Bookshot#179: Five Past Midnight In Bhopal

Another book that's been on my shelf far too long, Five Past Midnight In Bhopal is a harrowing story of

the world's worst industrial accident. Before reading this book, I knew the basic outlines of what happened. An industrial plant in Bhopal, run by Union Carbide had some kind of a gas explosion, that killed a ton of people, and then Carbide refused to take responsibility for it. (There were some court cases/decisions in the early 2000s that put this in the news back in the day, so I was vaguely aware of it.) 

This book, however, lifted the veil on the horrible details you don't get from reading random news articles about court cases. I don't want to say something trite like "Man, this was way worse than I realized" but that's more or less what I was left with. Honestly, comparing this to Chornobyl in scale and long-term after-effects probably wouldn't be too far from the mark and I don't want to say it's a 'searing indictment of corporate greed and capitalist malfeasance' because that seems trite as well, but really... it's that too. 

The biggest adjustment I had to make when starting this book was remembering what time we were talking about. The book looks at Carbide's global expansion, how they settled on India to market their new (and highly dangerous, yet effective) pesticide, MIC, built the plant and then let it decay to the point where the accident happened on December 2nd, 1984. The book starts with India still in the grips of Indira Gandhi's 'Emergency' and ends shortly after her assassination it opens by following a family that is forced to flee from their farm in Orissa due to famine and they wind up in Bhopal.

Now, I know that even today India has challenges and the way the poverty of the rural poor is portrayed in this book might still be pretty damn close to the reality a lot of folks in India face today-- but today, India is portrayed very, very differently. The specter of famine or worries about the failure of the monsoon are not something that you see talked about widely in the Western press these days. I'd like to hope that the brutal, bone-crushing poverty portrayed in this book has improved since the early 80s (I feel pretty confident saying that it probably has) but the opening chapters of this book are a harsh reminder of what India was back then and it wasn't necessarily all that pretty.

But, because of the time, Carbide's interest in the Indian market makes sense. Do you want to control famine? Worried about the monsoon failing? We've got pesticides for that!

So, the plant gets built. The residents of the neighboring bustee get some jobs out of the deal and after their cattle drink some contaminated water, they get some cash from Carbide as restitution as well- plus a new cow! The plant gives plenty of people jobs and opportunities and is generally seen as a symbol of India's ongoing industrialization and a sign of progress. People are proud of the plant. Employees are proud to work for Carbide. The book paints a picture of a company that attracts the best and the brightest and has an ironclad commitment to worker and plant safety.- in West Virginia at least. They started their plant in Bhopal with the same commitment to rigorous safety standards, but...

The market turns on them. Their expected sales of MIC never hit their intended targets and soon the parent company turned things over to the Indian subsidiary and made it clear that they were winding down production at the plant. Unfortunately, the personnel they trained on the proper safety measures and how to handle pesticides were replaced by people who were marking time until they turned the lights out and shut them down for good. So, gradually, safety measures and maintenance began to lapse. And kept decaying until that fateful night when the inevitable rupture happened.

Carbide and its successor company Dow Chemical both did their usual dance to evade legal responsibility-- they pushed a story of worker sabotage that sounds laughable in the book. I would be interested in seeing Dow's reasoning or evidence of that because the book-- while fairly even-handed, definitely tilts in one direction when it comes to the accident. Personally, I was unconvinced of their claim-- and even if it was true, Carbide had a responsibility if they were shutting down the planet, to remove hazardous materials safely. (They spared no expense and took all precautions getting the first batches of MIC to the plant, but couldn't be bothered to do the same when it came time to leave the plant?)

The accident itself sounds harrowing-- people bleeding out of their eyes and mouths and choking to death with no real remedies available or at least none that were employed. Whole families lost their lives, the young, the old, children, it spared absolutely no one. It sounds like a night of absolute horror-  railway workers attempted to warn off an incoming train and were unsuccessful. The true death toll from the disaster is also largely unknown- the official count puts it at something like 3700, but up to 16,000 are claimed to have died and at least half a million people suffered non-fatal injuries as a result.

The profit motive will always be inevitable with capitalism, but I have long believed that what we have and what we have had for years now bears little resemblance to free and fair competition in the marketplace. Money will always win.  Money will line the pockets of CEOs and shareholders before workers get a fair shake. And there seem to be no limits whatsoever to it, but there should be. Especially if you're a chemical company-- safety should have come first here- even if it hurts your profit margin. A correct shutdown of the plant should have mandated the safe removal of these chemicals and between governments and corporations, precious few of the actual victims of this disaster have received effective restitution or justice. 

Overall: More people should know about this accident. More people should be outraged by it. More should have been done to get the victims justice and this book is a powerful, searing story about how this tragedy could have been prevented and why the victims deserve real justice even now. My Grade: **** out of ****