The Killer Factory: A Disaster Waiting to Happen

Abstract

In 1984, the year of the Bhopal industrial disaster, Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) was the seventh largest chemical company in the world. Based in Danbury, Connecticut, USA, UCC owned and operated through its divisions, subsidiaries, and affiliates 500 manufacturing facilities across 137 countries, with a workforce of 120,000 employees and earning a profit of $10 billion.¹ The inception of its industrial empire dates back to the late nineteenth century, when it launched the company through acquisition and incorporation of a number of smaller companies that produced carbon and batteries, arc lamps for acetylene street lighting, nd headlamps for cars. It was during World War II that UCC began manufacturing synthetic organic chemicals for supplying equipments to the army. Soon it acquired a dominant position in petrochemicals, hydroelectric power, and mining of steel alloys and uranium as part of nuclear weapon projects. It first entered India in 1905 as the National Carbon Company (India) Ltd and subsequently became Union Carbide India Ltd (UCIL). After 1947, the year of India’s independence, UCIL started diversifying from the manufacture of battery cells in its modern plant in Calcutta to the distribution of a wide variety of chemicals, plastics, and allied products. It opened facilities in other metropolitan cities. In 1968, UCIL shifted its agricultural products division from Mumbai to Bhopal, the state capital of Madhya Pradesh (MP). The saga of the Bhopal industrial disaster begins from this point with UCC riding high on its success story. At the same time, another story—as yet unsung and unwritten—was already coming into shape.

A Hand in Things to Come: Union Carbide.

—Union Carbide run advertisement in Fortune Magazine (April 1962).

The Company, beginning its operations in India at the dawn of this century, has ever since shared the country’s dreams and aspirations and contributed to the nations growth.

—A Time for Nostalgia, Hexagon, The Commemorative Issue: Golden Jubilee (June 1984).

In 1975, I was in the middle of studying for my diploma in pharmacy when there appeared in the newspapers an advertisement of job vacancies in the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal. Family and friends in my small hometown—150 km from Bhopal—said that I should try for a job in the Carbide factory, since it was quite a good opportunity … For the first six months when we took part in classroom training we considered ourselves pretty important people. The bubble burst when we were sent for training on the job.

—T R. Chouhan, worker in MIC unit, UCIL and author of Bhopal: The Inside Story. 2nd nted. (2004).

For a long time we thought the factory made medicines to kill rats. In J. P. Nagar we hardly knew anyone who had a job in the factory. Such a person would be an object of envy for we had heard the company paid higher wages than government jobs.

—Hazra Bi, Gas Survivor.