Environment : Fix Corporate Liability

When the massive oil spill happened in the Gulf of Mexico a couple of years ago, President Barack Obama made sure that British Petroleum had to pay full damages (about $30 billion) for criminal negligence and liability. Now, 30 years after the world’s biggest industrial tragedy, India’s top environmental activist says we must urgently establish the issue of criminal liability for big corporates wanting to operate in India and it must be based on full costs. After the shame of Bhopal, asserts Sunita Narain, nothing less is acceptable.

With Prime Minister Narendra Modi is attracting world’s top MNCs to come over and be part of his Make in India campaign to transform India into a global manufacturing hub, most people go ecstatic about its prospects for our growing economy. But some think differently. One such is Sunita Narain, who’s become a rock star in India’s battle for justice for the victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy which claimed thousands of lives on the fateful night of December 2, 1984. “If the government of India, even 30 years after the world’s biggest industrial disaster, is still struggling to establish the liability of Union Carbide India Ltd (UCIL) and its buyer, Dow Chemicals,” then, says she, “it’s time to ponder seriously about the lessons India must learn from the tragedy.”

Sunita, who is the Director General of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a not-for-profit public research and advocacy NGO, feels rather strongly that unless India puts “a strict corporate liability regime” in place, it just cannot prevent such disasters in future.

By Pradeep Mathur