India's Night of Death: Bhopal

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The disaster in Bhopal was the latest in a series of major industrial mishaps around the world, some with immediate fatal results, others with lingering, long-term consequences. Last week in Taiwan, leaking methane gas in a coal shaft triggered an explosion that killed 33 miners. Two weeks earlier, a liquefied-natural-gas explosion claimed 452 lives near a Mexico City shantytown. As the list of such man-made tragedies grows, concern is rising everywhere that industrial safety standards are often higher in the U.S. than in developing countries, and that some U.S. firms may have opened plants abroad to take advantage of the disparity. Indeed, the accident in India touched off a wave of anticapitalist rhetoric. TASS, the Soviet news agency, called the disaster "the logical consequence of the general policy pursued by multinational corporations, which market low-quality products and outdated technology in developing countries." Said a U.S. embassy official in New Delhi: "This is a feast for the Communists. They'll go with it for weeks."

Prominent among the targets of that antibusiness backlash was Union Carbide. Within hours of the accident, police in Bhopal closed the plant and arrested its manager, J. Mukund, as well as four of his colleagues, on charges of "culpable homicide through negligence." When a team of five technical experts from Union Carbide's headquarters in Danbury, Conn., arrived to inspect the factory, they were turned away by local authorities. "We don't want anyone tampering with the evidence," said an official. The Indian Central Bureau of Investigation, meanwhile, seized records and logbooks at the plant, and Chief Minister Singh ordered a judicial inquiry into the accident. "This is a devastating tragedy," said Singh. "It was sudden and deadly, and there was a terrible human failure somewhere along the line. I have closed down the plant, probably forever."

Perhaps the most spectacular government action came when Warren M. Anderson, 63, Union Carbide's U.S. chairman, flew to Bhopal later in the week. Immediately after his arrival, he and two officials of the company's Indian subsidiary were arrested and charged with "negligence and criminal corporate liability" and "criminal conspiracy," which under Indian law carries a maximum penalty of death. Instead of being taken to prison, the three executives were detained at the company's comfortable Bhopal guesthouse, surrounded by 50 armed guards to protect them from possible mob attacks, and cut off from communication with the outside world. After more than six hours, Anderson was released on $2,500 bond and flown to New Delhi, while his colleagues remained in custody. "Somebody has to say that our safety standards in the U.S. are identical to those in India or Brazil or some place else," Anderson said after his release. "Same equipment, same design, same everything."