By Soroor Ahmed, TwoCircles.net
Justice delayed is justice denied, goes the saying. But the Indian law minister, Veerappa Moily, while reacting to the June 7 judgment of a Bhopal court on the gas tragedy coined a new term “Justice Buried.”
Just replace the word Justice with Compensation. Will the payment of Rs 10 lakh (one million) to each of the Bhopal gas victims 26 years after the tragedy amount to the Compensation Denied or Compensation Buried? Perhaps yes as many of the compensation-seekers have already got buried in the last quarter century––they are no more in the world to collect the amount.
Even if the compensation was paid on December 7, 1984 and by none else but Warren Anderson or Rajiv Gandhi or Arjun Singh, it would not have been enough as none of the thousands who perished are going to return. Nor will the money compensate for the loss of lives, health and vision.
Yet the offer of Rs 10 lakh to all the victims is being generally welcomed as, at least, it is better than paltry Rs 12,410 paid to each of them initially.
However, the problem is not just the money. Since our economy has now improved a lot in comparison to 1980s––no not just because of the FDI, but also because of the huge remittance and migration which our policy-makers fail to appreciate––we have learnt the art of enhancing compensation. Almost two decades after the anti-Sikh riots we enhanced the compensation to something around Rs seven lakh to each of the victim.
Similarly 20 years after the Bhagalpur riots, which took place during the height of Lal Krishan Advani’s Rath Yatra in October 1989 the government come under pressure to pay on par with the victims of anti-Sikh riots. In the same way demand was made to compensate to the victims of 2002 Gujarat riots.
After all that now comes the turn of Bhopal victims. The Group of Ministers headed by home minister, P Chidambaram, on June 21 recommended payment of Rs 10 lakh to the next of kin of the dead, Rs 5 lakh for the permanently disabled and Rs 3 lakh for those partially disabled.
The Congress apologized for the Sikh riots of 1984 and whatever happened to Muslims in Bhagalpur and elsewhere. A few years from now even Narendra Modi or at least his successor may apologize for whatever happened to Muslims in Gujarat in February to April 2002.
It is easy to announce and even pay hefty compensation and apologize 20 or 25 years later, but really tough to fight the real cancer plaguing the society or country––be it in the form of poisonous gas or the virus of communalism. The law of the land could give just two years punishment to the seven of those Indian top managers who were involved in running the Union Carbide. Yet we talk about the extradition of Warren Anderson, as if we would really hang him.
In 1993 the Japanese government apologized to Korea for the barbaric and inhuman treatment meted out to comfort girls of that country. These girls were in fact mostly Korean women forced to work as sex-slave for the conquering Japanese army in Manchuria and other places of East and South East Asia during the Second World War. In mid-1990s, that is half a century later, efforts were made to raise fund to pay compensation to those surviving comfort girls. It is other thing that in 2007 another Japanese Prime Minister said something controversial about the whole episode related to the comfort girls.
Since Japan took half a century to apologize about the heinous crime and talk about paying compensation to the people wronged by its army, we in India are taking half of that––25 years, to apologize and pay enhanced compensation to our own people. While Japan was forced to do under the compulsion of international diplomacy we do so for our own political ends.
Yet what we miss is that compensation is not what the people all need. Delayed compensation often opens a Pandora’s Box and leads to litigation and quarrel within the family.
In many developed countries we talk about the concept of neighborhood school for children. In India we encourage neighborhood factories, that is, industries in the heart of population. In fact our school children are made to travel 20 to 40 km or even more daily as the real estate dealers, who double as the owner of schools, usually open such educational shops at the outskirts of the city where land is cheap.
The Union Carbide Corp was in the centre of densely populated area of Bhopal. Yet no effort was made by successive rulers to either remove the plant or de-populate the locality. Quarter of century later no town planner, minister or official responsible for its growth in the populated area was held responsible and punished.
We still have no plan to check the Bhopals and now even Chernobyls in the making. After all this is the price we pay for the development? Isn’t it?