are given to the queries raised in the last fortnight, the ghosts of Bhopal will not be excised.

Three things are clear. First, Warren Anderson came to India by arrangement with the Government, having been assured “safe passage” by the Ministry of External Affairs in consultation with the political leadership. Second, the Central Government ordered the State Government to give instant bail to Anderson when he was put under house arrest in Bhopal, and flew him back to Delhi by official aircraft where and he interacted with senior officials during the brief sojourn. Third, despite the specious arguments advanced by the ruling party, Anderson could not have flown in and out of India without the knowledge and consent of the highest political authority, namely, then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

It is apparent that the Government went out of its way to appease Union Carbide and its then chairman in the purported belief that bending backwards would open the flow of US investments to India. This assessment belied the sycophantic mindset of India’s foreign policy establishment as well as political leadership. The fear of annoying Uncle Sam was so all pervasive that the Congress threw caution to the winds and treated Anderson as if he were a visiting Head of State! In that sense, the Indian Establishment equated one US-based multinational company with the US Administration. Is it surprising that stories are being carefully planted about then President Ronald Reagan having a telephonic chat with Rajiv Gandhi, presumably to direct the Prime Minister to fall in line? Incidentally, this was first hinted at by Congress general-secretary Digvijay Singh who has since been asked to shut up.

On the backfoot, the Congress has tied itself up in knots. Mr Pranab Mukherjee’s semi-credible claim that Anderson had to be “rescued” from Bhopal because of a law and order threat has now been completely contradicted by the interview to CNN-IBN by Mr MK Rasgotra, former Foreign Secretary. Initially, the effort was to put the blame on then Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Arjun Singh so that Rajiv Gandhi could be portrayed as a babe in the woods who knew nothing of the shenanigans of his partymen. This incredible line of defence fell apart almost instantly and now Mr Arjun Singh is threatening to bare all! PV Narasimha Rao was dragged into the picture as the next fall guy but a robust riposte from his son seems to have smothered that diversionary tactic.

The fact is that the Congress cannot run away from the guilt of Bhopal. It seriously underestimated the extent of the tragedy and was happy when former Chief Justice AM Ahmadi converted the case into one caused by negligence, that is, an accident. It was the agreement, which the Union of India initialled in 1989 with Union Carbide that quashed all claims of justice for the victims of Bhopal. The Government is now trying to apply a soothing balm by doling out taxpayers’ money. But the guilty men sitting in America have been allowed to get away through what amounts to a conspiracy against the people of Bhopal. India did not cause the gas leak; those who did have got away paying a mere $ 478 million. And we are left to pick up the bill for the devastation only because the Government must keep the Congress’s guilty secrets under wraps.

Manoosiyat of dirty politics

Double standards in politics are rising as vertically as the priceline and there seems to be no dearth of political leaders who are out to have fun at the expense of their respective voter manoos.

Look at Shiv Sena. The bhaiyyas have been in Mumbai for ages. So have Shiv Sena and Bal Thackeray. And the ’twain have co-existed peacefully, even when the non-manoos did not know Marathi. So why is the manoos vs non-manoos campaign so young? Because it is nothing but turf war within Sena, not so much over manoos and non-manoos as between Raj Thackeray and the Uddhav-Bal combine. Can someone tell us if the Sena has a quota for Marathis manoos in its party recruitment drive? Like, only 10 per cent non-Marathis allowed?

To add appeal to their outrageous campaign, (why does the Government always allow it to snowball), the Sena chooses its targets carefully. This time it is superstar Shah Rukh Khan.

Now, there are a hundred more serious issues the Sena could have raised rather than go after a frivolous opinion expressed by a personality who has no impact whatsoever on policy.

So what if SRK feels Pakistanis should have been in the IPL? Does it matter if Afridi is missing or present? What matters, and what the Sena should be after, is the complacence of Pakistan on 26/11. With such an organised force, the Sena could go all out to pressure the Centre into taking some action against Pakistan and the perpetrators of 26/11 blasts; how come the Sainiks are yet to go after Kasab? Why have they not gone on a rampage demanding his immediate hanging from the Taj Mahal Palace? After all, they are hardly known to respect law or the judicial system. Why just centre around banning My Name Is Khan? Will that serve any purpose for the nation and its manoos, even its Marathi manoos? All it will do is give free publicity to the film.

Let’s come to SRK himself. Much as you love him he, too, has become an epitome of double standards. First he ignores the entire Pak line-up in bidding for his team KKR at the recent IPL auction. Some days later, he issues a statement saying Pak players should have been picked up! He then refuses to apologise and says it is his private opinion. It is another matter altogether that as the controversy unfolds with the Sena turning ballistic, King Khan gets inordinate publicity for his film My Name is Khan.

Thanks to the Sena and SRK’s obvious courting of the Muslim segment, the opening buzz will take care of MNIK’s returns — on both sides of the border.

Simply put, Sena gains terrain and SRK eyeballs for his film in a win-win controversy. The aam manoos, meanwhile, keeps footing the bill.

As the controversy threatens to die down, in jumps Rahul Gandhi with his ‘I-have-to-become-an-icon’ campaign. He gets all the brownies to say simply and convincingly that Mumbai belongs to all Indians. He then takes a quick ride through the megapolis, including a hop into the local train, as the Sena looks the other way. Was it that the Sainiks were on tea-break or, did the cops finally showed us how they can manage to quell any movement if they really, really want to?

Let’s end with the biggest double-standards votary of them all — the Union Government. Our PM, the economic reform king of yore, has just announced that the food crisis is here to stay. Of course, he does not say if his Government will tackle it but he is, nevertheless outraged that chini, daal and sabzi are selling like gold dust. Perhaps, it’s here that he could put the delectable “zero tolerance” phrase to best use – and if the Centre is not doing so on its own, can the Shiv Sena please launch a campaign against it on the following issues — zero tolerance to price rise, zero tolerance to corruption and zero tolerance to terror. It’s sounds much more appealing and reasonable than its current zero tolerance to non-Marathi manoos!

Our Courts are chocked!!

The Union Law Minister has recently announced that the number of undertrial prisoners languishing in various jails across the country will be reduced by two-thirds within six months. Under the law, the Government has powers to release convicted prisoners after certain years of imprisonment. However, it has no such powers when the matter involves an accused undertrial. Of course, the Government can at any time withdraw any case pending in a court of law as well as deny sanction to prosecute any accused in cases where sanction is required. But convicting or freeing those under trial falls within the ambit of the judiciary.

The Government’s stated reason for freeing a large number of them is that many of those who are under trial and languishing in our prisons are in such a position because they could not get adequate legal aid. In some cases, prisoners have been behind bars for more than the maximum term of imprisonment for offences they had been charged with.

According to the Law Minister, the Chief Justices of High Courts would appoint a task force to monitor the plan. The task force, under the chairmanship of the state legal service authority or a senior judge, would depute teams to visit jails and identify prisoners who deserve to be freed. The teams would look into individual cases to identify those who were entitled to be released. The Law Minister has said, “Of the undertrials, roughly around two lakh have been in jail for several years essentially because of delays in the justice delivery system.” It appears that the Union Cabinet has approved the plan.

On the face of it, the plan seems excellent and a small step towards decongesting our prisons. According to a survey conducted and released in November, last year by the International Centre for Prison Studies, Kings College, London, in 218 countries and territories, a total of 3.73 lakh prisoners are lodged in nearly 1,336 prisons in India. As per the study, more than 9.8 million people are held in different prisons throughout the world. The study stated that the maximum number of prisoners across the globe is in the prisons of the US, which host 2.31 million prisoners. The US is followed by China (1.57 million), Russia (0.89 million) and Brazil (0.47 million).

The real problem does not lie with the courts but with the Government that knows what needs to be done to solve the problem of delay in our courts. Yet it chooses to skirt the issue.

As per the information furnished by the Law Minister to Parliament in December, 2009, a total of 3,11,39,022 cases were pending in courts across the country. The detailed break up is as follows:

# Supreme Court: 52,592 pending cases

# High Courts: 38,74,090 pending cases

# Maximum pending cases: Allahabad High Court — 9,11,858

# Pending cases in Uttar Pradeshs district and subordinate courts: 51,60,174

# n Total pending cases in subordinate courts: 2,64,09,163


Strength of judiciary:

# High Courts — Sanctioned: 886, Actual in position: 606

# Subordinate courts — Sanctioned: 16, 685, Actual in position: 13,556


Average disposal per judge:

# High Courts: 2,504 cases per year (2008)

# Subordinate courts: 1,138 cases per year (2008)


According to one estimate, the number of judges required to dispose of the total pending cases promptly is 1,547 in the High Courts and 4,400 in the subordinate courts.

Addressing a gathering in Chennai in July last year, Chief Justice of India KG Balakrishnan said: “We are not able to bring it (the number of pending) cases down significantly, though we want to. Some States in the country don’t pay enough attention to the judiciary. Unless there is a large number of courts, how can the pendency come down?”

For speedy and quick disposal of cases, several committees have been formed in the past. In 1924 a committee was formed under the chairmanship of Justice Rankin. After independence, other committees constituted included the Justice SR Das Committee in 1949, Justice JC Shah Committee in 1972, the Satish Chandra Committee in 1986 and the Justice VS Mallimath Committee in 1990. But the situation from 1926 to 2010 remains virtually the same. The Law Commission, in its 120th report submitted in 1987, examined the problem of understaffing in the judiciary and recommended 50 judges per million of population instead of the present 9.5.

The inadequate number of judges is a major reason for the delays in the disposal of cases. Thus, the solution to the problem lies in the hands of the executive and administrative wings of the Government, and not the judiciary. Former Attorney-General of India Soli Sorabjee, in a lecture in London, lamented that the criminal justice system in India was on the verge of collapsing because of understaffing in the judiciary. He also observed, “Justice delayed will not only be justice denied, it will be the rule of law destroyed.”

More than 60 per cent of the pending court cases in India are due to the action or inaction of some Government official towards a citizen or a group of citizens. The same observations have been made by the Supreme Court more than once. The Arrears Committee headed by Justice VS Mallimath (1990) has identified the following causes for the accumulation of backlog of cases in the High Courts.

(i) Litigation explosion;
(ii) Accumulation of first appeal;
(iii) Inadequacy of staff attached to the High Courts;
(iv) Inordinate concentration of work in the hands of some members of the Bar;
(v) Lack of punctuality among judges;
(vi) Granting of unnecessary adjournments;
(vii) Indiscriminate closure of courts; (viii) Indiscriminate resort to writ jurisdiction;
(ix) Inadequacy of classification and granting of cases; and,
(x) Inordinate delay in the supply of certified copies of judgements and orders, etc.

The problem of court pendency, delay and quick disposal of cases is not something new. Letting off those under trial and in judicial custody is no solution. The initiative taken by the law Minister is commendable. But it doesn’t do anything to alleviate the misery of the common man seeking justice. Much bolder steps are needed. The Government must remember that unless it maintains justice, justice will not maintain us. A crisis looms large and a solution brooks no further delay.

A schizophrenic Government

It’s perplexing how suddenly and rapidly India has slipped into schizophrenia in recent months. Take the perennial issue of Pakistan to begin with. At one level, the Government is believed to have gently nudged organisers of IPL to keep Pakistani cricketers out of the high-profile event.

Opinion is divided on whether this was appropriate on the sponsors’ part, many saying that our diplomatic and security issues with Islamabad should not have spilled over into the playing field, while others believe you can hug each other on the cricketing arena while the Pakistani Establishment holds a gun at New Delhi’s head. But having left the IPL organisers to face a barrage of criticism from cricket lovers for this stealthy decision, the Government itself is getting ready to resume the dialogue with Pakistan, ignoring Islamabad’s victorious smirks. If this is not schizophrenia, I don’t know what else it can be called.

Why do we want to talk to Pakistan at this juncture? Frankly it baffles me. After suspending the dialogue after the heinous 26/11 events admittedly plotted and directed from Pakistani soil and executed by Pakistani nationals who sneaked into India, the Government firmly declared not to talk till Islamabad showed concrete and visible progress in proceeding against the masterminds. In the interim came the shameful Sharm-el-Sheikh episode, demonstrating yet again Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s inability to stand firm. India capitulated without apparent reason and even agreed to include Balochistan in the Joint Statement.

Probably taken aback by the intensity of the furore at home in its aftermath, New Delhi appeared to steel its resolve not to talk to our Western neighbour, till progress happened on 26/11 culprits. The deliberately slipshod manner in which Pakistan went about prosecuting Jamaat-ud-Dawa bosses, exposed Islamabad’s duplicity once more although proof was hardly required for its two-faced policy.

Pakistan succeeded in its gamble of tiring India out, assured in the belief that Washington would put enormous pressure on New Delhi to initiate talks again, making the Government desperate enough to clutch at straws to resume the dialogue. Hence the plaintive cries heard last week from Home Minister P Chidambaram urging Pakistan to show some movement on 26/11, howsoever small, so that India could revise its stand. No gesture was forthcoming. Pakistan Prime Minister triumphantly responded by saying that India had been pressured into talking again and categorically declared that these would not be mere “talks about talks”, and nothing short of the resumption of the Composite Dialogue would cajole Islamabad back to the negotiating table. Having put out the second cheek to be soundly slapped even as bruises on the first cheek were still smarting, India has little option except to again genuflect at the altar of Pakistani high-handedness.

Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani has also made it clear that he expects “substantial progress” on Kashmir as and when the dialogue resumes. This is a line clearly dictated by Washington too. President Obama’s team has been consistent in pushing India to concede ground on Kashmir so that, according to them, Islamabad can focus on Afghanistan without worrying about India and also mollify domestic opinion. It is a measure of the US State Department’s naivette that it thinks Pakistan will agree to settle Kashmir with India once and for all. The fact is that Islamabad, irrespective of who controls the reins of power, will never want to part with the biggest, low-cost weapon in its armoury. In the last few weeks, it has demonstrated its ability to raise the temperature of militancy in the Valley, while India has been pushed into going ahead with its stupid, defeatist policy of withdrawing 30,000 troops from the troubled State. Taking full advantage of Indian pusillanimity, militants have infiltrated the Valley in large numbers and provoked a series of incidents. A wily ISI, remote-controlling separatist outfits, are said to have placed vast sums at the disposal of jihadi outfits to engineer regular pelting of Indian security forces with stones in order to disorient and demoralise them and, perhaps, force them into retaliation. Almost every other day separatists successfully organise massive street protests against counter-insurgency operations, raising the pitch against routine patrolling or questioning of suspects.

There is a clear pattern in this plan of action. Pakistan is working on two fronts, one inside the Valley and one at the diplomatic level. They have achieved their first aim that of pressuring India to pull out sizeable number of troops to create a killing field conducive to the militants. Now, with the US rapping India on its knuckles, they hope to accomplish the second aim of dragging India to the negotiating table like a penitent child. I hope that Parliament’s Budget Session will witness uproarious scenes on this capitulation. It must be made categorically clear to the Government that there is no need for any talks with Pakistan in the foreseeable future; that public opinion here will not brook bartering away Jammu & Kashmir under US pressure or otherwise; and that the nation’s interest cannot be sacrificed for Manmohan Singh to pursue his elusive dream for a Nobel Peace Prize. One of his predecessors led India into disaster after disaster vis-à-vis Pakistan and China in the hope of being recognised and feted as a harbinger of world peace.

Even as the Prime Minister embarks on this dangerous and self-demeaning policy one of his party colleagues has been busy cultivating terror sympathisers back home. In yet another bizarre instance of schizophrenia, a top office-bearer of the ruling party went on to merrily attack his own Government over the Batla House encounter, which had resulted in the martyrdom of policeman Mohan Chand Sharma, decorated posthumously with a gallantry medal. Digvijay Singh, Congress general-secretary and former Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, committed outrage on the nation’s sentiment by going to Azamgarh to visit the family and friends of terror suspects in the Batla House shootout and had the audacity of declaring the encounter as “fake”.

It does not help to try and back out from the assertion made at a public meeting by later claiming that all he wanted was a “speedy trial”, because TV cameras captured his original remark. Instead of taking disciplinary action against the redoubtable Mr Singh, his party has mildly sought merely to distance itself from him, saying this was his personal opinion.

It is clear that the Congress Party, in a mad scramble to garner a section of Muslim votes (fortunately most Muslims do not share Mr Singh’s assessment), will stoop at nothing to nurture a vote bank. But then, why blame him alone? His party’s heir apparent, buoyed by a fawning media, has been on a rampage against his opponents in Maharashtra, blissfully overlooking that, in the first place, it was his party’s Government that proposed a 15-year-domicile rule for awarding taxi licences in Mumbai thereby reinforcing the Shiv Sena-MNS brand of regional chauvinism!

498-A INVITATION TO FALSE CASES

If u never demanded dowry, she can still file a case under 498-A and without investigation u can be arrested by police. Provision of 498 A empower the women but if we will see in today’s circumstances, the provisions of 498-A are enough to make the man weak. Once F.I.R. is lodge under 498-A, whether it is vague or false, u will have very less chance. Now women are taking unjust profit of this section of Indian penal code. Today numbers of false cases are increasing and our society is suffering from this problem. In this type of situation, boy doesn’t have anything except some safeguards like collection of evidence. It is a very critical situation, to save the society from this situation, there must we some laws in favor of men, due to which man can be protected in court of law. There must be balance in our social system. If man is strong more than woman or woman is strong more than man, both situation are harmful for our society. 498 is a playing the role of harmful weapon. The provision of section 498-A is so much rigid and in favor of women, this fact invites the false cases under 498-A of Indian penal code. To balance the situation, legislation should make some laws in favor of men and try to develop balance in society. The basic aim of laws must be justice and balance in between society.

God made this beautiful earth. He did not do any classification but he made man and woman. This classification was the need of human being. Man was dominant over woman in society, but now both our equal, our constitution also providing this equality. According to the provision of constitution, there should be no discrimination on the basis of sex. It is very difficult to say that section 498-A of Indian penal code is unconstitutional because the intention behind this provision to protect the women. And our legislation is empowered by constitution to make special laws for women. But in the zeal to protect the women, legislation should not ignore the man and the current position of society. In whole in the name of protecting women, 498-A is making weak the man, and creating imbalance in society. If man can torture the woman, then woman also can torture the man. Both are human being. So legislation should think on this point of view and try to make some provision to protect the men.

By-Anubhuti Mishra
(writer is a student of JNU,Jaipur)
(Originally recieved and edited on 24th of nov 09)