Bhopal Gas Tragedy (December 03, 1984): An Analysis.
RAKESH KUMAR GUPTA VISUALLY CHALLENGED EMPLOYEE
| Bhopal Gas Tragedy (December 03,
1984): An Analysis
Introduction Around 1 a.m. on Monday, the 3rd of December, 1984, in a densely populated region in the city of Bhopal, Central India, a poisonous vapor burst from the tall stacks of the Union Carbide pesticide plant. This vapor was a highly toxic cloud of methyl isocyanate. Of the 800,000 people living in Bhopal at the time, 2,000 died immediately, and as many as 300,000 were injured. In addition, about 7,000 animals were injured, of which about one thousand were killed. “A series of studies made five years later showed that many of the survivors were still suffering from one or several of the following ailments: partial or complete blindness, gastrointestinal disorders, impaired immune systems, post traumatic stress disorders, and menstrual problems in women. A rise in spontaneous abortions, stillbirths, and offspring with genetic defects was also noted.” (The Bhopal Disaster) This incident we now refer to as the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, which has also been called “Hiroshima of the Chemical Industry” one of the worst commercial industrial disasters in history.(Cohen) After the incidence, over the next few years, numerous studies were conducted, many theories were explored, and the involved parties accused each other. In this paper, I will try to explore the various causes offered for the tragedy. In the course of my research for this case study, I came across many articles that put blame on various people and groups involved in the tragedy. I found one document particularly interesting from a rhetorical standpoint. This document, titled Union Carbide: Disaster at Bhopal , was authored by the retired Vice President of Health, Safety and Environmental Programs in Union Carbide Corporation. So for this paper, I would also like to rhetorically analyze this document and also, try to explore the various image restoration strategies that Union Carbide Corporation used through the course of the crisis. The Tragedy: Possible Causes The post-accident analysis of the process showed that the accident started when a tank containing methyl isocyanate (MIC) leaked. MIC is an extremely reactive chemical and is used in production of the insecticide carbaryl. It is presumed that the scientific reason for the accident at Bhopal is that water entered the tank where about 40 cubic meters of MIC was stored. When water and MIC mixed, an exothermic chemical reaction started, producing a lot of heat. As a result, the safety valve of the tank burst because of the increase in pressure. This burst was so violent that the coating of concrete around the tank also broke. It is presumed that between 20 and 30 tonnes of MIC were released during the hour that the leak took place. The gas leaked from a 30 m high chimney and this height was not enough to reduce the effects of the discharge. The reason was that the high moisture content (aerosol) in the discharge when evaporating, gave rise to a heavy gas which rapidly sank to the ground. The weather egged on this process. The conditions on the fateful day were typical for a clear night in the region, with a weak wind which frequently changed direction, which in turn helped the gas to cover more area in a shorter period of time (about one hour). The weak wind and the weak vertical turbulence caused a slow dilution of gas and thus allowed the poisonous gas to spread over considerable distances. (Chemical Accidents...) Many different terms have been used to describe the events in Bhopal that early morning of December 3, 1984: accident, disaster, catastrophe, crisis and also as sabotage, conspiracy, massacre, and experiment, whichever best suited the arguments that would help to pin the ‘blame’ on somebody. In his book titled The Bhopal Tragedy: Language, Logic and Politics in the Production of a Hazard, the authorWilliam Bogard “Each of these descriptions, in its own way, minimizes the problem of human agency and intention, and thus refuses to address directly the issue of responsibility.”(ix) Bogard goes on to point out that the best way to describe this incidence would be a tragedy because, “In calling Bhopal a tragedy, we are still permitted to say that intention and agency were involved in how the event unfolded and that responsibility must ultimately rest with someone or some group. But unlike saying that Bhopal was the deliberate result of sabotage, a conspiracy, or some diabolical experiment involving human guinea pigs- charges that are virtually impossible to prove in any case- a tragedy, in contrast, emerges out of a complex of confused and misguided intentions, many of which may be honorable in themselves but when forged to the actual chain of events produce the worst possible outcome.”(Bogard, ix) In the last twelve years, numerous studies have been conducted on the incident and there are numerous deductions. In most of the studies, the two main agencies analyzed were the Union Carbide Corporation and the Indian Government of the Late Primeminister Rajiv Gandhi and the Madhya Pradesh state government of Arjun Singh. One of the main reasons for the tragedy was found to be a result of a combination of human factors and an incorrectly designed safety system. “A portion of the safety equipment at the plant had been non-operational for four months and the rest failed. When the plant finally sounded an alarm--an hour after the toxic cloud had escaped--much of the harm had already been done.”(The Bhopal Disaster). Union Carbide itself believed the theory that the tragedy resulted when “ a disgruntled plant employee, apparently bent on spoiling a batch of methyl isocyanate, added water to a storage tank”(Browning). Still others, like the many experts in industrial safety, believe that the tragedy was preventable, arguing that it was the due to “....the negligence on the part of the Union Carbide Corporation and its corporate subsidiary Union Carbide of India Ltd.(UCIL), which had the responsibility for taking care of the day-to-day operations of the facility”(Bogard 4). The corporation and its subsidiary were also charged with corporate irresponsibility for pursuing the profits instead of the safety and hazard standards. The Madhya Pradesh State government had not mandated any safety standards and Union Carbide failed to implement its own (i.e. US) safety rules, apparently comfortable in the knowledge that it was not contravening Indian regulation. “The Bhopal plant experienced six accidents between 1981 and 1984, at least three of which involved MIC or phosgene, a highly poisonous gas used in World War I and a component in the manufacture of MIC. The accidents were generally small scale- one worker was killed in 1981- but official inquiries required by law were often shelved or tended to minimize the government’s or the company’s role”(Bogard 5). It is noted that it was probably this pattern of neglect that failed to bring about the much needed change in the malfunctioning safety equipment and improperly trained workers at the chemical plant. Even so, this negligent behavior on the part of Union Carbide regarding safety standards raised little concern among the citizens of Bhopal. So, why were the people of Bhopal so indifferent when voicing their concerns on the safety factors in the Union Carbide plant? Why was nothing done about the defective safety equipment? To understand this, it is important to understand that India is a poor nation. The country needed pesticides to protect her agricultural production. MIC is used to produce pesticides that control insects which would in turn, help increase production of food - central to India’s Green Revolution, which was ironically, US imposed. Initially, India imported the MIC from the United States. In an attempt to achieve industrial self-sufficiency, India invited Union Carbide to set up a plant in the state of Madhya Pradesh to produce methyl isocyanate. The license was given to them on the belief that the chemical industry would provide the desperately needed jobs and capital for the people of the country. To the people of the city of Bhopal, Union Carbide was a highly respected , technically advanced Western company that would bring them the jobs they needed. This coupled with political power and scientific expertise worked together to changed the people’s perception of what was dangerous and more importantly what was safe. The Analysis: Union Carbide’s Reaction Through all the months immediately following the incident, Union Carbide never directly apologized to the Indian government and her people or to the people of Bhopal. The Indian Government, in response to the tragedy and pressure from the Indian people, filed a compensation lawsuit against the UCC for an estimated $3 billion. On the other hand, Union Carbide strongly felt that the Indian government was to blame. This was the headlines in The New York Times on Dec. 17, 1986, The Union Carbide Corporation in Dec., 1986, while continuing to deny liability, filed a countersuit against the government of India and the State of Madhya Pradesh regarding the 1984 disaster at Carbide's Bhopal subsidiary. The company is charging the governments with "contributory" responsibility for the leak of poisonous gases, saying both governments knew of the toxicity of methyl isocyanate but failed to take adequate precautions to prevent a disaster. The government of India has sued Union Carbide for at least $3 billion in compensation for the victims of the leak of methyl isocyanate.(D4) This was iterated in the document titled Union Carbide: Disaster at Bhopal , written by Jackson B. Browning for the Union Carbide Corporation. At the time of the Bhopal tragedy, Jackson B. Browning was the Vice President responsible for the Health, Safety, and Environmental Programs in the corporation. He was one of the spokesmen for the corporation during the crisis in 1984 and was also in charge of the teams that responded to and investigated the tragedy. He retired from UCC in 1986. Browning’s document outlines the various aspects of the Bhopal tragedy from the perspective of the Union Carbide Corporation. In the very second paragraph on page one of the article, the author notes that the cause for the accident, as believed by the parent company- “Although it was not known at the time, the gas was formed when a disgruntled plant employee, apparently bent on spoiling a batch of methyl isocyanate, added water to a storage tank.”(Browning). This was the main argument by UCC in their defense and they still maintain the same. The corporation needed to divert the blame for the tragedy from themselves to something or somebody else, especially one that would catch the attention of anybody remotely interested in the incident. They used “sabotage”. What I found interesting was that on the one hand Browning called the incident of December 3rd a “massive industrial disaster” and on the other hand, a premeditated action- a sabotage. To me, the two don’t fit together. Disaster would mean ‘even if we knew, we could have done nothing about it’ and sabotage on the other hand would mean ‘if the process had not been tampered with, there would have been no leak, no loss of life’. But this was clearly not the case. Studies conducted on this incidence by a Dr. Paul Shrivastava, tell a completely different story. Dr. Paul Shrivastava, an Associate Professor of Business in NewYork University and Executive Director Industrial Crisis Institute Inc., NY conducted studies that revealed that Bhopal was neither an isolated incident nor the first of its kind in the corporation. There had been many accidents of similar nature in UCC's American plants prior to the Bhopal accident. He found that 28 major MIC leaks had occurred in UCC’s West Virginia plant during the five years preceding the Bhopal incident, the last one occurring only a month before. His studies found that the ‘sabotage’ theory was UCC’s way to avoid paying the huge amount that the Indian government had demanded as settlement. Interestingly, UCC, till date, has been unsuccessful in presenting any evidence to prove that theory and has never disclosed the name of the supposedly guilty employee.(Ahuja) All the previous accidents in the other Union Carbide plants were not highly publicized events, and hence, there were no repercussions that UCC had to face. But in the case of the Bhopal tragedy, the magnitude of the incident worked against them and made it difficult for them to distance themselves from it. In his article, discussing the theories of image restoration, Benoit notes that there are two components to an attack on one’s image: an undesirable act has been committed and you are responsible for that action. “Only if both of these conditions are believed to be true by the relevant audiences is the actor’s reputation at risk...”(71). The Bhopal incident was too big for the public to ignore and added to everything else, there was a huge loss of human life. This naturally drew attention. Even Browning notes in his article that “ the scope of the Bhopal tragedy made it to “page one” material in the weeks and months that followed.” Union Carbide was under attack from all sides as news of the leak spread and they needed to make arguments to achieve one particular goal- “restoring or protecting their reputation”(Benoit 71). Benoit argues that “....when our reputation is threatened, we feel compelled to offer explanations, defenses, justifications, rationalizations, apologies or excuses for our behavior”(70). But these defenses and excuses needed to be made to the audience that mattered the most to you. To the Union Carbide Corporation in the United States, the audiences were the people around them in the US and the media. The Press seemed to be the main focus in Browning document. The tone of the document suggested that the main audiences to pacify would be the media and once that was done the corporation would have definitely ‘saved face’. The other relevant audiences needed to be identified carefully. In the document, Browning has a sub-section titled “Keeping Vital Audiences Informed”. Under this section, Browning himself clearly identifies that audiences they were responding to: the most visible-the media, and other interested parties like the customers, shareholders, suppliers and other employees. Nowhere in this whole section was there a mention of the people of India or the people of Bhopal. There seemed an urgency for the corporation to assure the people of the United States who were their main stockholders, that such an incident would not happen here. Browning notes in the document that Warren Anderson, the then chairman of the UCC, and he were summoned to appear before the House Commerce and Energy Committee to answer one question- “Can it happen here?” It seems like this pretty much proved that the process of image restoration for the corporation was not all that difficult because of the large distance between the ‘vital’ audiences and the site of the disaster Bhopal. In his discussion of the tragedy, Benoit notes, The unusual aspect of Carbide’s public image is the fact that the public believed Union Carbide was responsible for Bhopal and had not told the truth about it- yet had a generally favorable overall opinion about the company. This may reflect a partial lack of interest in events that occurred in distant lands and suggests that salience of the accusations to the audience of an important factor of image restoration.(140) This shows an important factor of restoring one’s image in the eyes of the public depends to a great extent on how relevant the unfavorable event is in their eyes, in other words, how close to home is the tragedy. As the first step towards image restoration, Browning’s main strategy seems to have been to distance the corporation from the site of the disaster. Browning, very early in the document, points out that the Union Carbide Corporation had only 50.9% stake in the affiliate, the Union Carbide India Ltd. He also makes clear that all the employees in the company were Indians and that “...the last American employee at the site had left two years[1982] before.” Union Carbide Corporation maintained that it did not have any hold over its Indian affiliate. The UCC argued that the day-to-day working in UCIL was independent of the parent company and hence it was not to be held responsible. But most of the research showed that this was not really true. In spite of denials, it appears the Union Carbide company in Danbury, Connecticut had substantial authority over its affiliate......Many of the day to day details, such as staffing and maintenance, were left to Indian officials, but every major decision, such as the annual budget, had to be cleared with the American headquarters, and directives were often issued from the US.(Bogard 28) And in addition to this, by both Indian and US laws, a parent company (UCC in this case) holds full responsibility for any plants they operate through subsidiaries and in which they have the majority stake.Hence, it seemed like the main aim of making an argument that UCIL was independent could be for two purposes: 1) to avoid paying the large sum of $3,000 million that India demanded as compensation or 2) to find a ‘scapegoat’ to divert the blame onto. In his article, Keith Michael Hearit, an Assistant Professor in Communication Studies, Purdue University, discusses the concept of scapegoating with respect to saving face, “ .....instances in which corporations cannot deny the validity of the charges, they are forced to deal with the issue of guilt and responsibility to restore their social legitimacy. At such time, corporate apologist offer individual/group dissociations. An individual/group dissociation is a scapegoating strategy by which a rhetor seeks too transfer guilt to another.” (8) In this case, UCC, by noting that UCIL had an all Indian workforce and the last American employed had left two years before, attempted to restore its image by differentiating the affiliate from the rest of the organization. This is one of the many modes of image restoration discussed by Benoit. William Benoit has an interesting and detailed discussion of the theory of Image Restoration in his book titled Accounts, Excuses and Apologies. He lists five categories that, he argues, identify instances of image restoration strategies in a defensive discourse: · Denial · Evading Responsibility · Reducing Offensiveness of Event · Corrective Action · Mortification Defense by denial can be done in two ways- simply denying that the accused committed the act or by shifting the blame on something that the accused can distance itself from. The accused could also evade responsibility either by claiming to have been provoked or defeasibility -claiming lack of information, or declare that the event was an accident or claim that the act was done with good intentions. The third method that Benoit talks about is by reducing the perceived offensiveness of the act by either minimizing or bolstering or differentiation or transcendence or in turn attack the accuser or by compensation which reduces the perceived severity of the injury. Another strategy used for image restoration is corrective action. Audiences may well forgive the accused if the accused is promise to remedy the problem and never do it again. The last strategy is mortification, the sincere apology. This is often a never used strategy.(73-74) Union Carbide used some of these strategies to restore its reputation after the gas leak in Bhopal. One of the strategies employed is that of ‘corrective action’ and stands out in an interesting section of Browning’s document titled “Safety Emphasized”. Under this section, Browning tries to establishe that Bhopal was a stray incident and should not be held against the corporation because “No analysis of Union Carbide’s reaction to the Bhopal tragedy is possible without recognizing the considerable emphasis the company and its affiliates had placed on safe operations”(Browning). To lend credibility to the corporation’s cause, Browning cites an international management specialist, Dr. Richard Robinson, a professor in Massachusetts Institute of Technology, commenting on the tragedy as saying that Union Carbide was one of those multinational corporations who were very dedicated to the safety aspect of their plants and that “ it is particularly depressing that it was Union Carbide which was involved”. Browning notes that considering the company’s strict safety policies that the news of the Bhopal tragedy was “astounding”. Arguments in this section are more devoted to explaining that it would be unfair to assume that the accusations that UCC was not careful with safety, were true. It is, in a sense, a form of apologia- the corporation is utilizing the “act/essence dissociation. An act/essence dissociation distances the apologist from the wrongdoing by arguing that while the wrongdoing admittedly occurred, it was an isolated act that does not represent the apologist’s true nature.”(Hearit 9) And this is often followed by the next step -to point out how the corporation has worked to remedying the unfortunate incidence. This is exactly what Union Carbide Corporation did. Under the two sections titled “First Steps At Control” and “Contingency Planning and Experience Help”, Browning lists out all the things that UCC did immediately following the first call they got about the tragedy. He notes that vital decisions were made - the UCC facility making MIC in the US was shut down; a task force led by the chairman of UCC, Warren Anderson, was set up; medical and technical teams were dispatched to the site of the tragedy “within 24 hours”. He also noted that “Union Carbide had a contingency plan for emergencies” The people of UCC worked together, with the press and the ‘vital audiences’, in to help in dealing with the “terrible facts of the tragedy”. What is interesting is that most of the research done on the incident points to the fact that Union Carbide did not have any kind of emergency plans in its Indian subsidiary. So much so that when the accident occurred and people started pouring into the hospitals in Bhopal complaining about the various ailments, the hospital staff had on idea of what had happened or what to do. “The city health officials had not been informed of the toxicity of the chemicals used at the Union Carbide factory. There were no emergency plans or procedures in place and no knowledge of how to deal with the poisonous cloud.”(The Bhopal Disaster) Browning ends his document noting, with confidence, that the approach used by UCC at the time of the disaster were in his opinion “correct ones”. He also notes that today’s Union Carbide Corporation is a very different company. The Corporation now works twice as hard on its safety operations and that “money and staff were committed to those objectives”. Conclusion Thirteen years later not much has changed. Union Carbide India Ltd. is an abandoned site in Bhopal. UCC sold its share of the affiliate. In October of 1991, the Indian Supreme Court upheld a settlement, which had been appealed from a lower court decision of 1989, under which Union Carbide had to pay $470 million in compensation of all claims. In 1996, at Union Carbide's annual meeting, William H. Joyce, its chief executive, declared that the company had no intention of doing anything further for the victims. This resolve was apparently reversed, as the company announced that it is planning to support the building of a $ 20 million hospital for the victims of the Bhopal tragedy through a London based independent charitable trust. The construction should be complete in mid-1998 and will be operational by the end of this year. Today, Union Carbide is a six billion dollar company, whose worldwide sales percentage is increasing every financial year. It seems like their image restoration strategy worked for them. “Union Carbide may have been aided in this matter by an unconscious ethnocentric bias in the public. It is reasonable to assume that if this terrible tragedy had occurred here in the United states (rather than in a foreign country), its image would have suffered even more.” (Benoit, 141). Bhopal was one of the worst industrial disasters in history. For all its horrors, the tragedy had at least one beneficial consequence- the intense public debate that followed the tragedy made more private citizens aware of the hazards of the chemical industry as a whole. It put the lethal nature of the chemical industry in out in the open. In response to this, the Chemical Manufacturing Association created the ‘Responsible Care Program’ that is now being implemented worldwide in at least 22 countries. The Program's aim is to improve community awareness, emergency response and employee health and safety. In this paper, I attempted analyze Browning’s document and draw from it the rhetorical implications of Union Carbide’s perspective on the Bhopal tragedy. This is by no means an in-depth inquiry of the various image restorations strategies that the Union Carbide Corporation might have used. This is at best the tip of the iceberg. Bibliography Ahuja, Chetan “Bhopal Tragedy and the New York Times” URL : http://slater.cem.msu.edu/~ahuja/bhopal.html Benoit, William L. Accounts, Excuses and Apologies: A Theory of Image Restoration Strategies New York : State Univ. of New York Press 1995 Bogard, William The Bhopal Tragedy: Language, Logic and Politics in the Production of a Hazard SanFransico: Westview Press, Inc. 1989 Browning, Jackson B. “Union Carbide: Disaster at Bhopal” Bhopal WWW URL: http://www.bhopal.com/ (May 15, 1998) Cohen, Gary “Bhopal And The New World Order” Third World Network URL: http://rtk.net/E8734T660 (May 15, 1998) EarthBase “The Bhopal Disaster” WWW URL: http://www.earthbase.org/home/timeline/1984/bhopal/ (May 15, 1998) Eubank, Annette and Peter Montague, "Union Carbide Says Indian Failed to Regulate Union Carbide, Thus Bears Responsibility for Bhopal." The New York Times Dec. 17, 1986: D4 Hearit, Keith Michael “Mistakes Were Made: Organizations, Apologia, and Crises of Social Legitimacy” Communication Studies v 6 Spring 1995 Kurzman, Dan A Killing Wind: Inside Union Carbide and the Bhopal Catastrophe New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company. 1987 Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons “Chemical Accidents: Causes, effects and important influencing factors” WWW URL: http://www.opcw.nl/chemhaz/chemacci.htm (May 15, 1998) |