Photo: Hindustan Times
On the intervening night of December 2-3 1984, a highly unstable chemical, methyl isocyanate (MiC), an intermediary substance used to manufacture Sevin, a pesticide, leaked from tank 610 in the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal.
The leak was first detected by workers about 11.30pm as their eyes began to burn.
By 12.40am, the temperature and pressure in the tank had built up. Within an hour of the leak, victims started arriving at the nearby government health facility, Hamidia Hospital.
It was 3.30am, on 3 December 1984, and the police in Bhopal still had no clue what had leaked from the Union Carbide pesticide plant. The then superintendent of police, Swaraj Puri, was in the control room. “My first question to the company officials was, ‘What is it?’ The official said he had no clue.”
Next morning, the company equated the poisoning with tear gas, adding that the gas was “slightly more potent”. What followed next can only be described as a holocaust and not a “tragedy”, Puri says. “Calling it a tragedy or an unfortunate accident is a reflection of a person’s value system. For me, it was a holocaust. If an outsider perceives the impact of gas leak as an accident, it is because he has not lived through it.”
Yes. The number of dead doesn't matter as the thousands who 'slept in peace' on the fateful night could never wake up.
We thought that the tragedy was over with the dead. We were not aware more was in store. Till this minute the relatives of deceased and the diseased due to the leak fight to get any compensation the worth. The tragedy is 29 years old for history and her records. But the suffering of the residents of Bhopal count it as the loss of their childhood, youth hood and adulthood. Time has erased from the memory of the mammoth tragedy. But the civilized society refuses to recognize their problems and continue to neglect. Courts of India and abroad debate the amount of compensation for decades now.
BHOPAL GAS TRAGEDY is a lesson for the humanity. In the name of development and increase of production of rice or wheat we go on pouring poison on the tender plants at least 3 times during the crop. The pesticides do kill the pests. They are not there for about a week bu t once again they regain their lost territory. The incidence of cancer and other fatal diseases can be directly linked to this indiscriminate use of pesticides.
The world has to move such hazardous chemical plants and of course nuclear plants far away from the human habitations. Man and chemicals do not match. This step is to be taken up urgently to avoid any more mishaps.
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