The Bhopal Gas Tragedy

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The Journey from Virginia to Bhopal Contd...

UCC's operations in India started in the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1924, an assembly plant for batteries was opened in Kolkata. By 1983 UCC had 14 plants in India manufacturing chemicals pesticides, batteries and other products. UCC held a 50.9 % stake in the Indian subsidiary. The balance of 49.1% was owned by various Indian investors. Normally foreign investors were limited to 40% ownership of equity in Indian companies, but GoI waived this requirement in the case of UCC because of the sophistication of its technology and the company's potential for export.

In 1966, an agreement was signed between GoI and UCIL. Under the agreement, UCIL would import 1,200 tons of Sevin from the parent company in the United States. UCC would build a factory in India to produce Sevin within five years. The location of the factory would be Kali Grounds in Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh) (Refer Exhibit I). In 1969, UCC set up its pesticide unit in Bhopal. The GoI granted a license to UCIL to manufacture 5,000 tons of Sevin a year. UCIL would produce Sevin and all the chemical ingredients required in India itself. Eduardo Munoz, the Argentinean agronomic engineer, who was with UCC, was entrusted the responsibility of making the project a success. Eduardo Munoz felt that manufacturing 5,000 tons of Sevin would require considerable quantities of MIC to be manufactured and stored. He was not in favour of storing huge quantity of MIC and suggested an alternative like batch production of MIC to meet production line requirements as they rose. This would eliminate the need to store large quantity of MIC on site.

However, this production philosophy was against the American industrial culture and UCC officials turned down the suggestion saying, "You have absolutely no need to worry, dear Eduardo Munoz. Your Bhopal plant will be as inoffensive as a chocolate factory."³ Eduardo Munoz was also against the proposed site of the factory as it was too close to areas where people lived, such as the slums in Oriya Bustee, Jayprakash Nagar and Chola (Refer Exhibit I).

However, UCC officials thought Kali Grounds was the right place to build the plant. These officials submitted their request for a sixty hectare plot of land on Kali Grounds. According to municipal planning regulations, no industry likely to give off toxic emissions could be set up on a site where the prevailing wind might carry effluents into densely populated areas.

At the Kali Grounds the wind usually blew from north to south, toward the slums, the railway station and finally toward the overpopulated parts of the old town. Under such circumstances, the application should have been rejected. But the UCC officials did not mention that their proposed factory would be making pesticides out of the most toxic gases available in the chemical industry.

At the beginning of the summer of 1972, UCC dispatched to UCIL all the plans for the factory's construction and development. In 1979, the Bhopal plant was inaugurated and work started. Initially, when the factory was not ready to make the MIC needed to produce Sevin, the UCIL management decided to import several hundred barrels from the parent company's factory in the United States. In May 1980, the chemical reactors of the Bhopal plant produced their first gallons of MIC and dispatched them into three huge tanks. The new CEO of UCC, Warren Anderson, came over specially from the United States for the event.

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3] It was five past midnight in Bhopal, Dominique Lapierre & Javier Moro, Full Circle Publishing, 2001.