NGOs to Stage Protest Rally in Delhi to Condemn Betrayal of Bhopal Gas Tragedy Survivors on June 24
Bhopal, June 23 (Pervez Bari): Five Bhopal-based NGOs fighting the cause of the survivors of Bhopal Gas Tragedy, the world’s worst industrial disaster, piqued at the recommendations of Group of Ministers, (GoM), on Bhopal are organizing a joint rally in New Delhi on June 24 to condemn the betrayal of the Bhopal victims once again by the Government of India.
The rally is being held from Mandi House to Jantar Mantar in New Delhi at 11 am. It is being jointly organized by the Children Against Dow Carbide; Bhopal Gas Peedit Nirashrit Pension Bhogi Sangarsh Morcha; Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Udyog Sanghatan; Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Purush Sangarsh Morcha; Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationery Karmachari Sangh; Bhopal Gas Peedit Sangarsh Sahyog Samiti and Bhopal Group for Information and Action.
These NGOs have appealed the people to join the rally in large numbers for Justice in Bhopal and don't let the Government betray Bhopal once again.
It may be mentioned here that though the official copy of the report of the Group of Ministers on Bhopal has not been released to the media. But the media has been selectively and confusingly reported on certain parts of the recommendations reportedly given to them by inside sources. These reports make it seem as if:
a) The GoM is recommending enhanced compensation for Bhopal victims to the tune of Rs. 15000 millions (324.500 millions USD); b) The GoM is recommending that the Centre will pay for clean-up and recover the money from Dow Chemical; c) The GoM will recommend the Government to address the issue of liability by pursuing Anderson and d) The GoM will recommend that Rs. 7200 millions (155.760 million USD) be handed over to the State Government to take care of rehabilitation.
It may be pointed out that a senior bureaucrat who was present at the GoM meeting revealed some startling details:
a) Only 41,000 people, out of 5,72,000 people exposed and injured by the gas leak will receive any compensation. 5,31,000 people, who received paltry sums of Rs. 25,000 from the earlier settlement for life-long ill-health, will receive nothing.
b) The GoM has reportedly committed Rs. 3000 millions (65.0689 million USD). This is wholly inadequate for cleanup of more than 10,000 tons of toxic wastes, a contaminated groundwater aquifer. Also, no provision has been made for the medical care and compensation of the 25,000 or more people who have been forced to consume this poisonous groundwater and have developed serious and lifelong illnesses as a result. As for recovery of money from Dow, the Government has indicated it will merely await a verdict from the Court and will do nothing to actively pursue Dow Chemical.
c) While much noise is made about extraditing Anderson, not a word has been mentioned about enforcing the appearance of the other foreign accused -- i.e. Union Carbide Corporation USA, and Union Carbide Eastern Hong Kong.
d) The Rs. 7200 millions (155.760 million USD) given to the State Government will suffer the same fate as the Rs. 5300 millions (114.955 million USD)already spent by the MP Government for rehabilitation of Bhopal victims. Till date, not one person has been gainfully employed as a result of MP Government's economic rehabilitation schemes. Victims are paying through their nose for medical treatment at private clinics because of the horrendous state of the hospitals set up using a big chunk of the Rs. 530 millions (114.955 million USD). A Supreme Court Monitoring Committee that looked into medical rehabilitation has severely criticized the medical infrastructure and said that the need of the hour is more doctors, better administration and better quality medicines. Instead of investing in these, the Government of Madhya Pradesh has submitted a proposal in which a bulk of the funds will be used for construction of new wings. Several million of rupees will be used to purchase fictitious equipments like "automatic micro-organism [sic] detection instruments" and non-equipment items such as "identification & sensitivity of micro organism [sic]". (pervezbari@eth.net)
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Bhopal Gas-hit Survivors Still Afflicted with Diseases, Progenies Being Born with Birth-related Defects
Bhopal Gas-hit Survivors Still Afflicted with Diseases, Progenies Being Born with Birth-related Defects
By Pervez Bari
Despair and depression is writ large on the faces of the survivors of Bhopal Gas Tragedy, the world's worst industrial disaster, as they continue to suffer silently with death staring them in their faces. The helplessness of these victims is to be seen to be believed as they watch their progenies afflicted with stunted growth born with a host of birth-related defects. With the upcoming 25th anniversary of the catastrophe a new generation has come up which is handicapped physically, mentally and emotionally.
This scenario and state of affairs is thanks to the fall-out of the poisonous. 40 tonnes of Methyl Iso Cyanate, (MIC), and other lethal gases that spewed out of the Union Carbide Corporation’s pesticide plant in Bhopal, the capital city of central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, on the intervening night of December 2-3, 1984, exposing over 5,00,000 people to the toxic fumes. While 25,000-35,000 people have died since then and hundreds of thousands of persons have been maimed for life.
Children still being born in Bhopal to badly affected survivors are blind, lame, with limbs twisted or missing, deaf & mute, brain-damaged, with hare-lips, cleft palates, webbed
A Bhopal child with tumour in her eyeball
fingers, cerebral palsy, tumours where there should be eyes etc. The still-born often cannot be recognised as human. They were damaged in the womb by chemicals leaking from the same Union Carbide factory that killed thousands in 1984 and to-date still counting.
Bhopal is well known as the site of the world's worst industrial disaster in 1984. What is less well known is that a medical disaster of unmatched proportions continues to re-victimize the gas victims to this day.
Following the gas disaster the Indian Council of Medical Research,(ICMR), a government agency – concluded, on the basis of mortality figures, that over 520,000 exposed persons had poisons circulating in their bloodstream causing different degrees of damage to almost all the systems in the body.
Today, well over 120,000-150,000 chronically ill survivors are in desperate need of medical attention and an estimated 10 to 15 people are dying every month from exposure-related illnesses. Breathlessness, persistent cough, diminished vision, early age cataracts, loss of appetite, menstrual irregularities, recurrent fever, back and body aches, loss of sensation in the limbs, fatigue, weakness, anxiety and depression are the most common symptoms among survivors. The alarming rise in cancers, TB, reproductive health problems and others such as growth retardation among children born after the disaster remain undocumented. The official agency for monitoring deaths has
Adil, child of a gas-victim, born with croocked legs
been closed since 1992.
According to Dr. N. Ganesh, an expert from Jawaharlal Nehru Cancer Hospital and Research Centre, the research conducted by him revealed that 53 per cent of the gas victims suffer from chromosomal aberrations as compared to 10 per cent common people. Also the rate of infertility and abortions are four to five per cent higher in gas victims, he added.
A recent survey says that 43 per cent of the gas victims still suffer from respiratory problems, 10 per cent from heart-related problems, nine per cent with eye problems, eight per cent with general depression problems and six per cent with gastro-intestinal problems.
To this day, the treatment of the Bhopal victims is impeded because Dow-Carbide callously refuses to share all its medical information on the toxic effects of the gases released that night, regarding the information as a “trade secret”. As a result, effective long-term medical treatment has been hampered. Even worse, the effects of the gases on future generations remains unclear even as health effects manifest themselves with disturbing regularity among the children of gas-exposed parents. Since the disaster, the city has been plagued with an epidemic of cancers, menstrual disorders and what one doctor described as "monstrous births.”
It may be recalled here that in a show of publicity as the bodies stacked up, Carbide flew a series of “top medical experts” to Bhopal to sing a chorus of reassurance. Dr. Hans Weil - reprimanded for unethical conduct by a US court for fudging medical data on behalf of the Johns-Manville corporation - predicted that ‘most victims would fully recover’. Pulmonary specialist Thomas Petty, also flown to Bhopal by Carbide, said that victims were ‘recovering rapidly’. No report made by Carbide-sponsored doctors was made available to the Indian government.
It may be recalled that in March 1985, a column of frightened mothers-to-be wound towards a government hospital with bottles containing urine samples. The women asked for the samples to be tested to check whether their babies could be born damaged, and to ask for sodium thiosulphate injections to rid their bodies of toxins inhaled on ‘that night’.
Instead of injections, tests, medical advice and kindness they were driven away by police with sticks. Ironically, even as these scared women were being chased away, the Indian Council of Medical Research, (ICMR), was carrying out a double-blind clinical trial to test the efficacy of sodium thiosulphate injections as
Six year old Sarmil born blind
a detoxifycant for the gas-exposed.
Other ‘expertise’ included Carbide’s Dr. Bipin Awasia, who sent a telex to Bhopal recommending treatment with sodium thiosulphate. When in Bhopal, flanked by lawyers, he said he’d been mistaken. As a result, tens of thousands of ailing victims were denied a treatment that double blind clinical trials had shown to be effective. Success of the treatment would have proven that the gases had crossed into the bloodstream, thus generating more expensive damages against Carbide.
And while the fears of mothers-to-be were all too soon realized in what one Swedish doctor described as ‘a spate of horrific births’, the ICMR results took 22 years to be published, when they revealed – a whole generation too late – that the injections could indeed have saved tens of thousands of lives. The disaster has faded in the world's memory, but in Bhopal the damaged births continue.
Union Carbide (now Dow Chemical,
Foetus of an unborn child of 3rd December 1984 Bhopal gas leak preserved in formaldehyde in Govt. Hamidia Hospital.
following the February 2001 merger) continues to claim over 60 years of research (including research on human 'volunteers') on MIC (the gas that leaked from the Bhopal pesticide plant) as “trade secrets”. There is more than enough research to suggest that by withholding information, propagating misinformation and the withdrawal of funds meant for medical care, Union Carbide has impeded the health care efforts of the victims to help themselves. The ICMR in turn stopped all research into the health effects of the gas in 1994 and is yet to publish the findings of the 24 research studies it had carried out up to that point involving over 80,000 survivors.
From the start, the medical response ranged from inadequate to catastrophic. On that night, hospital officials frantically called Union Carbide, seeking a treatment protocol. When they finally got through, they were blithely assured that the gas which was killing thousands was “nothing more than a potent tear gas” and that victims merely had to “wash their eyes with water.”
In the absence of medical information, no treatment protocols specific to exposure-induced multi-systemic problems exist and symptomatic treatment remains the mainstay of medical response. Of the two official publications resembling treatment protocols, the most recent by the ICMR is 11 years old and covers little except the management of respiratory problems, and the vast majority of the medical community in Bhopal is not even aware of its existence. As a result, drugs for temporary symptomatic relief have been the mainstay of medical care ever since the morning of the disaster. This indiscriminate prescription of steroids, antibiotics and psychotropic drugs continues to compound the damage caused by gas exposure.
In the prevailing situation of despair, the Sambhavna Trust, which is a charitable trust run by a group of eminent doctors, scientists, writers and social workers who have been involved with various aspects of the Union Carbide disaster ever since its occurrence in December 1984, believes in creating possibilities by generating compassion. At Sambhavna, survivors are offered free medical care through Allopathy, Ayurveda (an indigenous system of medicine based on herbs) and Yoga. The 21 staff members of the Sambhavna clinic (among whom 9 are survivors themselves) include five physicians, two yoga and two Panchakarma therapists and five community health workers who carry out health surveys, health education and community programs for better health. Satinath Sarangi, the metallurgical engineer-turned-activist, who arrived in Bhopal a day after the disaster and has stayed on to help the survivors in every way. Better known as Sathyu, he is a founding trustee of the charitable Sambhavna Clinic for the gas victims. The work carried out by the Sambhavna Trust since 1996 has shown that it is possible to evolve simple, safe, effective, ethical and participatory ways of treatment monitoring and research for the survivors of Bhopal. However, Sambhavna is small compared to the magnitude and complexity of the disaster. While an estimated 120,000-150,000 survivors of the disaster are today chronically ill, the clinic run by this trust has provided direct treatment to little over 16,000 people and provided support to about the same number through its health initiatives in 10 communities close to the Union Carbide factory.
Women's Health: Given the official neglect towards monitoring and care of gynaecological complications caused by the disaster, special attention is paid by Sambhavna in this area. While officials continue to deny any exposure-related gynaecological health consequence, data collected at Sambhavna shows that of 190 females, aged between 13 and 19, who came to the clinic between 1st June 1999 and 31st March 2000, 113 reported menstrual problems, including painful and irregular menses, heavy bleeding and excessive vaginal secretions.
The secretions, locally as ‘safed pani’ (literally white water), are not often openly discussed because of social taboos. Community health worker Aziza explains, "Women do talk about it more now but are often confined to their houses and can’t talk to their husbands about their problems or get education." Worryingly, Sambhavna’s pathologist has found a high proportion of abnormal PAP smears among women survivors, increasing fears for a connection between cervical cancer and gas exposure. Already in India, cervical cancer is the highest occurring cancer for women, but there is no provision for routine cervical screening in Bhopal. Women who are referred to local hospitals after producing abnormal smears have been reluctant to attend, given that the most common medical procedure for cervical abnormalities is an immediate hysterectomy. This is referred to as a "blind hysterectomy" because no one including the doctor knows how far or how little the malignancy is.
Meanwhile, the Indian Supreme court directed Carbide to build a 500 bed hospital from its own money. Instead, Carbide put £1000 into a trust in London and tried to transfer into this its shares in UCIL that had been seized by the Bhopal court due to Carbide’s non-appearance to face manslaughter charges. In 1994 it succeeded, thus evading the Bhopal court where the judge declared the transfer ‘malafide’. The 350-bed hospital took nearly ten years to build and within a year of opening was found to be profiteering with private patients, despite being bound to treat gas victims for eight years ‘in the first instance’.
So many government hospitals have been built in Bhopal since the 1984 disaster, that, as the International Medical Commission on Bhopal, (IMCB), has observed, there are more hospital beds per 1000 population here than in the USA or Europe. The Comptroller and Auditor General's annual reports suggest that excessive commissions, and not concern for victims' welfare, is the real motive for building these huge hospitals that house seldom-used expensive equipment.
Government initiatives towards identification of survivors have resulted in confusion, corruption and utter discrimination. Consequently there are no credible official figures of the number of victims and the degree and extent of injury. Similarly lacking are systems to document the health status and treatment given to hundreds of thousands of survivors under long-term medical care.
Given the nature of chronic exposure-induced illnesses and the need for continuous medication, systematic efforts towards finding non-toxic drug alternatives or drug-free therapies is long overdue. Such initiatives are even more imperative in the context of the rich possibilities offered by long-established indigenous systems. However, systems of health care such as Ayurveda, Unani and Yoga that are known to provide sustained relief – without contributing to the toxic load – have been given only token recognition within the official system of medical care in Bhopal. The government budgetary allocation to “alternative” medical care is under 1 per cent.
Despite repeated advice from medical professionals, including the IMCB, a community health perspective has failed to inform health care delivery among the gas-affected population. Budgetary allocations to community health services have remained under 2 per cent. As a consequence, such vital areas as health education and community involvement in medical management remain neglected.
While the corporation continues to evade liability for contamination of community water sources, the government has done little to protect over 5000 people from additional exposure and injury. Both Union Carbide [now Dow] and the Indian government are in possession of information on the hazardous and persistent nature of these pollutants, yet no effort is being made to assess the damage, or plan for remediation.
The failure of Madhya Pradesh Government agencies(despite spending over US $43 million of public money) to offer sustained relief has meant big business for private doctors and nursing homes. In the severely affected areas, most of the meagre compensation has been spent on private doctors, nearly 70 per cent of whom are not even professionally qualified, yet they constitute the majority of the medical care providers.
The BMHT (originally set up by Union Carbide) has also been found to be prescribing drugs that do more harm than good. Dr. Rajiv Bhatia, Medical Director of the Department of Public Health in San Francisco, has audited over 400 prescriptions given to chronically ill patients in the Trust's community clinics with alarming conclusions.
It is indeed a shocking situation – people surviving against the most gruesome odds – a company carrying on with “business as usual" – a government that is about to close its files on the "expendable people" of Bhopal – and the prevalent system of health care most probably doing more harm than good.
(pervezbari@eth.net)
By Pervez Bari
Despair and depression is writ large on the faces of the survivors of Bhopal Gas Tragedy, the world's worst industrial disaster, as they continue to suffer silently with death staring them in their faces. The helplessness of these victims is to be seen to be believed as they watch their progenies afflicted with stunted growth born with a host of birth-related defects. With the upcoming 25th anniversary of the catastrophe a new generation has come up which is handicapped physically, mentally and emotionally.
This scenario and state of affairs is thanks to the fall-out of the poisonous. 40 tonnes of Methyl Iso Cyanate, (MIC), and other lethal gases that spewed out of the Union Carbide Corporation’s pesticide plant in Bhopal, the capital city of central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, on the intervening night of December 2-3, 1984, exposing over 5,00,000 people to the toxic fumes. While 25,000-35,000 people have died since then and hundreds of thousands of persons have been maimed for life.
Children still being born in Bhopal to badly affected survivors are blind, lame, with limbs twisted or missing, deaf & mute, brain-damaged, with hare-lips, cleft palates, webbed
A Bhopal child with tumour in her eyeball
fingers, cerebral palsy, tumours where there should be eyes etc. The still-born often cannot be recognised as human. They were damaged in the womb by chemicals leaking from the same Union Carbide factory that killed thousands in 1984 and to-date still counting.
Bhopal is well known as the site of the world's worst industrial disaster in 1984. What is less well known is that a medical disaster of unmatched proportions continues to re-victimize the gas victims to this day.
Following the gas disaster the Indian Council of Medical Research,(ICMR), a government agency – concluded, on the basis of mortality figures, that over 520,000 exposed persons had poisons circulating in their bloodstream causing different degrees of damage to almost all the systems in the body.
Today, well over 120,000-150,000 chronically ill survivors are in desperate need of medical attention and an estimated 10 to 15 people are dying every month from exposure-related illnesses. Breathlessness, persistent cough, diminished vision, early age cataracts, loss of appetite, menstrual irregularities, recurrent fever, back and body aches, loss of sensation in the limbs, fatigue, weakness, anxiety and depression are the most common symptoms among survivors. The alarming rise in cancers, TB, reproductive health problems and others such as growth retardation among children born after the disaster remain undocumented. The official agency for monitoring deaths has
Adil, child of a gas-victim, born with croocked legs
been closed since 1992.
According to Dr. N. Ganesh, an expert from Jawaharlal Nehru Cancer Hospital and Research Centre, the research conducted by him revealed that 53 per cent of the gas victims suffer from chromosomal aberrations as compared to 10 per cent common people. Also the rate of infertility and abortions are four to five per cent higher in gas victims, he added.
A recent survey says that 43 per cent of the gas victims still suffer from respiratory problems, 10 per cent from heart-related problems, nine per cent with eye problems, eight per cent with general depression problems and six per cent with gastro-intestinal problems.
To this day, the treatment of the Bhopal victims is impeded because Dow-Carbide callously refuses to share all its medical information on the toxic effects of the gases released that night, regarding the information as a “trade secret”. As a result, effective long-term medical treatment has been hampered. Even worse, the effects of the gases on future generations remains unclear even as health effects manifest themselves with disturbing regularity among the children of gas-exposed parents. Since the disaster, the city has been plagued with an epidemic of cancers, menstrual disorders and what one doctor described as "monstrous births.”
It may be recalled here that in a show of publicity as the bodies stacked up, Carbide flew a series of “top medical experts” to Bhopal to sing a chorus of reassurance. Dr. Hans Weil - reprimanded for unethical conduct by a US court for fudging medical data on behalf of the Johns-Manville corporation - predicted that ‘most victims would fully recover’. Pulmonary specialist Thomas Petty, also flown to Bhopal by Carbide, said that victims were ‘recovering rapidly’. No report made by Carbide-sponsored doctors was made available to the Indian government.
It may be recalled that in March 1985, a column of frightened mothers-to-be wound towards a government hospital with bottles containing urine samples. The women asked for the samples to be tested to check whether their babies could be born damaged, and to ask for sodium thiosulphate injections to rid their bodies of toxins inhaled on ‘that night’.
Instead of injections, tests, medical advice and kindness they were driven away by police with sticks. Ironically, even as these scared women were being chased away, the Indian Council of Medical Research, (ICMR), was carrying out a double-blind clinical trial to test the efficacy of sodium thiosulphate injections as
Six year old Sarmil born blind
a detoxifycant for the gas-exposed.
Other ‘expertise’ included Carbide’s Dr. Bipin Awasia, who sent a telex to Bhopal recommending treatment with sodium thiosulphate. When in Bhopal, flanked by lawyers, he said he’d been mistaken. As a result, tens of thousands of ailing victims were denied a treatment that double blind clinical trials had shown to be effective. Success of the treatment would have proven that the gases had crossed into the bloodstream, thus generating more expensive damages against Carbide.
And while the fears of mothers-to-be were all too soon realized in what one Swedish doctor described as ‘a spate of horrific births’, the ICMR results took 22 years to be published, when they revealed – a whole generation too late – that the injections could indeed have saved tens of thousands of lives. The disaster has faded in the world's memory, but in Bhopal the damaged births continue.
Union Carbide (now Dow Chemical,
Foetus of an unborn child of 3rd December 1984 Bhopal gas leak preserved in formaldehyde in Govt. Hamidia Hospital.
following the February 2001 merger) continues to claim over 60 years of research (including research on human 'volunteers') on MIC (the gas that leaked from the Bhopal pesticide plant) as “trade secrets”. There is more than enough research to suggest that by withholding information, propagating misinformation and the withdrawal of funds meant for medical care, Union Carbide has impeded the health care efforts of the victims to help themselves. The ICMR in turn stopped all research into the health effects of the gas in 1994 and is yet to publish the findings of the 24 research studies it had carried out up to that point involving over 80,000 survivors.
From the start, the medical response ranged from inadequate to catastrophic. On that night, hospital officials frantically called Union Carbide, seeking a treatment protocol. When they finally got through, they were blithely assured that the gas which was killing thousands was “nothing more than a potent tear gas” and that victims merely had to “wash their eyes with water.”
In the absence of medical information, no treatment protocols specific to exposure-induced multi-systemic problems exist and symptomatic treatment remains the mainstay of medical response. Of the two official publications resembling treatment protocols, the most recent by the ICMR is 11 years old and covers little except the management of respiratory problems, and the vast majority of the medical community in Bhopal is not even aware of its existence. As a result, drugs for temporary symptomatic relief have been the mainstay of medical care ever since the morning of the disaster. This indiscriminate prescription of steroids, antibiotics and psychotropic drugs continues to compound the damage caused by gas exposure.
In the prevailing situation of despair, the Sambhavna Trust, which is a charitable trust run by a group of eminent doctors, scientists, writers and social workers who have been involved with various aspects of the Union Carbide disaster ever since its occurrence in December 1984, believes in creating possibilities by generating compassion. At Sambhavna, survivors are offered free medical care through Allopathy, Ayurveda (an indigenous system of medicine based on herbs) and Yoga. The 21 staff members of the Sambhavna clinic (among whom 9 are survivors themselves) include five physicians, two yoga and two Panchakarma therapists and five community health workers who carry out health surveys, health education and community programs for better health. Satinath Sarangi, the metallurgical engineer-turned-activist, who arrived in Bhopal a day after the disaster and has stayed on to help the survivors in every way. Better known as Sathyu, he is a founding trustee of the charitable Sambhavna Clinic for the gas victims. The work carried out by the Sambhavna Trust since 1996 has shown that it is possible to evolve simple, safe, effective, ethical and participatory ways of treatment monitoring and research for the survivors of Bhopal. However, Sambhavna is small compared to the magnitude and complexity of the disaster. While an estimated 120,000-150,000 survivors of the disaster are today chronically ill, the clinic run by this trust has provided direct treatment to little over 16,000 people and provided support to about the same number through its health initiatives in 10 communities close to the Union Carbide factory.
Women's Health: Given the official neglect towards monitoring and care of gynaecological complications caused by the disaster, special attention is paid by Sambhavna in this area. While officials continue to deny any exposure-related gynaecological health consequence, data collected at Sambhavna shows that of 190 females, aged between 13 and 19, who came to the clinic between 1st June 1999 and 31st March 2000, 113 reported menstrual problems, including painful and irregular menses, heavy bleeding and excessive vaginal secretions.
The secretions, locally as ‘safed pani’ (literally white water), are not often openly discussed because of social taboos. Community health worker Aziza explains, "Women do talk about it more now but are often confined to their houses and can’t talk to their husbands about their problems or get education." Worryingly, Sambhavna’s pathologist has found a high proportion of abnormal PAP smears among women survivors, increasing fears for a connection between cervical cancer and gas exposure. Already in India, cervical cancer is the highest occurring cancer for women, but there is no provision for routine cervical screening in Bhopal. Women who are referred to local hospitals after producing abnormal smears have been reluctant to attend, given that the most common medical procedure for cervical abnormalities is an immediate hysterectomy. This is referred to as a "blind hysterectomy" because no one including the doctor knows how far or how little the malignancy is.
Meanwhile, the Indian Supreme court directed Carbide to build a 500 bed hospital from its own money. Instead, Carbide put £1000 into a trust in London and tried to transfer into this its shares in UCIL that had been seized by the Bhopal court due to Carbide’s non-appearance to face manslaughter charges. In 1994 it succeeded, thus evading the Bhopal court where the judge declared the transfer ‘malafide’. The 350-bed hospital took nearly ten years to build and within a year of opening was found to be profiteering with private patients, despite being bound to treat gas victims for eight years ‘in the first instance’.
So many government hospitals have been built in Bhopal since the 1984 disaster, that, as the International Medical Commission on Bhopal, (IMCB), has observed, there are more hospital beds per 1000 population here than in the USA or Europe. The Comptroller and Auditor General's annual reports suggest that excessive commissions, and not concern for victims' welfare, is the real motive for building these huge hospitals that house seldom-used expensive equipment.
Government initiatives towards identification of survivors have resulted in confusion, corruption and utter discrimination. Consequently there are no credible official figures of the number of victims and the degree and extent of injury. Similarly lacking are systems to document the health status and treatment given to hundreds of thousands of survivors under long-term medical care.
Given the nature of chronic exposure-induced illnesses and the need for continuous medication, systematic efforts towards finding non-toxic drug alternatives or drug-free therapies is long overdue. Such initiatives are even more imperative in the context of the rich possibilities offered by long-established indigenous systems. However, systems of health care such as Ayurveda, Unani and Yoga that are known to provide sustained relief – without contributing to the toxic load – have been given only token recognition within the official system of medical care in Bhopal. The government budgetary allocation to “alternative” medical care is under 1 per cent.
Despite repeated advice from medical professionals, including the IMCB, a community health perspective has failed to inform health care delivery among the gas-affected population. Budgetary allocations to community health services have remained under 2 per cent. As a consequence, such vital areas as health education and community involvement in medical management remain neglected.
While the corporation continues to evade liability for contamination of community water sources, the government has done little to protect over 5000 people from additional exposure and injury. Both Union Carbide [now Dow] and the Indian government are in possession of information on the hazardous and persistent nature of these pollutants, yet no effort is being made to assess the damage, or plan for remediation.
The failure of Madhya Pradesh Government agencies(despite spending over US $43 million of public money) to offer sustained relief has meant big business for private doctors and nursing homes. In the severely affected areas, most of the meagre compensation has been spent on private doctors, nearly 70 per cent of whom are not even professionally qualified, yet they constitute the majority of the medical care providers.
The BMHT (originally set up by Union Carbide) has also been found to be prescribing drugs that do more harm than good. Dr. Rajiv Bhatia, Medical Director of the Department of Public Health in San Francisco, has audited over 400 prescriptions given to chronically ill patients in the Trust's community clinics with alarming conclusions.
It is indeed a shocking situation – people surviving against the most gruesome odds – a company carrying on with “business as usual" – a government that is about to close its files on the "expendable people" of Bhopal – and the prevalent system of health care most probably doing more harm than good.
(pervezbari@eth.net)
Bhopal gas tragedy: Madhya Pradesh CM seeks explanation from Arjun Singh
Bhopal gas tragedy: Madhya Pradesh CM seeks explanation from Arjun Singh
Bhopal, June 11 (ANI): Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan has written a letter to veteran Congress leader and former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Arjun Singh seeking an explanation for the escape of Union Carbide Chairman Warren Anderson, in connection with the 1984 Bhopal Gas Tragedy.
In the letter, Singh asked Arjun Singh to reveal the person responsible facilitating the safe passage for Warren Anderson days after the Bhopal gas leak.
"I have written a letter to Arjun Singh asking him to reveal that under whose orders did he take a decision to free Anderson on December 7, 1984, soon after his arrest. Because, the then District Collector of Bhopal is saying that the Chief Secretary asked him to not only release Anderson, but also to fly him from Bhopal to New Delhi in the state plane," said Chauhan.
Chauhan added that the court verdict on the case was unacceptable.
"I believe that if someone has taken this decision, then there can be no bigger crime against the gas leak victims and the residents of Bhopal. It is the right of the country to know the truth and all facts should be revealed. Therefore it is very important that Arjun Singh breaks his silence, and that is why, I have requested him to bring the truth in front of the country," said Chauhan.
On Thursday, former Madhya Pradesh Aviation Director R.S. Sondhi and a pilot both claimed that they were instructed by the Chief Minister’s Office to fly Anderson out of Bhopal.
Sondhi said Arjun Singh’s office sent the orders to fly Anderson out of the troubled zone.
"At around 2 p.m., we received a call at the office of the Director (Aviation) at the airport (Bhopal) from the secretariat of the chief minister office that an aircraft has to be sent to Delhi around 4 p.m. We prepared the plane accordingly," he added.
Captain S.H. Ali, the pilot, who flew Anderson out of Bhopal on December 7, 1984, four days after the deadly gas accident, said he was asked by the authorities to fly Anderson to New Delhi.
"At around 4:30 p.m., Anderson and the other officials came to Bhopal Airport. We asked Anderson to get inside the aircraft. We closed the door of the aircraft and left for Delhi. I came to know that later it was Anderson," said Ali.
On Monday, a District Magistrate’s Court in Bhopal had convicted all eight accused on grounds of negligence under Section 304 (a) for the tragedy.
The court also granted bail to seven of the eight accused and released them on submission of a bond and a surety of Rs 25,000 each.
The eight accused are Keshub Mahendra, Vijay Gokhle, Kishore Kamdar, J Mukund, S P Choudhary, K V Shetty and S I Qureshi and R B Roy Choudhary.
Out of the accused R B Roy Choudhary, then former Assistant Works Manager Union Carbide India Ltd (UCIL), Mumbai, died during the trial.
Warren Anderson, the chairman of Union Carbide Worldwide, has been designated an absconder.
Source: ANI
Bhopal, June 11 (ANI): Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan has written a letter to veteran Congress leader and former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Arjun Singh seeking an explanation for the escape of Union Carbide Chairman Warren Anderson, in connection with the 1984 Bhopal Gas Tragedy.
In the letter, Singh asked Arjun Singh to reveal the person responsible facilitating the safe passage for Warren Anderson days after the Bhopal gas leak.
"I have written a letter to Arjun Singh asking him to reveal that under whose orders did he take a decision to free Anderson on December 7, 1984, soon after his arrest. Because, the then District Collector of Bhopal is saying that the Chief Secretary asked him to not only release Anderson, but also to fly him from Bhopal to New Delhi in the state plane," said Chauhan.
Chauhan added that the court verdict on the case was unacceptable.
"I believe that if someone has taken this decision, then there can be no bigger crime against the gas leak victims and the residents of Bhopal. It is the right of the country to know the truth and all facts should be revealed. Therefore it is very important that Arjun Singh breaks his silence, and that is why, I have requested him to bring the truth in front of the country," said Chauhan.
On Thursday, former Madhya Pradesh Aviation Director R.S. Sondhi and a pilot both claimed that they were instructed by the Chief Minister’s Office to fly Anderson out of Bhopal.
Sondhi said Arjun Singh’s office sent the orders to fly Anderson out of the troubled zone.
"At around 2 p.m., we received a call at the office of the Director (Aviation) at the airport (Bhopal) from the secretariat of the chief minister office that an aircraft has to be sent to Delhi around 4 p.m. We prepared the plane accordingly," he added.
Captain S.H. Ali, the pilot, who flew Anderson out of Bhopal on December 7, 1984, four days after the deadly gas accident, said he was asked by the authorities to fly Anderson to New Delhi.
"At around 4:30 p.m., Anderson and the other officials came to Bhopal Airport. We asked Anderson to get inside the aircraft. We closed the door of the aircraft and left for Delhi. I came to know that later it was Anderson," said Ali.
On Monday, a District Magistrate’s Court in Bhopal had convicted all eight accused on grounds of negligence under Section 304 (a) for the tragedy.
The court also granted bail to seven of the eight accused and released them on submission of a bond and a surety of Rs 25,000 each.
The eight accused are Keshub Mahendra, Vijay Gokhle, Kishore Kamdar, J Mukund, S P Choudhary, K V Shetty and S I Qureshi and R B Roy Choudhary.
Out of the accused R B Roy Choudhary, then former Assistant Works Manager Union Carbide India Ltd (UCIL), Mumbai, died during the trial.
Warren Anderson, the chairman of Union Carbide Worldwide, has been designated an absconder.
Source: ANI
BJP stages ‘dharna’ in Bhopal, says Rajiv responsible for Anderson's escape
BJP stages ‘dharna’ in Bhopal, says Rajiv responsible for Anderson's escape
Bhopal, June 18 (Pervez Bari): The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, (BJP), in Madhya Pradesh, staged a massive demonstration "dharna" (sit-in) against the failure of the successive Congress Governments to extradite Union Carbide Corporation Chief Warren Anderson here on Friday.
Led by the Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha Mrs. Sushma Swaraj alleged that the then Congress-ruled Prime Minister of India Rajiv Gandhi
was responsible for the escape of Bhopal gas tragedy prime accused Warren Anderson from the country.
Speaking at the "dharna" site Mrs. Swaraj said that likewise, Bofors scandal accused Ottavio Quattrocchi was allowed to leave India. She demanded justice for the victims of the December 1984 gas leak. She said securing of bail for Anderson in Bhopal, the then District Collector and the Superintendent of Police escorting him to airport in a government car and he being flown to Delhi from Bhopal in a government plane could not have happened only at the instance of the then Chief Minister Arjun Singh.
Mrs. Swaraj said as such apart from Rajiv Gandhi and Arjun Singh, the then Chief Justice of India A. M. Ahmadi is also guilty of denying justice to Bhopal gas tragedy victims as he diluted the charges against Anderson. The charges were framed under Section 304A of Indian Penal Code, (IPC), and not under Section 304-II of IPC which had been struck down by the Supreme Court of India in September 1996.
Speakers after speakers spewed ire against the trio demanding death to them and adequate compensation to the victims. BJP General Secretary in-charge of Madhya Pradesh Anant Kumar, BJP General Secretary and MP Narendra Singh Tomar and State president and MP Prabhat Jha amongst others addressed the sit-in demonstration.
All the State office bearers of the party, district presidents, Member of Parliaments, Legislators, former parliamentarians and legislators, Mayors and other elected representatives of the party from the State attended the sit in demonstration.
Meanwhile, Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee, (MPCC), has questioned the then BJP-led Federal NDA Government in 1996 presided over by Atal Behari Vajpayee of not appealing against the Supreme Court’s September 13, 1996 judgment diluting the charges against the officials of killer Union Carbide’s pesticide plant.
A spokesman of the MPCC said that BJP has no moral right to plead for the gas victims and shed crocodile tears as it took no remedial measures to undo the Supreme Court verdict which reduced the prison term to only two years under Section 304A of IPC and not under Section 304-II of IPC — that attracts a maximum jail term of 10 years. (pervezbari@eth.net)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Court convicts eight over Bhopal gas leak
BHOPAL, India — An Indian court on Monday sentenced the former top managers of the company blamed for the 1984 Bhopal gas leak to two years in prison in the first convictions over the catastrophe.
Eight people were found guilty in the local court in Bhopal, capital of central Madhya Pradesh state, over the 1984 incident which poisoned tens of thousands of people in the world's worst industrial accident.
A lethal plume of gas escaped from a storage tank at the US-run Union Carbide pesticide factory in the early hours of December 3, 1984, killing thousands in the surrounding slums and residential area.
Among those found guilty of criminal negligence was the chairman of the Indian unit of US group Union Carbide, Keshub Mahindra, a leading industrialist who is now chairman of car and truck group Mahindra & Mahindra.
The guilty, also including the managing director, the production manager and the plant supervisor, were all sentenced to two years in prison and were ordered to pay a fine of 100,000 rupees (2,100 dollars), lawyers told reporters.
All of them are now expected to launch appeals and will not be jailed immediately. One of the eight convicted, R.B. Roychoudhury, has already died.
Warren Anderson, the American then-chairman of the US-based Union Carbide parent group, was among the accused but he was not named in the verdicts after the Bhopal court declared him an "absconder".
The company executives were originally charged with culpable homicide but -- to the outrage of survivors and victims -- the Supreme Court in 1996 reduced the charges to death by negligence with maximum imprisonment of just two years.
"Even with the guilty judgment, what does two years' punishment mean?" Sadhna Karnik, of the Bhopal Gas Victims Struggle group, told AFP.
"They will be able to appeal against the judgement in higher courts," he said.
Outside the court on Monday, victims and members of human rights groups anxiously waited. Some shouted that the verdict was an "insult." Others criticised the time it had taken for the convictions.
"Justice has been delayed and denied," read one placard.
Government figures put the death toll at 3,500 within the first three days of the leak but independent data by the state-run Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) puts the figure at between 8,000 and 10,000 in the same period.
The ICMR has said that until 1994, 25,000 people also died from the consequences of gas exposure, with victim groups saying many were still suffering from the effects to this day.
Survivors remember their eyes grew huge and red after the leak and they began frothing at the mouth and vomiting after inhaling the gas. Many recall hundreds of dead lying in the streets.
Government statistics compiled after 1994 concluded that at least 100,000 people living near the factory were chronically sick, with more than 30,000 residing in areas with contaminated water.
A study last year by the Britain-based Bhopal Medical Appeal said the shanty towns surrounding the site were still laced with lethal chemicals that are polluting groundwater and soil, causing birth defects and a range of illnesses.
Dow Chemical bought Union Carbide in 1999 but says all liabilities related to the accident were cleared in a 470-million-dollar out-of-court settlement with the Indian government in 1989.
A statement released to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the disaster said the settlement "resolved all existing and future claims" against the company.
Union Carbide "did all it could to help the victims and their families" until the settlement and said the Indian government should be responsible for providing clean drinking water and health services to residents, it said.
The company said at the time and continues to insist that sabotage was behind the leak, but the victims have long fought for it to provide further compensation and for its senior staff to face justice.
One victims' group member, Satyanath Sarangi, described the maximum two-year sentence as comparable to the punishment for a "traffic accident."
"We will continue our fight," he said. "This is just the beginning."
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described Bhopal as a tragedy that "still gnaws at our collective conscience" and has vowed continued efforts to tackle the issues of drinking water and site decontamination.
(AFP)
Bhopal, June 18 (Pervez Bari): The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, (BJP), in Madhya Pradesh, staged a massive demonstration "dharna" (sit-in) against the failure of the successive Congress Governments to extradite Union Carbide Corporation Chief Warren Anderson here on Friday.
Led by the Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha Mrs. Sushma Swaraj alleged that the then Congress-ruled Prime Minister of India Rajiv Gandhi
was responsible for the escape of Bhopal gas tragedy prime accused Warren Anderson from the country.
Speaking at the "dharna" site Mrs. Swaraj said that likewise, Bofors scandal accused Ottavio Quattrocchi was allowed to leave India. She demanded justice for the victims of the December 1984 gas leak. She said securing of bail for Anderson in Bhopal, the then District Collector and the Superintendent of Police escorting him to airport in a government car and he being flown to Delhi from Bhopal in a government plane could not have happened only at the instance of the then Chief Minister Arjun Singh.
Mrs. Swaraj said as such apart from Rajiv Gandhi and Arjun Singh, the then Chief Justice of India A. M. Ahmadi is also guilty of denying justice to Bhopal gas tragedy victims as he diluted the charges against Anderson. The charges were framed under Section 304A of Indian Penal Code, (IPC), and not under Section 304-II of IPC which had been struck down by the Supreme Court of India in September 1996.
Speakers after speakers spewed ire against the trio demanding death to them and adequate compensation to the victims. BJP General Secretary in-charge of Madhya Pradesh Anant Kumar, BJP General Secretary and MP Narendra Singh Tomar and State president and MP Prabhat Jha amongst others addressed the sit-in demonstration.
All the State office bearers of the party, district presidents, Member of Parliaments, Legislators, former parliamentarians and legislators, Mayors and other elected representatives of the party from the State attended the sit in demonstration.
Meanwhile, Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee, (MPCC), has questioned the then BJP-led Federal NDA Government in 1996 presided over by Atal Behari Vajpayee of not appealing against the Supreme Court’s September 13, 1996 judgment diluting the charges against the officials of killer Union Carbide’s pesticide plant.
A spokesman of the MPCC said that BJP has no moral right to plead for the gas victims and shed crocodile tears as it took no remedial measures to undo the Supreme Court verdict which reduced the prison term to only two years under Section 304A of IPC and not under Section 304-II of IPC — that attracts a maximum jail term of 10 years. (pervezbari@eth.net)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Court convicts eight over Bhopal gas leak
BHOPAL, India — An Indian court on Monday sentenced the former top managers of the company blamed for the 1984 Bhopal gas leak to two years in prison in the first convictions over the catastrophe.
Eight people were found guilty in the local court in Bhopal, capital of central Madhya Pradesh state, over the 1984 incident which poisoned tens of thousands of people in the world's worst industrial accident.
A lethal plume of gas escaped from a storage tank at the US-run Union Carbide pesticide factory in the early hours of December 3, 1984, killing thousands in the surrounding slums and residential area.
Among those found guilty of criminal negligence was the chairman of the Indian unit of US group Union Carbide, Keshub Mahindra, a leading industrialist who is now chairman of car and truck group Mahindra & Mahindra.
The guilty, also including the managing director, the production manager and the plant supervisor, were all sentenced to two years in prison and were ordered to pay a fine of 100,000 rupees (2,100 dollars), lawyers told reporters.
All of them are now expected to launch appeals and will not be jailed immediately. One of the eight convicted, R.B. Roychoudhury, has already died.
Warren Anderson, the American then-chairman of the US-based Union Carbide parent group, was among the accused but he was not named in the verdicts after the Bhopal court declared him an "absconder".
The company executives were originally charged with culpable homicide but -- to the outrage of survivors and victims -- the Supreme Court in 1996 reduced the charges to death by negligence with maximum imprisonment of just two years.
"Even with the guilty judgment, what does two years' punishment mean?" Sadhna Karnik, of the Bhopal Gas Victims Struggle group, told AFP.
"They will be able to appeal against the judgement in higher courts," he said.
Outside the court on Monday, victims and members of human rights groups anxiously waited. Some shouted that the verdict was an "insult." Others criticised the time it had taken for the convictions.
"Justice has been delayed and denied," read one placard.
Government figures put the death toll at 3,500 within the first three days of the leak but independent data by the state-run Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) puts the figure at between 8,000 and 10,000 in the same period.
The ICMR has said that until 1994, 25,000 people also died from the consequences of gas exposure, with victim groups saying many were still suffering from the effects to this day.
Survivors remember their eyes grew huge and red after the leak and they began frothing at the mouth and vomiting after inhaling the gas. Many recall hundreds of dead lying in the streets.
Government statistics compiled after 1994 concluded that at least 100,000 people living near the factory were chronically sick, with more than 30,000 residing in areas with contaminated water.
A study last year by the Britain-based Bhopal Medical Appeal said the shanty towns surrounding the site were still laced with lethal chemicals that are polluting groundwater and soil, causing birth defects and a range of illnesses.
Dow Chemical bought Union Carbide in 1999 but says all liabilities related to the accident were cleared in a 470-million-dollar out-of-court settlement with the Indian government in 1989.
A statement released to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the disaster said the settlement "resolved all existing and future claims" against the company.
Union Carbide "did all it could to help the victims and their families" until the settlement and said the Indian government should be responsible for providing clean drinking water and health services to residents, it said.
The company said at the time and continues to insist that sabotage was behind the leak, but the victims have long fought for it to provide further compensation and for its senior staff to face justice.
One victims' group member, Satyanath Sarangi, described the maximum two-year sentence as comparable to the punishment for a "traffic accident."
"We will continue our fight," he said. "This is just the beginning."
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described Bhopal as a tragedy that "still gnaws at our collective conscience" and has vowed continued efforts to tackle the issues of drinking water and site decontamination.
(AFP)
Saturday, June 19, 2010
The Group of Ministers on Bhopal gas tragedy will finalise
New Delhi, June 18 /--/ The Group of Ministers on Bhopal gas tragedy will finalise its report on Monday making its recommendations on relief, rehabilitation and remediation issues and legal options in the wake of the recent trial court judgement in the case. After the first meeting of the reconstituted GoM that was mandated by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to give its report in 10 days, home minister P Chidambaram, who heads the GoM, told reporters that the Group was proceeding in the right direction and was determined address all issues, including relief, rehabilitation and remediation by Sunday. "We are looking at them separately and then we will take a comprehensive view," he said adding they were now looking into the number of people affected, number of claims that were accepted and claims categorised as death and injury cases. He said the GoM will meet in two sessions tomorrow and on Sunday. "On Monday, we should be able to finalise the recommendations." "We will give our best and most sympathetic consideration to all these people who have suffered as a result of this tragedy," Mr Chidambaram said. The GoM was announced in the wake of a raging controversy over the light punishment given to Bhopal case accused by a local court and several questions being raised over the exit of the then Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson. Union ministers M Veerappa Moily (Law), Ghulam Nabi Azad (Health), Kamal Nath (Surface Transport), M K Alagiri (Chemicals), Kumari Selja (Tourism), S Jaipal Reddy (Urban Development), Prithviraj Chavan (Science and Technology) and Jairam Ramesh (Environment). Madhya Pradesh Minister Babulal Gaur also attended the meeting as special invitee. Cabinet secretary K M Chandrashekhar, home secretary G K Pillai, foreign secretary Nirupama Rao were among the officials who attended the meeting. . At the meeting today, the GoM identified the areas which require in-depth consideration in the wake of the mandate given by the Prime Minister to look into relief, rehabilitation, remediation and all options available to the government after the judgement of the trial court on June 7. "Tomorrow, we will look at legal and health issues, remediation issues and all other issues that arise out of the judgement of the trial court," he said. Mr Chidambaram said he would not be in a position to share any details about the conclusion till the report is submitted to the Prime Minister. During today's deliberations, it was felt that in government's eyes, Warren Anderson was still a proclaimed offender and the charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder under Section 304 (Part II) was still there. Tomorrow, the meeting is also likely to consider the liability of Dow Chemicals for the cleaning up of the site in Bhopal. It was re-collected that the law ministry had taken such a stand in the Madhya Pradesh High Court. The issue of the possibility of Anderson extradition will also be taken tomorrow. Asked whether the Planning Commission had given a Rs 982 crore plan for relief, Mr Chidambaram said the plan panel had given its view on the Second Action Plan submitted by the government of Madhya Pradesh. "It is a separate issue and will be considered," the home minister said.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Young French artistes in City of Lakes
Young French artistes in City of Lakes
Bhopal, June 17:
Five young artistes from France are in this City of Lakes to showcase their talent that is inspired by jazz, gypsy and fusion music.
''This is our first international tour. So far the experience has been good. The Mumbai crowd enjoyed thoroughly by dancing to our tunes whereas in Chandigarh people went into a trance,'' Guillaume Marin -- who plays bass in the group named Sam Smala.
Music buffs are in for a treat as the group is to perform later today at the multi-art centre Bharat Bhavan. The concert is being organised by Alliance Francaise de Bhopal and Indo-French Cultural Centre with support from the French Embassy.
''We organise these kind of events often to promote Indo-French culture. People in Bhopal like Jazz and response is generally good.
As far as logistics is concerned, Bharat Bhavan supported us,'' said Rita from Alliance Francaise that also organises exhibitions at least once a month.
Smala is a word that comes from North Africa and means family.
Guitarist Samuel Strouk performed his first solo concert at the Beaux Arts de Lima Auditorium at the age of 26. In 2008, he worked on three albums and along with other musicians composed and recorded musical scores for films and documentaries. He is the composer, arranger and singer of Carhabana -- an amazing fusion of Cuban jazz and Manouche jazz.
Marin studied saxophone and classical music for a decade at the Conservatoire de Montpellier. Later, with the help of the electric bass he explored other musical styles including jazz, funk and flamenco.
Drummer Quentin Braine lives in Paris and plays with various formations.
Mathias Levy, who handles the violin and guitar, was awarded the first prize for violin and Chamber music at the Conservatoire de Raincy in 1999. The musician has performed more than 400 concerts with the group Caravan Quartet and has toured Turkey, Cuba and Pakistan.
Of Indonesian origin, singer Serena Fisseau is a polyglot singer who launched the group Bahasabe that has performed at various places across the globe and also released three albums. The singer teaches music and conducts workshops regularly in France.
Bhopal, June 17:
Five young artistes from France are in this City of Lakes to showcase their talent that is inspired by jazz, gypsy and fusion music.
''This is our first international tour. So far the experience has been good. The Mumbai crowd enjoyed thoroughly by dancing to our tunes whereas in Chandigarh people went into a trance,'' Guillaume Marin -- who plays bass in the group named Sam Smala.
Music buffs are in for a treat as the group is to perform later today at the multi-art centre Bharat Bhavan. The concert is being organised by Alliance Francaise de Bhopal and Indo-French Cultural Centre with support from the French Embassy.
''We organise these kind of events often to promote Indo-French culture. People in Bhopal like Jazz and response is generally good.
As far as logistics is concerned, Bharat Bhavan supported us,'' said Rita from Alliance Francaise that also organises exhibitions at least once a month.
Smala is a word that comes from North Africa and means family.
Guitarist Samuel Strouk performed his first solo concert at the Beaux Arts de Lima Auditorium at the age of 26. In 2008, he worked on three albums and along with other musicians composed and recorded musical scores for films and documentaries. He is the composer, arranger and singer of Carhabana -- an amazing fusion of Cuban jazz and Manouche jazz.
Marin studied saxophone and classical music for a decade at the Conservatoire de Montpellier. Later, with the help of the electric bass he explored other musical styles including jazz, funk and flamenco.
Drummer Quentin Braine lives in Paris and plays with various formations.
Mathias Levy, who handles the violin and guitar, was awarded the first prize for violin and Chamber music at the Conservatoire de Raincy in 1999. The musician has performed more than 400 concerts with the group Caravan Quartet and has toured Turkey, Cuba and Pakistan.
Of Indonesian origin, singer Serena Fisseau is a polyglot singer who launched the group Bahasabe that has performed at various places across the globe and also released three albums. The singer teaches music and conducts workshops regularly in France.
Gas tragedy has exposed the drawbacks in the judicial, political setup
Gas tragedy has exposed the drawbacks in the judicial, political setup
Bhopal, June 17:
Zahreeli Gas Kand Sangarsh Morcha Bhopal convener Alok Pratap Singh has written a letter to Home Minister P Chidambaram in which he has expressed happiness over the fact that group of ministers would be led by him. He added that Bhopal gas victims have lot of hope from the meeting of group of ministers to be held on Friday under the leadership of Home Minister.
Singh added that after the Bhopal gas tragedy various incidents have exposed the drawbacks in the judicial, administrative and political edifice. This has posed dual challenge before us. One of the challenge is to get the guilty punished, gas victims should get additional compensation and their rehabilitation should be done and the expenses of removing the toxic waste from Union Carbide factory should be taken from Dow Chemicals. The second challenge is that the posterity should be given such a judicial and administrative machinery where there is no place for such type of negligence and mishap.
Zahreeli Gas Kand Sangarsh Morcha Bhopal convener Alok Pratap Singh has given the following suggestions for consideration.
Warren Anderson should be extradited and presented before court. Those officers of MP Government who gave bail to Anderson in the year 1984 illegally case should be registered against them.
Bhopal, June 17:
Zahreeli Gas Kand Sangarsh Morcha Bhopal convener Alok Pratap Singh has written a letter to Home Minister P Chidambaram in which he has expressed happiness over the fact that group of ministers would be led by him. He added that Bhopal gas victims have lot of hope from the meeting of group of ministers to be held on Friday under the leadership of Home Minister.
Singh added that after the Bhopal gas tragedy various incidents have exposed the drawbacks in the judicial, administrative and political edifice. This has posed dual challenge before us. One of the challenge is to get the guilty punished, gas victims should get additional compensation and their rehabilitation should be done and the expenses of removing the toxic waste from Union Carbide factory should be taken from Dow Chemicals. The second challenge is that the posterity should be given such a judicial and administrative machinery where there is no place for such type of negligence and mishap.
Zahreeli Gas Kand Sangarsh Morcha Bhopal convener Alok Pratap Singh has given the following suggestions for consideration.
Warren Anderson should be extradited and presented before court. Those officers of MP Government who gave bail to Anderson in the year 1984 illegally case should be registered against them.
CPI: Central, State govts diluted case of gas victims
Bhopal, June 17:
Communist Party of India (CPI) has levelled allegations on Central and State governments of diluting the case of gas victims and taking anti people decisions. CPI district secretary Shailendra Kumar Shelly said in a press release that Central and State governments were trying to save Anderson and they hatched conspiracy to make minimum assessment of adverse affects of gas tragedy and tried to hide and destroy the evidence. To probe the case of gas tragedy the then government had constituted judicial commission but few months after constitution of this commission it lost its relevance and existance.
Aarambh organises cleanliness, awareness drive
Bhopal, June 17:
An organisation Arrambh with coordination of Bhopal Municipal Corporation is running AIF/CIF programmes in 14 slum areas of City. In the absence of proper toilets, clean drinking water and good sanitary condition slum dwellers of Gandhi Nagar area were facing lot of problems. Arrambh along with the cooperation of CGC members organised cleanliness and public awareness drive during which a Rath was taken out at 11 am on June 17: . Through road show effort was made to increase awareness of cleanliness in 5 colonies of Gandhi Nagar area.
Communist Party of India (CPI) has levelled allegations on Central and State governments of diluting the case of gas victims and taking anti people decisions. CPI district secretary Shailendra Kumar Shelly said in a press release that Central and State governments were trying to save Anderson and they hatched conspiracy to make minimum assessment of adverse affects of gas tragedy and tried to hide and destroy the evidence. To probe the case of gas tragedy the then government had constituted judicial commission but few months after constitution of this commission it lost its relevance and existance.
Aarambh organises cleanliness, awareness drive
Bhopal, June 17:
An organisation Arrambh with coordination of Bhopal Municipal Corporation is running AIF/CIF programmes in 14 slum areas of City. In the absence of proper toilets, clean drinking water and good sanitary condition slum dwellers of Gandhi Nagar area were facing lot of problems. Arrambh along with the cooperation of CGC members organised cleanliness and public awareness drive during which a Rath was taken out at 11 am on June 17: . Through road show effort was made to increase awareness of cleanliness in 5 colonies of Gandhi Nagar area.
CBI had sought dilution of charge against Anderson
CBI had sought dilution of charge against Anderson
Bhopal Posted On Thursday, June 17, 2010
Bhopal, June 17:
In the midst of the political storm over the Bhopal gas case verdict, the records of the trial court show that the CBI had sought dilution of the stringent charge against UCC CEO Warren Anderson on the lines of the relief given by the Supreme Court in the case against the Indian accused.
In 2002, the CBI had filed an application in the court seeking that the charge under section 304 II of IPC (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) against Anderson be changed to section 304 (A) (causing death by negligence). While 304 II entails a maximum of 10 years imprisonment, 304 provides for two years jail term.
The CBI had moved the CJM's court six years after the Supreme Court had watered down the charge against seven Indian accused in the case under section 304 II to 304 (a). Anderson had not appeared before any court after he returned to the US in December 1984 and his case was delinked from that of the other accused.
However, Chief Judicial Magistrate Rameshwar Kothe had on August 28, 2002, dismissed the CBI plea and directed it to inform the court about the steps being taken by it to get him extradited from the US.
Following this, the CBI had told the court on October 18, 2002 that the work regarding Anderson's extradition was on.
The court had dismissed the CBI application after interveners in the case, including NGO Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Udyog Sangathan, had argued that if section 304 II was diluted to 304 (a) against Anderson, his extradition will become impossible as the case will get reduced to that a minor accident.
Also, the interveners had argued before the trial judge that the CBI plea should be dismissed as Anderson had never appeared in the court for trial and he was not fit for any concession.
His extradition request to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) was sent on September 23, 1993 which was remitted back by the US on May 9, 2002 on inter-alia requesting CBI to re-examine the matter, a CBI official said.
A revised extradition request along with an arrest warrant against Anderson was sent to US on December 13, 2002, he said.
After this, the CJM's Court here had again issued arrest warrant against Anderson on July 22 last year, he said, adding the matter was being pursued with the US authorities through MEA.
Apart from Anderson, representatives of Union Carbide Corporation, US and Union Carbide Eastern, Hong Kong, which were named as accused, also had not attended the trial.
Bhopal Posted On Thursday, June 17, 2010
Bhopal, June 17:
In the midst of the political storm over the Bhopal gas case verdict, the records of the trial court show that the CBI had sought dilution of the stringent charge against UCC CEO Warren Anderson on the lines of the relief given by the Supreme Court in the case against the Indian accused.
In 2002, the CBI had filed an application in the court seeking that the charge under section 304 II of IPC (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) against Anderson be changed to section 304 (A) (causing death by negligence). While 304 II entails a maximum of 10 years imprisonment, 304 provides for two years jail term.
The CBI had moved the CJM's court six years after the Supreme Court had watered down the charge against seven Indian accused in the case under section 304 II to 304 (a). Anderson had not appeared before any court after he returned to the US in December 1984 and his case was delinked from that of the other accused.
However, Chief Judicial Magistrate Rameshwar Kothe had on August 28, 2002, dismissed the CBI plea and directed it to inform the court about the steps being taken by it to get him extradited from the US.
Following this, the CBI had told the court on October 18, 2002 that the work regarding Anderson's extradition was on.
The court had dismissed the CBI application after interveners in the case, including NGO Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Udyog Sangathan, had argued that if section 304 II was diluted to 304 (a) against Anderson, his extradition will become impossible as the case will get reduced to that a minor accident.
Also, the interveners had argued before the trial judge that the CBI plea should be dismissed as Anderson had never appeared in the court for trial and he was not fit for any concession.
His extradition request to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) was sent on September 23, 1993 which was remitted back by the US on May 9, 2002 on inter-alia requesting CBI to re-examine the matter, a CBI official said.
A revised extradition request along with an arrest warrant against Anderson was sent to US on December 13, 2002, he said.
After this, the CJM's Court here had again issued arrest warrant against Anderson on July 22 last year, he said, adding the matter was being pursued with the US authorities through MEA.
Apart from Anderson, representatives of Union Carbide Corporation, US and Union Carbide Eastern, Hong Kong, which were named as accused, also had not attended the trial.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Arjun Singh's welfare trust received “donation” from Union Carbide
Arjun Singh's welfare trust received “donation” from Union Carbide
Mahim Pratap Singh
A financial statement, signed by Arjun Singh’s son Ajay Singh, shows that the trust received Rs.1,50,000 from Union Carbide for the construction of a building.
Even as senior Congress leaders mount pressure on Arjun Singh to “speak up”, a document doing the rounds in political and journalistic circles of Bhopal suggests that Mr. Singh might have received financial favours from Union Carbide.
The document is the annual financial statement prepared by the Chartered Accountant of the Churhat Children’s Welfare Society (Rewa), which was managed and run by Mr. Singh's family.
The statement, signed by Arjun Singh’s son Ajay Singh, shows that the society received Rs.1,50,000 from Union Carbide for the construction of a building.
Ajay Singh was at that time the secretary of the society.
It needs to be taken into consideration that this transfer of money took place in 1982-83, before the disaster struck. Before the night of December 2, Carbide was a high profile corporate entity in the state and it was considered an honour to be associated with it.
The company routinely used to sponsor local events and its Shyamla Hills Guest House was a favourite among political leaders from all hues of the spectrum, who used to enjoy its plush hospitality during their visits to the state capital. Some sources also claim that the celebrated late Congress leader Madhav Rao Scindia was also a shareholder of the company.
In such a scenario, Arjun Singh’s accepting a “donation” from Union Carbide might not have been significant, but as a direct beneficiary of the company’s finances, doubts have been raised that he might have subsequently acted in a manner which could have helped Carbide’s top employee Warren Anderson when needed it.
Local Congress party workers however reject the theory that the decision was made following a call from Delhi.
“If he got a call from Rajiv Gandhi to let Anderson go, did he also receive instructions from Rajiv to accept favours like foreign visits and donations from Union Carbide?” asks a party insider on the condition of anonymity.
Keywords: Bhopal tragedy verdict, Arjun Singh, Union Carbide, Anderson
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Mahim Pratap Singh
A financial statement, signed by Arjun Singh’s son Ajay Singh, shows that the trust received Rs.1,50,000 from Union Carbide for the construction of a building.
Even as senior Congress leaders mount pressure on Arjun Singh to “speak up”, a document doing the rounds in political and journalistic circles of Bhopal suggests that Mr. Singh might have received financial favours from Union Carbide.
The document is the annual financial statement prepared by the Chartered Accountant of the Churhat Children’s Welfare Society (Rewa), which was managed and run by Mr. Singh's family.
The statement, signed by Arjun Singh’s son Ajay Singh, shows that the society received Rs.1,50,000 from Union Carbide for the construction of a building.
Ajay Singh was at that time the secretary of the society.
It needs to be taken into consideration that this transfer of money took place in 1982-83, before the disaster struck. Before the night of December 2, Carbide was a high profile corporate entity in the state and it was considered an honour to be associated with it.
The company routinely used to sponsor local events and its Shyamla Hills Guest House was a favourite among political leaders from all hues of the spectrum, who used to enjoy its plush hospitality during their visits to the state capital. Some sources also claim that the celebrated late Congress leader Madhav Rao Scindia was also a shareholder of the company.
In such a scenario, Arjun Singh’s accepting a “donation” from Union Carbide might not have been significant, but as a direct beneficiary of the company’s finances, doubts have been raised that he might have subsequently acted in a manner which could have helped Carbide’s top employee Warren Anderson when needed it.
Local Congress party workers however reject the theory that the decision was made following a call from Delhi.
“If he got a call from Rajiv Gandhi to let Anderson go, did he also receive instructions from Rajiv to accept favours like foreign visits and donations from Union Carbide?” asks a party insider on the condition of anonymity.
Keywords: Bhopal tragedy verdict, Arjun Singh, Union Carbide, Anderson
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Friday, June 11, 2010
Bhopal gas tragedy case : NGO hits out at ex-CJI
Bhopal gas tragedy case : NGO hits out at ex-CJI
Bhopal, : Hitting out at former Chief Justice of India A H Ahmadi for a 1996 ruling in the Bhopal gas tragedy case, an NGO working for the victims of the world's worst industrial disaster today said the judge was as big a "villain" as former Union Carbide chairman Warren Anderson.
"There is not much difference between Ahmadi and Anderson and the two should be put in the same category of villains," Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Udyog Sangthan (BGPMUS) convenor Abdul Jabbar told PTI.
In a 1996 Supreme Court ruling in the gas tragedy case, the then apex court chief justice Ahmadi dropped charges under IPC Section 304-II (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) against Anderson and other accused in the case. Had the charges not been dropped, the accused could have been given an imprisonment of 10 years instead of only two years, awarded to them on Monday, Jabbar said.
Bhopal, : Hitting out at former Chief Justice of India A H Ahmadi for a 1996 ruling in the Bhopal gas tragedy case, an NGO working for the victims of the world's worst industrial disaster today said the judge was as big a "villain" as former Union Carbide chairman Warren Anderson.
"There is not much difference between Ahmadi and Anderson and the two should be put in the same category of villains," Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Udyog Sangthan (BGPMUS) convenor Abdul Jabbar told PTI.
In a 1996 Supreme Court ruling in the gas tragedy case, the then apex court chief justice Ahmadi dropped charges under IPC Section 304-II (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) against Anderson and other accused in the case. Had the charges not been dropped, the accused could have been given an imprisonment of 10 years instead of only two years, awarded to them on Monday, Jabbar said.
MP Govt, some in Centre helped Anderson flee : Sathe
New Delhi, (PTI) : Former Union Minister Vasant Sathe today said there was a "collusion" between the Madhya Pradesh government and "some people" in the Centre which allowed former Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson to escape justice in the Bhopal gas tragedy. Sathe, former minister for Information and Broadcasting and Chemicals and Fertilisers, told PTI, "There was a collusion between the state government and some people in the central government, probably in the Home Ministry" during the Narasimha Rao government.
Asked who could be responsible for the escape of Anderson, Sathe said he could not guess the names of the people but claimed only the then Chief Minister Arjun Singh could reply to queries on this issue. "I cannot guess the names of the people...The collector (Moti Singh) says he got orders from the Chief Secretary...Arjun Singh ji knows all the facts.
New Delhi, (PTI) : Former Union Minister Vasant Sathe today said there was a "collusion" between the Madhya Pradesh government and "some people" in the Centre which allowed former Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson to escape justice in the Bhopal gas tragedy. Sathe, former minister for Information and Broadcasting and Chemicals and Fertilisers, told PTI, "There was a collusion between the state government and some people in the central government, probably in the Home Ministry" during the Narasimha Rao government.
Asked who could be responsible for the escape of Anderson, Sathe said he could not guess the names of the people but claimed only the then Chief Minister Arjun Singh could reply to queries on this issue. "I cannot guess the names of the people...The collector (Moti Singh) says he got orders from the Chief Secretary...Arjun Singh ji knows all the facts.
former Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson after the gas tragedy in December 1984.
New Delhi : Congress on Thursday found itself embroiled in attacks from within and outside with its leaders holding the then party governments at the Centre and Madhya Pradesh responsible for the escape of former Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson after the gas tragedy in December 1984.
The Centre sought to play down the controversy, saying all such issues would be looked into by the Group of Ministers (GoM) set up yesterday to go into the range of issues related to the Bhopal gas disaster in which over 15,000 people were killed and lakhs others affected.
Questions were also raised over the role of Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi for taking up the case of Dow Chemicals, the successor of the Union Carbide which was involved in the gas leakage.
Singhvi vehemently denied the charges contending that “There is no conflict of interest in representing Dow Chemical in courts as a lawyer and being the member of political party.” After Dow Chemicals took over UCIL, the Bhopal gas leak tragedy victims moved the court of city's chief judicial magistrate to summon Dow Chemicals, contending that the new company has to take over all the legal liability of the UCIL.
The court issued a summons to Dow Chemical, which was later stayed by the Madhya Pradesh High Court in 2005. It was in this case that Singhvi is said to have represented Dow Chemicals. "I have no idea of this charge (conflict of interest), as you call it... it is laughable," said Singhvi.
"This is an old case... it involves only the threshold legal question - whether Dow is same as, or even remotely related to - Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL)," he told a private news channel, adding that "for three-four years, these NGOs (representing Bhopal gas tragedy victims) have been trying to prove Dow and UCIL are the same. Courts have not accepted this... the application is still pending."
"I represent Dow Chemicals as a senior counsel, I don't deal directly with them," Singhvi said on the phone from Yale, where he is currently leading an Indian delegation. "I don't mix my law and politics. I don't even know Dow Chemicals in the direct sense in any manner. I am instructed by solicitors. Several senior counsels have appeared for them or given them opinion or advice in a purely legal sense and senior counsels are instructed by advocates and solicitors. It has got nothing to do with the government, this case or the Bhopal case," he added.
Who asked for Anderson's release : Chouhan to Arjun Singh
Internal politics appeared to have come to the fore in Congress with senior leader Digvijay Singh firing the salvo by reportedly saying that release of Anderson had come under "US pressure". Singh was then a minister in the Arjun Singh government of Madhya Pradesh.
Echoing his views, another party veteran Vasant Sathe said "collusion" between the Madhya Pradesh government and "some people" in the Centre had allowed Anderson to escape justice.
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has written to former union minister Arjun Singh to disclose the name of the person on whose instructions Warren Anderson, the then CEO of Union Carbide, was released Dec 7, 1984, just days after a leak in the company's plant here instantly killed over 3,000 people.
In the letter to Arjun Singh late Thursday, Chouhan said the nation has been waiting for the last few days for him to reveal the identity of the person who arranged Anderson's release after his arrest Dec 7, 1984.
"The people of Bhopal and indeed all of Madhya Pradesh have a right to this information from their distinguished chief minister of the time," he added.
No ministerial connivance on Anderson : Soni
No central minister had connived to ensure that former Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson left the country four days after the Bhopal gas tragedy, the world's worst industrial disaster, the government asserted Thursday.
"There is no conclusive evidence to show that any central minister had a role to play in Anderson leaving the country," Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni told reporters here.
"The very fact that a group of ministers on the Bhopal gas tragedy has been reconstituted shows how serious the government is on the issue. The law minister has also spoken on the issue without delay. Let the committee give its report and we will see how to move forward," she added.
The committee would, among other things, study the implications of a Bhopal court's judgment Monday sentencing to two years imprisonment seven people, including Keshub Mahindra, the chairman of Union Carbide India, when the Dec 2-3, 1984 gas tragedy occurred.
The sentence has sparked outrage among activists and other Indian citizens for being too little too late. Soni, however, refused to comment on a statement by Congress leader Digvijay Singh that Anderson had been permitted to go scot-free under US pressure. "I would not like to comment on that," she said. (zeenews)
The Centre sought to play down the controversy, saying all such issues would be looked into by the Group of Ministers (GoM) set up yesterday to go into the range of issues related to the Bhopal gas disaster in which over 15,000 people were killed and lakhs others affected.
Questions were also raised over the role of Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi for taking up the case of Dow Chemicals, the successor of the Union Carbide which was involved in the gas leakage.
Singhvi vehemently denied the charges contending that “There is no conflict of interest in representing Dow Chemical in courts as a lawyer and being the member of political party.” After Dow Chemicals took over UCIL, the Bhopal gas leak tragedy victims moved the court of city's chief judicial magistrate to summon Dow Chemicals, contending that the new company has to take over all the legal liability of the UCIL.
The court issued a summons to Dow Chemical, which was later stayed by the Madhya Pradesh High Court in 2005. It was in this case that Singhvi is said to have represented Dow Chemicals. "I have no idea of this charge (conflict of interest), as you call it... it is laughable," said Singhvi.
"This is an old case... it involves only the threshold legal question - whether Dow is same as, or even remotely related to - Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL)," he told a private news channel, adding that "for three-four years, these NGOs (representing Bhopal gas tragedy victims) have been trying to prove Dow and UCIL are the same. Courts have not accepted this... the application is still pending."
"I represent Dow Chemicals as a senior counsel, I don't deal directly with them," Singhvi said on the phone from Yale, where he is currently leading an Indian delegation. "I don't mix my law and politics. I don't even know Dow Chemicals in the direct sense in any manner. I am instructed by solicitors. Several senior counsels have appeared for them or given them opinion or advice in a purely legal sense and senior counsels are instructed by advocates and solicitors. It has got nothing to do with the government, this case or the Bhopal case," he added.
Who asked for Anderson's release : Chouhan to Arjun Singh
Internal politics appeared to have come to the fore in Congress with senior leader Digvijay Singh firing the salvo by reportedly saying that release of Anderson had come under "US pressure". Singh was then a minister in the Arjun Singh government of Madhya Pradesh.
Echoing his views, another party veteran Vasant Sathe said "collusion" between the Madhya Pradesh government and "some people" in the Centre had allowed Anderson to escape justice.
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has written to former union minister Arjun Singh to disclose the name of the person on whose instructions Warren Anderson, the then CEO of Union Carbide, was released Dec 7, 1984, just days after a leak in the company's plant here instantly killed over 3,000 people.
In the letter to Arjun Singh late Thursday, Chouhan said the nation has been waiting for the last few days for him to reveal the identity of the person who arranged Anderson's release after his arrest Dec 7, 1984.
"The people of Bhopal and indeed all of Madhya Pradesh have a right to this information from their distinguished chief minister of the time," he added.
No ministerial connivance on Anderson : Soni
No central minister had connived to ensure that former Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson left the country four days after the Bhopal gas tragedy, the world's worst industrial disaster, the government asserted Thursday.
"There is no conclusive evidence to show that any central minister had a role to play in Anderson leaving the country," Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni told reporters here.
"The very fact that a group of ministers on the Bhopal gas tragedy has been reconstituted shows how serious the government is on the issue. The law minister has also spoken on the issue without delay. Let the committee give its report and we will see how to move forward," she added.
The committee would, among other things, study the implications of a Bhopal court's judgment Monday sentencing to two years imprisonment seven people, including Keshub Mahindra, the chairman of Union Carbide India, when the Dec 2-3, 1984 gas tragedy occurred.
The sentence has sparked outrage among activists and other Indian citizens for being too little too late. Soni, however, refused to comment on a statement by Congress leader Digvijay Singh that Anderson had been permitted to go scot-free under US pressure. "I would not like to comment on that," she said. (zeenews)
Thursday, June 10, 2010
मध्य प्रदेश कैबिनेट ने प्रतिबंधित सिमी संगठन के 13 टॉप मेंबर्स को गिरफ्तार करने वाले 8 पुलिस
भोपाल ।। मध्य प्रदेश कैबिनेट ने प्रतिबंधित सिमी संगठन के 13 टॉप मेंबर्स को गिरफ्तार करने वाले 8 पुलिस
अधिकारियों को पिस्तौल तथा 61 कर्मचारियों को नकद राशि देकर पुरस्कृत करने का फैसला किया।
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मंत्रिपरिषद ने कार्यभारित तथा आकस्मिकता सेवा में कार्यरत कर्मचारियों एवं दैनिक वेतन भोगी कर्मचारियों की असामयिक मृत्यु होने पर उनके परिवार के आश्रित नामांकित सदस्य को अनुकंपा अनुदान राशि में वृद्धि करने का भी निर्णय लिया। अनुकंपा अनुदान की राशि एक लाख रुपए से बढ़कर 1.25 लाख रुपए दी जाएगी। मंत्रिपरिषद ने मध्यप्रदेश विधानसभा अध्यक्ष, उपाध्यक्ष एवं नेता प्रतिपक्ष वेतन तथा भत्ता विधि (संशोधन) अध्यादेश 2010 का भी अनुमोदन किया। अध्यादेश में अध्यक्ष और नेता प्रतिपक्ष के लिए कुल 62 हजार रुपए और उपाध्यक्ष के लिए 60 हजार रुपए वेतन का प्रावधान है।
अधिकारियों को पिस्तौल तथा 61 कर्मचारियों को नकद राशि देकर पुरस्कृत करने का फैसला किया।
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मंत्रिपरिषद ने कार्यभारित तथा आकस्मिकता सेवा में कार्यरत कर्मचारियों एवं दैनिक वेतन भोगी कर्मचारियों की असामयिक मृत्यु होने पर उनके परिवार के आश्रित नामांकित सदस्य को अनुकंपा अनुदान राशि में वृद्धि करने का भी निर्णय लिया। अनुकंपा अनुदान की राशि एक लाख रुपए से बढ़कर 1.25 लाख रुपए दी जाएगी। मंत्रिपरिषद ने मध्यप्रदेश विधानसभा अध्यक्ष, उपाध्यक्ष एवं नेता प्रतिपक्ष वेतन तथा भत्ता विधि (संशोधन) अध्यादेश 2010 का भी अनुमोदन किया। अध्यादेश में अध्यक्ष और नेता प्रतिपक्ष के लिए कुल 62 हजार रुपए और उपाध्यक्ष के लिए 60 हजार रुपए वेतन का प्रावधान है।
श्रीलंका के शरणार्थी शिविरों में सेना द्वारा तमिल शरणार्थियों पर भारी जुल्म ढाए जाने के आरोप
लंदन।। श्रीलंका के शरणार्थी शिविरों में सेना द्वारा तमिल शरणार्थियों पर भारी जुल्म ढाए जाने के आरोप दु
निया भर के मानवाधिकार संगठन लगा रहे हैं। उनके दावे को अब और मजबूती मिली है। एशियाई मूल के एक ब्रिटिश डॉक्टर का आरोप है कि श्रीलंका के शरणार्थी शिविरों में सेना के जवानों ने तमिल महिलाओं का यौन उत्पीड़न किया। यही नहीं, लिट्टे से रिश्ते रखने के आरोप में कई लड़कियों को शिविरों से दूर ले जाया गया, जिनका बाद में कोई अता-पता नहीं चला। 'द ऑब्जर्वर' की रिपोर्ट में कहा गया है कि करीब चार महीने तक खुद शरणार्थी शिविरों में दिन काट चुके 25 साल के वानी कुमार ने दावा किया है कि सैनिकों ने तमिल महिलाओं से खाने के बदले सिर्फ उनके जिस्म का सौदा ही नहीं किया, बल्कि उन पर जुल्म ढाते हुए उन्हें घंटों कड़ी धूप में खड़ा भी किया जाता था। वानी ने बताया कि यह एक यातना शिविर की तरह था, जह
प्रभाकरण की मां को एयरपोर्ट से लौटाया यहां क्लिक को न तो बातचीत करने की इजाजत थी और न ही कंटीले तार के पास फटकने की इजाजत। यौन उत्पीड़न तो ऐसी चीज थी, जो बेहद आम थी और मैंने इसे अपनी आंखों से देखा। वहां मिलने-जुलने के लिए आने वाले लोगों को कंटीले तार के बाहर रहना पड़ता था, जबकि हम शिविर में रहते थे। वानी ने बताया, मैंने देखा कि जब लड़कियां अपने रिश्तेदार से मिलने के लिए इंतजार कर रही होती थीं तो सेना के अफसर वहां आते थे और उन्हें छूते थे। आमतौर पर लड़कियां उनसे कुछ कह नहीं पाती थीं, क्योंकि वे जानती थीं कि कुछ कहने पर उनके साथ कोई अनहोनी हो सकती है। यह सब एकदम खुलेआम होता था, सब लोग देख सकते थे कि सैन्य अधिकारी लड़कियों से छेड़छाड़ कर रहे हैं। लड़कियां अमूमन यौन शोषण के बारे में कभी नहीं बताती थीं, वह कभी अपना मुंह नहीं खोलती थीं, लेकिन मैंने सुना कि सैन्य अधिकारी महिलाओं को सेक्स के बदले खाना मुहैया कराते थे। सैन्य अधिकारी कुछ भी करने को बेताब रहते थे। एसेक्स के रहने वाले कुमार को सितंबर में छोड़ा गया, लेकिन इस अहम खुलासे में उन्होंने इतना वक्त इसलिए लिया, क्योंकि उनके कुछ दोस्त और परिवार के सदस्य भी वहां थे। उन्हें भी अब छोड़ दिया गया है। श्रीलंकाई सरकार ने भी ब्रिटिश अखबार से पुष्टि की है कि उसे संयुक्त राष्ट्र की एजेंसियों की ओर से शरणार्थी शिविरों में यौन शोषण की खबरें मिली हैं, लेकिन सरकार ने यह भी कहा है कि इन आरोपों को साबित
निया भर के मानवाधिकार संगठन लगा रहे हैं। उनके दावे को अब और मजबूती मिली है। एशियाई मूल के एक ब्रिटिश डॉक्टर का आरोप है कि श्रीलंका के शरणार्थी शिविरों में सेना के जवानों ने तमिल महिलाओं का यौन उत्पीड़न किया। यही नहीं, लिट्टे से रिश्ते रखने के आरोप में कई लड़कियों को शिविरों से दूर ले जाया गया, जिनका बाद में कोई अता-पता नहीं चला। 'द ऑब्जर्वर' की रिपोर्ट में कहा गया है कि करीब चार महीने तक खुद शरणार्थी शिविरों में दिन काट चुके 25 साल के वानी कुमार ने दावा किया है कि सैनिकों ने तमिल महिलाओं से खाने के बदले सिर्फ उनके जिस्म का सौदा ही नहीं किया, बल्कि उन पर जुल्म ढाते हुए उन्हें घंटों कड़ी धूप में खड़ा भी किया जाता था। वानी ने बताया कि यह एक यातना शिविर की तरह था, जह
प्रभाकरण की मां को एयरपोर्ट से लौटाया यहां क्लिक को न तो बातचीत करने की इजाजत थी और न ही कंटीले तार के पास फटकने की इजाजत। यौन उत्पीड़न तो ऐसी चीज थी, जो बेहद आम थी और मैंने इसे अपनी आंखों से देखा। वहां मिलने-जुलने के लिए आने वाले लोगों को कंटीले तार के बाहर रहना पड़ता था, जबकि हम शिविर में रहते थे। वानी ने बताया, मैंने देखा कि जब लड़कियां अपने रिश्तेदार से मिलने के लिए इंतजार कर रही होती थीं तो सेना के अफसर वहां आते थे और उन्हें छूते थे। आमतौर पर लड़कियां उनसे कुछ कह नहीं पाती थीं, क्योंकि वे जानती थीं कि कुछ कहने पर उनके साथ कोई अनहोनी हो सकती है। यह सब एकदम खुलेआम होता था, सब लोग देख सकते थे कि सैन्य अधिकारी लड़कियों से छेड़छाड़ कर रहे हैं। लड़कियां अमूमन यौन शोषण के बारे में कभी नहीं बताती थीं, वह कभी अपना मुंह नहीं खोलती थीं, लेकिन मैंने सुना कि सैन्य अधिकारी महिलाओं को सेक्स के बदले खाना मुहैया कराते थे। सैन्य अधिकारी कुछ भी करने को बेताब रहते थे। एसेक्स के रहने वाले कुमार को सितंबर में छोड़ा गया, लेकिन इस अहम खुलासे में उन्होंने इतना वक्त इसलिए लिया, क्योंकि उनके कुछ दोस्त और परिवार के सदस्य भी वहां थे। उन्हें भी अब छोड़ दिया गया है। श्रीलंकाई सरकार ने भी ब्रिटिश अखबार से पुष्टि की है कि उसे संयुक्त राष्ट्र की एजेंसियों की ओर से शरणार्थी शिविरों में यौन शोषण की खबरें मिली हैं, लेकिन सरकार ने यह भी कहा है कि इन आरोपों को साबित
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
सुप्रीम कोर्ट के पूर्व चीफ जस्टिस ए. एच. अहमदी ने भोपाल गैस कांड में यूनियन कार्बाइड कंपनी
नई दिल्ली।। सुप्रीम कोर्ट के पूर्व चीफ जस्टिस ए. एच. अहमदी ने भोपाल गैस कांड में यूनियन कार्बाइड कंपनी
के अधिकारियों के खिलाफ आरोपों को हल्का किए जाने की आलोचना को खारिज कर दिया है। उन्होंने कहा कि आपराधिक कानून व्यवस्था में दूसरे के बदले उत्तरदायित्व जैसी अवधारणा नहीं होती। अहमदी ने हालांकि इस बात पर अफसोस जताया कि भोपाल गैस कांड जैसे हादसों से निबटने के लिए देश में उचित कानून का अभाव है। उन्होंने कहा कि दोषियों को उचित सजा दिलवाने के लिए कानून में बदलाव लाया जा सकता है।
गौरतलब है कि जस्टिस अहमदी ने 1996 में सुप्रीम कोर्ट की उस बेंच की अध्यक्षता की थी, जिसने सीबीआई द्वारा भोपाल कांड में धारा 304-2 के तहत आरोपों को, जिसमें अधिकतम 10 साल की सजा का प्रावधान है, उस धारा में बदल डाला था, जिसमें अधिकतम 2 साल कैद की सजा ही दी जा सकती है। इन्हें भी पढ़ें
क्या इतनी सस्ती है हम भारतीयों की जिंदगी?
एंडरसन के खिलाफ बंद नहीं हुआ है मामला: मोइ
उन्होंने कहा कि लोगों के लिए बात करना और आरोप लगाना आसान है, लेकिन जजों को सिस्टम के तहत ही काम करना होता है।
अहमदी ने कहा, किसी को भी सिस्टम और कानूनी फ्रेमवर्क के तहत ही काम करना पड़ता है। आज की तारीख में धारा के बहाव के साथ बहकर बात करना आसान है। जस्टिस अहमदी उन आलोचनाओं का जवाब दे रहे थे कि सुप्रीम कोर्ट की बेंच द्वारा दिए गए फैसले के कारण ही सोमवार को भोपाल की अदालत ने इस केस में मुजरिमों को हल्की सजा दी। उन्होंने कह कि आपराधिक कानून में दूसरे के बदले उत्तरदायित्व का कॉन्सेप्ट नहीं है। अगर मेरा ड्राइवर गाड़ी चला रहा है और उससे कोई जानलेवा हादसा हो जाता है, तो इसके लिए धारा 304-2 के तहत मुझे इसका जिम्मेदार नहीं ठहराया जा सकता।
के अधिकारियों के खिलाफ आरोपों को हल्का किए जाने की आलोचना को खारिज कर दिया है। उन्होंने कहा कि आपराधिक कानून व्यवस्था में दूसरे के बदले उत्तरदायित्व जैसी अवधारणा नहीं होती। अहमदी ने हालांकि इस बात पर अफसोस जताया कि भोपाल गैस कांड जैसे हादसों से निबटने के लिए देश में उचित कानून का अभाव है। उन्होंने कहा कि दोषियों को उचित सजा दिलवाने के लिए कानून में बदलाव लाया जा सकता है।
गौरतलब है कि जस्टिस अहमदी ने 1996 में सुप्रीम कोर्ट की उस बेंच की अध्यक्षता की थी, जिसने सीबीआई द्वारा भोपाल कांड में धारा 304-2 के तहत आरोपों को, जिसमें अधिकतम 10 साल की सजा का प्रावधान है, उस धारा में बदल डाला था, जिसमें अधिकतम 2 साल कैद की सजा ही दी जा सकती है। इन्हें भी पढ़ें
क्या इतनी सस्ती है हम भारतीयों की जिंदगी?
एंडरसन के खिलाफ बंद नहीं हुआ है मामला: मोइ
उन्होंने कहा कि लोगों के लिए बात करना और आरोप लगाना आसान है, लेकिन जजों को सिस्टम के तहत ही काम करना होता है।
अहमदी ने कहा, किसी को भी सिस्टम और कानूनी फ्रेमवर्क के तहत ही काम करना पड़ता है। आज की तारीख में धारा के बहाव के साथ बहकर बात करना आसान है। जस्टिस अहमदी उन आलोचनाओं का जवाब दे रहे थे कि सुप्रीम कोर्ट की बेंच द्वारा दिए गए फैसले के कारण ही सोमवार को भोपाल की अदालत ने इस केस में मुजरिमों को हल्की सजा दी। उन्होंने कह कि आपराधिक कानून में दूसरे के बदले उत्तरदायित्व का कॉन्सेप्ट नहीं है। अगर मेरा ड्राइवर गाड़ी चला रहा है और उससे कोई जानलेवा हादसा हो जाता है, तो इसके लिए धारा 304-2 के तहत मुझे इसका जिम्मेदार नहीं ठहराया जा सकता।
Bhopal and the BP Spill: A Tale of Two Disasters
As BP struggles to contain the damage the Deepwater Horizon oil spill has caused to the Gulf of Mexico and to the people whose livelihoods depend on its waters, a legal judgment in the worst industrial catastrophe in history highlights how wrong the aftermath of such disasters can go — not just in terms of a clean-up but in the matter of justice. It is a terrifying lesson in how a corporation can evade full responsibility for one of the most heinous accidents in human history.
(See pictures of the oil spill's victims.)
On Monday, more than 25 years after 40 tons of highly toxic methyl isocyanate (MIC) was released from a Union Carbide plant in the central Indian city of Bhopal — killing thousands in a matter of hours and through the years, and rendering many hundreds of thousands seriously ill and causing genetic defects in yet-to-be-born generations — a local court announced its verdict. It held eight Indian former employees of Union Carbide India Ltd guilty of criminal negligence, and sentenced seven of them to two years each in prison and a fine of $2,100 each. (The eighth defendant had died during the course of the 23-year-long trial.) The convicted were out on bail — of just $500 each — in less than two hours. Union Carbide India, which no longer exists, was fined less than $11,000.
(See the living legacy of the Bhopal disaster.)
The judgments are likely to be appealed. Given the speed of the wheels of justice in India, the case is likely to outlast most of the Bhopal survivors and the accused. The most prominent name in the latter category is Warren Anderson, the American CEO of Union Carbide, the U.S. parent company. He is now 89 years old. Arrested by Indian police when he visited the disaster site, he was released on bail and flew out of the country. He continues to be a fugitive from Indian law and hence has not been tried. (He is believed to be living somewhere in New York State.) At the same time, no one has been assigned responsibility for cleaning up Bhopal's ground zero, which researchers and activists say continues to leach toxic chemicals into the groundwater used by thousands of families.
(See TIME's cover 1984 cover story on the Bhopal disaster.)
The outcome of the case has ignited outrage and disbelief across India. No less than the federal law minister and a former chief justice have said justice has been delayed and denied. The Economic Times newspaper led its front-page spread with the headline: "After 25 Years, Anothert Tragedy Strikes Bhopal." "We are used to being let down," says Rachna Dhingra of the Bhopal Group for Information and Action, her voice catching as she spoke to TIME by phone, "by our government... now even the judiciary."
The letdowns have been serious and repeated — and apparently preordained because of decisions that facilitated the disaster itself. Investigations over the years have shown that the Bhopal plant design was faulty, and that there was next to no emergency preparedness — issues that the parent company in the U.S. apparently knew about, according to the groups who conducted the studies. The company was operating in India with standards unacceptable in the U.S.
(See pictures of the Gulf oil spill.)
The Indian government seemed to go out of its way to cushion the experience for Union Carbide. After first suing the company for $3.3 billion in 1985, New Delhi announced an out of court settlement of $470 million in February 1989. Then a 1996 ruling by another Supreme Court judge watered down the charges against the accused from culpable homicide (with maximum punishment of 10 years' jail term) to criminal negligence (maximum sentence two years).
The various governments that have ruled India in the meantime have not taken on Union Carbide, which is now owned by Dow Chemical. Meanwhile, Keshub Mahindra, the chairman of Union Carbide India Ltd at the time of the Bhopal disaster, and now chairman of India's automobile giant Mahindra & Mahindra, was nominated for a civilian honor, the Padma Bhushan, in 2002. He had to decline in the face of widespread protests.
Although environmental legislation was ramped up in the wake of the Bhopal disaster, companies continue to operate in India in ways that severely — if not as dramatically — pollute the environment and impact people's health and livelihoods. Britain-based mining major Vedanta, for instance, has faced censure from Amnesty International for violating the human rights of communities in Orissa where it operates bauxite mines. India continues to be the world's e-waste dump. Of late, the government, keen to attract foreign investment to its nascent nuclear energy market, has been pushing a bill to limit the liability of a nuclear plant operator to $111 million. "We've learned nothing from Bhopal," says Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan, "There is a drive to attract foreign investment overwhelming all other considerations." Opposition parties have already demanded a re-think of the proposed legislation in the face of the Bhopal outcome.
(See pictures of people protesting BP.)
There is still outrage that the U.S. refuses to extradite Warren Anderson to face criminal charges in India. New Delhi made the request in 2003 and it was refused the year after. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Robert Blake, reacting to this week's Bhopal verdict, said, "I don't expect this verdict to reopen any new inquiries or anything like that. On the contrary, we hope that this is going to help to bring closure." The Bhopal activists now plan to file a writ petition in the higher court to admit more charges against Union Carbide and Warren Anderson, seeking an as-yet unspecified figure for personal and property damages, health monitoring and clean-up of the site, which is likely to run into billions of dollars.
Indians point at the way the U.S. government is now confronting BP — holding it squarely responsible for the oil spill and accountable for all cleanup costs — as a stark contrast to the way their own government has dealt with Union Carbide. The hope in India is that U.S. courts will be more amenable to the requests of Bhopal's victims now that America has a huge environmental disaster in its own backyard. The Bhopal activists say the Indian government must join the case in the U.S. as a plaintiff (indeed, it owns the land on which the Union Carbide factory was located). "Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should be inspired by President Obama's recent commitment towards making BP pay every cent for its oil spill," says Satinath Sarangi of Bhopal Group for Information & Action, "And the U.S. government must follow the same standards on corporate liability for U.S. corporations operating in India as it expects corporations operating in the U.S."
See the world's top 10 environmental disasters.
See pictures of critters caught in the Gulf oil
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1995029,00.html#ixzz0qHRhg6b9
(See pictures of the oil spill's victims.)
On Monday, more than 25 years after 40 tons of highly toxic methyl isocyanate (MIC) was released from a Union Carbide plant in the central Indian city of Bhopal — killing thousands in a matter of hours and through the years, and rendering many hundreds of thousands seriously ill and causing genetic defects in yet-to-be-born generations — a local court announced its verdict. It held eight Indian former employees of Union Carbide India Ltd guilty of criminal negligence, and sentenced seven of them to two years each in prison and a fine of $2,100 each. (The eighth defendant had died during the course of the 23-year-long trial.) The convicted were out on bail — of just $500 each — in less than two hours. Union Carbide India, which no longer exists, was fined less than $11,000.
(See the living legacy of the Bhopal disaster.)
The judgments are likely to be appealed. Given the speed of the wheels of justice in India, the case is likely to outlast most of the Bhopal survivors and the accused. The most prominent name in the latter category is Warren Anderson, the American CEO of Union Carbide, the U.S. parent company. He is now 89 years old. Arrested by Indian police when he visited the disaster site, he was released on bail and flew out of the country. He continues to be a fugitive from Indian law and hence has not been tried. (He is believed to be living somewhere in New York State.) At the same time, no one has been assigned responsibility for cleaning up Bhopal's ground zero, which researchers and activists say continues to leach toxic chemicals into the groundwater used by thousands of families.
(See TIME's cover 1984 cover story on the Bhopal disaster.)
The outcome of the case has ignited outrage and disbelief across India. No less than the federal law minister and a former chief justice have said justice has been delayed and denied. The Economic Times newspaper led its front-page spread with the headline: "After 25 Years, Anothert Tragedy Strikes Bhopal." "We are used to being let down," says Rachna Dhingra of the Bhopal Group for Information and Action, her voice catching as she spoke to TIME by phone, "by our government... now even the judiciary."
The letdowns have been serious and repeated — and apparently preordained because of decisions that facilitated the disaster itself. Investigations over the years have shown that the Bhopal plant design was faulty, and that there was next to no emergency preparedness — issues that the parent company in the U.S. apparently knew about, according to the groups who conducted the studies. The company was operating in India with standards unacceptable in the U.S.
(See pictures of the Gulf oil spill.)
The Indian government seemed to go out of its way to cushion the experience for Union Carbide. After first suing the company for $3.3 billion in 1985, New Delhi announced an out of court settlement of $470 million in February 1989. Then a 1996 ruling by another Supreme Court judge watered down the charges against the accused from culpable homicide (with maximum punishment of 10 years' jail term) to criminal negligence (maximum sentence two years).
The various governments that have ruled India in the meantime have not taken on Union Carbide, which is now owned by Dow Chemical. Meanwhile, Keshub Mahindra, the chairman of Union Carbide India Ltd at the time of the Bhopal disaster, and now chairman of India's automobile giant Mahindra & Mahindra, was nominated for a civilian honor, the Padma Bhushan, in 2002. He had to decline in the face of widespread protests.
Although environmental legislation was ramped up in the wake of the Bhopal disaster, companies continue to operate in India in ways that severely — if not as dramatically — pollute the environment and impact people's health and livelihoods. Britain-based mining major Vedanta, for instance, has faced censure from Amnesty International for violating the human rights of communities in Orissa where it operates bauxite mines. India continues to be the world's e-waste dump. Of late, the government, keen to attract foreign investment to its nascent nuclear energy market, has been pushing a bill to limit the liability of a nuclear plant operator to $111 million. "We've learned nothing from Bhopal," says Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan, "There is a drive to attract foreign investment overwhelming all other considerations." Opposition parties have already demanded a re-think of the proposed legislation in the face of the Bhopal outcome.
(See pictures of people protesting BP.)
There is still outrage that the U.S. refuses to extradite Warren Anderson to face criminal charges in India. New Delhi made the request in 2003 and it was refused the year after. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Robert Blake, reacting to this week's Bhopal verdict, said, "I don't expect this verdict to reopen any new inquiries or anything like that. On the contrary, we hope that this is going to help to bring closure." The Bhopal activists now plan to file a writ petition in the higher court to admit more charges against Union Carbide and Warren Anderson, seeking an as-yet unspecified figure for personal and property damages, health monitoring and clean-up of the site, which is likely to run into billions of dollars.
Indians point at the way the U.S. government is now confronting BP — holding it squarely responsible for the oil spill and accountable for all cleanup costs — as a stark contrast to the way their own government has dealt with Union Carbide. The hope in India is that U.S. courts will be more amenable to the requests of Bhopal's victims now that America has a huge environmental disaster in its own backyard. The Bhopal activists say the Indian government must join the case in the U.S. as a plaintiff (indeed, it owns the land on which the Union Carbide factory was located). "Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should be inspired by President Obama's recent commitment towards making BP pay every cent for its oil spill," says Satinath Sarangi of Bhopal Group for Information & Action, "And the U.S. government must follow the same standards on corporate liability for U.S. corporations operating in India as it expects corporations operating in the U.S."
See the world's top 10 environmental disasters.
See pictures of critters caught in the Gulf oil
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1995029,00.html#ixzz0qHRhg6b9
Case against Anderson not closed: Moily
Case against Anderson not closed: Moily
Tue, Jun 8 02:47 PM
New Delhi, Jun 8 (PTI) Law Minister Veerappa Moily today said the case against former Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson in connection with the Bhopal gas tragedy was not closed. "As far as Anderson is concerned, the case is not closed," Moily said.
He said the name of Anderson figured in the chargesheet filed by the CBI in the case. "The CBI has filed chargesheet.
The courts then frame charges. There is one person here who has not responded to the summons or replied to the charges.
He has absconded and was declared a proclaimed offender," he said. "That does not mean that the case against him (Anderson) is closed," Moily said.
The Minister had yesterday said that the government will fast-track the Bhopal gas tragedy case in the High Court as it has learnt "big lessons" from the verdict and could go in for a stand-alone legislation to ensure that the culprits in such incidents are brought to book effectively. Nearly 26 years after world''s worst industrial disaster left over 15,000 dead, former Union Carbide India Chairman Keshub Mahindra and six others were yesterday sentenced to two years imprisonment.
The outcome of the case came under attack from civil rights activists and political parties. 89-year-old Anderson, the then Chairman of Union Carbide Corporation of USA, who lives in the United States, appeared to have gone scot-free for the present as he is still an absconder and did not subject himself to trial.
There was no word about him in the judgement of the Bhopal court.
Tue, Jun 8 02:47 PM
New Delhi, Jun 8 (PTI) Law Minister Veerappa Moily today said the case against former Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson in connection with the Bhopal gas tragedy was not closed. "As far as Anderson is concerned, the case is not closed," Moily said.
He said the name of Anderson figured in the chargesheet filed by the CBI in the case. "The CBI has filed chargesheet.
The courts then frame charges. There is one person here who has not responded to the summons or replied to the charges.
He has absconded and was declared a proclaimed offender," he said. "That does not mean that the case against him (Anderson) is closed," Moily said.
The Minister had yesterday said that the government will fast-track the Bhopal gas tragedy case in the High Court as it has learnt "big lessons" from the verdict and could go in for a stand-alone legislation to ensure that the culprits in such incidents are brought to book effectively. Nearly 26 years after world''s worst industrial disaster left over 15,000 dead, former Union Carbide India Chairman Keshub Mahindra and six others were yesterday sentenced to two years imprisonment.
The outcome of the case came under attack from civil rights activists and political parties. 89-year-old Anderson, the then Chairman of Union Carbide Corporation of USA, who lives in the United States, appeared to have gone scot-free for the present as he is still an absconder and did not subject himself to trial.
There was no word about him in the judgement of the Bhopal court.
Judgement day: Eight convicted for Bhopal gas tragedy
Judgement day: Eight convicted for Bhopal gas tragedy
bhopal
Bhopal, June 8 (UNI) Scripting judicial history, a local court sentenced eminent Indian industrialist Keshub Mahindra and six other persons to two years' imprisonment and fines of Rs 1 lakh each in the criminal case relating to the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy, which was the world's worst industrial disaster.
Chief Judicial Magistrate Mohan P Tiwari yesterday also pronounced Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) guilty under the Indian Penal Code's Section 304(a) and imposed a fine of Rs 5 lakh. Mahindra and five other accused were present in court while S I Qureshi is undergoing treatment at Indore. His son was present.
Besides Mahindra, UCIL's then managing director Vijay Gokhale, then vice-president Kishore Kamdar, then works manager J Mukund, then production manager S P Choudhary, then plant superintendent K B Shetty and then plant production assistant Qureshi were convicted.
On the intervening night of December 2 and 3, 1984, 40 tonnes of highly volatile and toxic methyl isocyanate stored at a pesticide plant owned by UCIL -- a subsidiary of Union Carbide Corporation (UCC), United States -- got contaminated with water and other impurities. A mixture of deadly gases escaped from the factory killing thousands and grievously affecting thousands of others.
Warren Anderson was then UCC chairman.
UNI
bhopal
Bhopal, June 8 (UNI) Scripting judicial history, a local court sentenced eminent Indian industrialist Keshub Mahindra and six other persons to two years' imprisonment and fines of Rs 1 lakh each in the criminal case relating to the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy, which was the world's worst industrial disaster.
Chief Judicial Magistrate Mohan P Tiwari yesterday also pronounced Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) guilty under the Indian Penal Code's Section 304(a) and imposed a fine of Rs 5 lakh. Mahindra and five other accused were present in court while S I Qureshi is undergoing treatment at Indore. His son was present.
Besides Mahindra, UCIL's then managing director Vijay Gokhale, then vice-president Kishore Kamdar, then works manager J Mukund, then production manager S P Choudhary, then plant superintendent K B Shetty and then plant production assistant Qureshi were convicted.
On the intervening night of December 2 and 3, 1984, 40 tonnes of highly volatile and toxic methyl isocyanate stored at a pesticide plant owned by UCIL -- a subsidiary of Union Carbide Corporation (UCC), United States -- got contaminated with water and other impurities. A mixture of deadly gases escaped from the factory killing thousands and grievously affecting thousands of others.
Warren Anderson was then UCC chairman.
UNI
chairperson and former Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan said here on Monday.
Bhopal gas tragedy verdict late: K G Balakrishnan
IANS, Jun 7, 2010, 03.09pm IST
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chairperson and former Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan said here on Monday.
"The verdict on the Bhopal gas tragedy has come late," Balakrishnan, who took charge as NHRC head on Monday, said at a press meet.
"I can't comment on the quantum of punishment. Inadequacy of a sentence is a ground for appeal and the aggrieved parties can appeal on the same ground," he added.
A court in Bhopal held eight former officials of Union Carbide India Ltd (UCIL) guilty of criminal negligence in the world's worst industrial disaster 25 years back.
The eight include Keshub Mahindra, who then headed UCIL, from whose pesticide plant tonnes of lethal gas leaked on Dec 2-3, 1984 night, killing thousands instantly and many more later. The death toll is believed to be about 25,000.
IANS, Jun 7, 2010, 03.09pm IST
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chairperson and former Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan said here on Monday.
"The verdict on the Bhopal gas tragedy has come late," Balakrishnan, who took charge as NHRC head on Monday, said at a press meet.
"I can't comment on the quantum of punishment. Inadequacy of a sentence is a ground for appeal and the aggrieved parties can appeal on the same ground," he added.
A court in Bhopal held eight former officials of Union Carbide India Ltd (UCIL) guilty of criminal negligence in the world's worst industrial disaster 25 years back.
The eight include Keshub Mahindra, who then headed UCIL, from whose pesticide plant tonnes of lethal gas leaked on Dec 2-3, 1984 night, killing thousands instantly and many more later. The death toll is believed to be about 25,000.
US hopes Bhopal gas verdict won't affect ties with India
US hopes Bhopal gas verdict won't affect ties with India
The US on Tuesday hoped the Bhopal gas tragedy case will not "inhibit" its expanding ties with India and that the court verdict will bring "closure" to the families of the victims and rejected opening of new inquiries.
The Obama Administration also hoped the Bhopal court verdict in the world's worst industrial disaster will not affect the Indian civil nuclear liability bill.
The nuclear bill, which is facing opposition in India, is currently before Parliament.
The American reactions by two senior officials came amid outrage by civil rights activists over the US parent company Union Carbide escaping criminal liability and its chairman Warren Anderson being allowed to go scot free in connection with the 1984 gas disaster in which over 15,000 people died.
The officials were reacting to yesterday's verdict convicting seven Indian employees including ex-Union Carbide India Chairman Keshub Mahindra and sentencing them to two years in prison each, nearly 26 years after the tragedy
The US on Tuesday hoped the Bhopal gas tragedy case will not "inhibit" its expanding ties with India and that the court verdict will bring "closure" to the families of the victims and rejected opening of new inquiries.
The Obama Administration also hoped the Bhopal court verdict in the world's worst industrial disaster will not affect the Indian civil nuclear liability bill.
The nuclear bill, which is facing opposition in India, is currently before Parliament.
The American reactions by two senior officials came amid outrage by civil rights activists over the US parent company Union Carbide escaping criminal liability and its chairman Warren Anderson being allowed to go scot free in connection with the 1984 gas disaster in which over 15,000 people died.
The officials were reacting to yesterday's verdict convicting seven Indian employees including ex-Union Carbide India Chairman Keshub Mahindra and sentencing them to two years in prison each, nearly 26 years after the tragedy
Monday, June 7, 2010
Experts slam limited line of treatment
Experts slam limited line of treatment Buzz Up Share
Twitter Delicious Myspace Digg Stumble Upon Facebook Tue, Jun 8 05:18 AM
Medical experts have opined that the biggest failure on the Bhopal gas disaster front has been the line of treatment to the victims remaining the same after a quarter of a century. According to experts, no focused researches has been conducted to assess the environmental and health effects of Methyl Isocyanate poisoning in the 26 years since the disaster.
"Doctors in Bhopal still give the same drugs that were given in December 1984, when nothing was known about the poisonous gas," said Dr D K Satpathy, who retired as director of Medico-Legal Institute of the MP government. "For generations, doctors have been prescribing steroids and antibiotics indiscriminately to Bhopal victims. Two generations of victims have been 'managing' their illnesses in absence of focused research," he added.
In January 2009, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) had invited research proposals to study the effects of Methyl Isocyanate (MIC) poisoning. After waiting for a year, ICMR decided to keep the 'call for research proposals' open because there were no noteworthy submissions.
The state government stopped monitoring mortalities caused by MIC in 1992. ICMR had temporarily set up the Bhopal Gas Disaster Research Centre under the Gandhi Medical College to monitor the health effects of MIC exposure, but it was shut down ten years after the disaster. The findings of the studies conducted in those 10 years were never published.
Twitter Delicious Myspace Digg Stumble Upon Facebook Tue, Jun 8 05:18 AM
Medical experts have opined that the biggest failure on the Bhopal gas disaster front has been the line of treatment to the victims remaining the same after a quarter of a century. According to experts, no focused researches has been conducted to assess the environmental and health effects of Methyl Isocyanate poisoning in the 26 years since the disaster.
"Doctors in Bhopal still give the same drugs that were given in December 1984, when nothing was known about the poisonous gas," said Dr D K Satpathy, who retired as director of Medico-Legal Institute of the MP government. "For generations, doctors have been prescribing steroids and antibiotics indiscriminately to Bhopal victims. Two generations of victims have been 'managing' their illnesses in absence of focused research," he added.
In January 2009, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) had invited research proposals to study the effects of Methyl Isocyanate (MIC) poisoning. After waiting for a year, ICMR decided to keep the 'call for research proposals' open because there were no noteworthy submissions.
The state government stopped monitoring mortalities caused by MIC in 1992. ICMR had temporarily set up the Bhopal Gas Disaster Research Centre under the Gandhi Medical College to monitor the health effects of MIC exposure, but it was shut down ten years after the disaster. The findings of the studies conducted in those 10 years were never published.
PTIUS hopes Bhopal gas case will not inhibit relations with India
PTIUS hopes Bhopal gas case will not inhibit relations with India BuzShare
Lalit K Jha Washington, June 8 (PTI) The US today hoped the Bhopal gas tragedy case will not "inhibit" its expanding ties with India and that the court verdict will bring "closure" to the families of the victims and rejected opening of new inquiries.
The Obama Administration also hoped the Bhopal court verdict in the world's worst industrial disaster will not affect the Indian civil nuclear liability bill.
The nuclear bill, which is facing opposition in India, is currently before Parliament. The American reactions by two senior officials came amid outrage by civil rights activists over the US parent company Union Carbide escaping criminal liability and its chairman Warren Anderson being allowed to go scot free in connection with the 1984 gas disaster in which over 15,000 people died.
The officials were reacting to yesterday's verdict convicting seven Indian employees including ex-Union Carbide India Chairman Keshub Mahindra and sentencing them to two years in prison each, nearly 26 years after the tragedy.
"With respect to Bhopal, obviously that was one of the greatest industrial tragedies and industrial accidents in human history.
And let me just say that we hope that this verdict today helps to bring some closure to the victims and their families," Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, Robert Blake told a news conference here.
Blake hoped the verdict will not lead to opening of new inquiries into the role of Union Carbide in the disaster.
"But I don't expect this verdict to reopen any new, you know, inquiries or anything like that.
On the contrary, we hope that this is going to help to bring closure," Blake told foreign reporters in response to a question.
Responding to a specific question on the Bhopal gas tragedy and the court's decisions, Blake said this is an internal matter of India.
To a similar question at another news briefing, the State Department spokesman, P J Crowley said: "This tragedy happened 26 years ago, and it was a terrible tragedy, one of the worst industrial accidents in human history, and we certainly hope that the verdict brings some closure to the families of the victims of this tragedy."
Crowley hoped that this particular case "does not inhibit - or the continuing expansion of economic, cultural, and political ties between the two countries."
"We fully expect that this will not be the case," he said.
"The Indian Parliament will have to make judgement on the nuclear liabilities bill, but this criminal case should have no relation to the liability legislation currently before the parliament," Crowley said.
Lalit K Jha Washington, June 8 (PTI) The US today hoped the Bhopal gas tragedy case will not "inhibit" its expanding ties with India and that the court verdict will bring "closure" to the families of the victims and rejected opening of new inquiries.
The Obama Administration also hoped the Bhopal court verdict in the world's worst industrial disaster will not affect the Indian civil nuclear liability bill.
The nuclear bill, which is facing opposition in India, is currently before Parliament. The American reactions by two senior officials came amid outrage by civil rights activists over the US parent company Union Carbide escaping criminal liability and its chairman Warren Anderson being allowed to go scot free in connection with the 1984 gas disaster in which over 15,000 people died.
The officials were reacting to yesterday's verdict convicting seven Indian employees including ex-Union Carbide India Chairman Keshub Mahindra and sentencing them to two years in prison each, nearly 26 years after the tragedy.
"With respect to Bhopal, obviously that was one of the greatest industrial tragedies and industrial accidents in human history.
And let me just say that we hope that this verdict today helps to bring some closure to the victims and their families," Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, Robert Blake told a news conference here.
Blake hoped the verdict will not lead to opening of new inquiries into the role of Union Carbide in the disaster.
"But I don't expect this verdict to reopen any new, you know, inquiries or anything like that.
On the contrary, we hope that this is going to help to bring closure," Blake told foreign reporters in response to a question.
Responding to a specific question on the Bhopal gas tragedy and the court's decisions, Blake said this is an internal matter of India.
To a similar question at another news briefing, the State Department spokesman, P J Crowley said: "This tragedy happened 26 years ago, and it was a terrible tragedy, one of the worst industrial accidents in human history, and we certainly hope that the verdict brings some closure to the families of the victims of this tragedy."
Crowley hoped that this particular case "does not inhibit - or the continuing expansion of economic, cultural, and political ties between the two countries."
"We fully expect that this will not be the case," he said.
"The Indian Parliament will have to make judgement on the nuclear liabilities bill, but this criminal case should have no relation to the liability legislation currently before the parliament," Crowley said.
Court convicts eight over Bhopal gas leak
Court convicts eight over Bhopal gas leak
BHOPAL, India — An Indian court on Monday sentenced the former top managers of the company blamed for the 1984 Bhopal gas leak to two years in prison in the first convictions over the catastrophe.
Eight people were found guilty in the local court in Bhopal, capital of central Madhya Pradesh state, over the 1984 incident which poisoned tens of thousands of people in the world's worst industrial accident.
A lethal plume of gas escaped from a storage tank at the US-run Union Carbide pesticide factory in the early hours of December 3, 1984, killing thousands in the surrounding slums and residential area.
Among those found guilty of criminal negligence was the chairman of the Indian unit of US group Union Carbide, Keshub Mahindra, a leading industrialist who is now chairman of car and truck group Mahindra & Mahindra.
The guilty, also including the managing director, the production manager and the plant supervisor, were all sentenced to two years in prison and were ordered to pay a fine of 100,000 rupees (2,100 dollars), lawyers told reporters.
All of them are now expected to launch appeals and will not be jailed immediately. One of the eight convicted, R.B. Roychoudhury, has already died.
Warren Anderson, the American then-chairman of the US-based Union Carbide parent group, was among the accused but he was not named in the verdicts after the Bhopal court declared him an "absconder".
The company executives were originally charged with culpable homicide but -- to the outrage of survivors and victims -- the Supreme Court in 1996 reduced the charges to death by negligence with maximum imprisonment of just two years.
"Even with the guilty judgment, what does two years' punishment mean?" Sadhna Karnik, of the Bhopal Gas Victims Struggle group, told AFP.
"They will be able to appeal against the judgement in higher courts," he said.
Outside the court on Monday, victims and members of human rights groups anxiously waited. Some shouted that the verdict was an "insult." Others criticised the time it had taken for the convictions.
"Justice has been delayed and denied," read one placard.
Government figures put the death toll at 3,500 within the first three days of the leak but independent data by the state-run Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) puts the figure at between 8,000 and 10,000 in the same period.
The ICMR has said that until 1994, 25,000 people also died from the consequences of gas exposure, with victim groups saying many were still suffering from the effects to this day.
Survivors remember their eyes grew huge and red after the leak and they began frothing at the mouth and vomiting after inhaling the gas. Many recall hundreds of dead lying in the streets.
Government statistics compiled after 1994 concluded that at least 100,000 people living near the factory were chronically sick, with more than 30,000 residing in areas with contaminated water.
A study last year by the Britain-based Bhopal Medical Appeal said the shanty towns surrounding the site were still laced with lethal chemicals that are polluting groundwater and soil, causing birth defects and a range of illnesses.
Dow Chemical bought Union Carbide in 1999 but says all liabilities related to the accident were cleared in a 470-million-dollar out-of-court settlement with the Indian government in 1989.
A statement released to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the disaster said the settlement "resolved all existing and future claims" against the company.
Union Carbide "did all it could to help the victims and their families" until the settlement and said the Indian government should be responsible for providing clean drinking water and health services to residents, it said.
The company said at the time and continues to insist that sabotage was behind the leak, but the victims have long fought for it to provide further compensation and for its senior staff to face justice.
One victims' group member, Satyanath Sarangi, described the maximum two-year sentence as comparable to the punishment for a "traffic accident."
"We will continue our fight," he said. "This is just the beginning."
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described Bhopal as a tragedy that "still gnaws at our collective conscience" and has vowed continued efforts to tackle the issues of drinking water and site decontamination.
(AFP)
More
BHOPAL, India — An Indian court on Monday sentenced the former top managers of the company blamed for the 1984 Bhopal gas leak to two years in prison in the first convictions over the catastrophe.
Eight people were found guilty in the local court in Bhopal, capital of central Madhya Pradesh state, over the 1984 incident which poisoned tens of thousands of people in the world's worst industrial accident.
A lethal plume of gas escaped from a storage tank at the US-run Union Carbide pesticide factory in the early hours of December 3, 1984, killing thousands in the surrounding slums and residential area.
Among those found guilty of criminal negligence was the chairman of the Indian unit of US group Union Carbide, Keshub Mahindra, a leading industrialist who is now chairman of car and truck group Mahindra & Mahindra.
The guilty, also including the managing director, the production manager and the plant supervisor, were all sentenced to two years in prison and were ordered to pay a fine of 100,000 rupees (2,100 dollars), lawyers told reporters.
All of them are now expected to launch appeals and will not be jailed immediately. One of the eight convicted, R.B. Roychoudhury, has already died.
Warren Anderson, the American then-chairman of the US-based Union Carbide parent group, was among the accused but he was not named in the verdicts after the Bhopal court declared him an "absconder".
The company executives were originally charged with culpable homicide but -- to the outrage of survivors and victims -- the Supreme Court in 1996 reduced the charges to death by negligence with maximum imprisonment of just two years.
"Even with the guilty judgment, what does two years' punishment mean?" Sadhna Karnik, of the Bhopal Gas Victims Struggle group, told AFP.
"They will be able to appeal against the judgement in higher courts," he said.
Outside the court on Monday, victims and members of human rights groups anxiously waited. Some shouted that the verdict was an "insult." Others criticised the time it had taken for the convictions.
"Justice has been delayed and denied," read one placard.
Government figures put the death toll at 3,500 within the first three days of the leak but independent data by the state-run Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) puts the figure at between 8,000 and 10,000 in the same period.
The ICMR has said that until 1994, 25,000 people also died from the consequences of gas exposure, with victim groups saying many were still suffering from the effects to this day.
Survivors remember their eyes grew huge and red after the leak and they began frothing at the mouth and vomiting after inhaling the gas. Many recall hundreds of dead lying in the streets.
Government statistics compiled after 1994 concluded that at least 100,000 people living near the factory were chronically sick, with more than 30,000 residing in areas with contaminated water.
A study last year by the Britain-based Bhopal Medical Appeal said the shanty towns surrounding the site were still laced with lethal chemicals that are polluting groundwater and soil, causing birth defects and a range of illnesses.
Dow Chemical bought Union Carbide in 1999 but says all liabilities related to the accident were cleared in a 470-million-dollar out-of-court settlement with the Indian government in 1989.
A statement released to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the disaster said the settlement "resolved all existing and future claims" against the company.
Union Carbide "did all it could to help the victims and their families" until the settlement and said the Indian government should be responsible for providing clean drinking water and health services to residents, it said.
The company said at the time and continues to insist that sabotage was behind the leak, but the victims have long fought for it to provide further compensation and for its senior staff to face justice.
One victims' group member, Satyanath Sarangi, described the maximum two-year sentence as comparable to the punishment for a "traffic accident."
"We will continue our fight," he said. "This is just the beginning."
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described Bhopal as a tragedy that "still gnaws at our collective conscience" and has vowed continued efforts to tackle the issues of drinking water and site decontamination.
(AFP)
More
Groundwater even 3 km away from Union Carbide factory in Bhopal contains 40 times more pesticides than Indian standards, says CSE report
Groundwater even 3 km away from Union Carbide factory in Bhopal contains 40 times more pesticides than Indian standards, says CSE report
Bhopal, December 01 (Pervez Bari): The latest tests show that groundwater in areas even three km away from the Union Carbide India limited, (UCIL), pesticide manufacturing factory in Bhopal, contains almost 40 times more pesticides than the Indian standards.
The chronic poisoning due to the contamination of land and water even though it was closed down 25 years back following the fatal leak of Methyl Isocyanate, (MIC), from its plant in December 1984.
These are the findings of a study released here on Tuesday by Ms Sunita Narain and Chandra Bhushan, Director and Associate Director respectively of the New Delhi-based research and advocacy organization, Centre for Science and Environment, (CSE). The CSE’s Pollution Monitoring Lab has tested water and soil samples from in and around the Union Carbide factory, and found high concentrations of pesticides and heavy metals inside the factory as well as in the groundwater outside.
Thus, this pooh-poohs the stand taken by the Madhya Pradesh Government and the Indian Government that the defunct Union Carbide factory and the adjoining areas are free from toxicity and is safe for the inhabitants living around it.
It may be recalled here that on the fateful intervening night of December 2/3, 1984 nearly 40 tonnes of MIC and other lethal gases spewed out of the Union Carbide Corporation’s pesticide plant in Bhopal, exposing over 5,00,000 people to the toxic fumes. While 25,000-35,000 people have died since then and hundreds of thousands of persons have been maimed for life.
Chandra Bhushan, who is also in-charge of the CSE laboratory, while releasing the report said UCIL used to manufacture three different kinds of pesticides: Carbaryl (trade name Sevin), Aldicarb (trade name Temik) and a formulation of Carbaryl and gamma-hexachlorocyclohexane (trade name Sevidol). The plant also used heavy metals like mercury and chromium. Most of these products and elements are persistent and toxic. The CSE laboratory chose the same chemicals for its tests.
In October this year, one water and eight soil samples were collected from various places inside the factory. Eleven more water samples came from locations outside, ranging from colonies next to the factory’s boundary to those 3.5 km away.
All the samples collected from within the factory were found to be highly contaminated. The waste stored within the premises had Carbaryl content of 9,856 parts per million (ppm) and mercury content of 1,065 ppm. The soil sample near the Sevidol plant had 2,782 ppm of Lindane; soil from solar evaporation pond had chromium content of 1,065 ppm, while that from the Sevin plant had mercury concentration of 8,188 ppm.
It must be noted that there is no standard for these pesticides. Surface water samples had a pesticide concentration of 0.2805 ppm – which is 561 times more than the Indian standard.
Bhushan warned: “The reason this is extremely worrying is because we have found the toxins in the groundwater we have checked from almost 3 km below the factory”.
All 11 groundwater samples collected from colonies around the UCIL factory were found to be contaminated with chlorinated benzene compounds and organo-chlorine pesticides. Carbamates were found in four samples. The concentration of pesticides was 1.1 to 38.6 times higher than the Indian standard. The water sample from a hand-pump near the Chaurasia Samaj Mandir in Shiv Nagar – more than 3 km from the factory – was the most contaminated. It had the highest concentration of Carbaryl (0.011 ppm, 110 times the standard); Lindane (0.004 ppm, 40 times the standard); and mercury (0.024 ppm, 24 times the standard), the report said.
“The profile of chemicals found within the UCIL factory and in the waste disposal site of UCIL matches the chemicals found in the groundwater sample in the colonies outside. There is no other source of these chlorinated benzene compounds and pesticides than UCIL”, Bhushan added.
Meanwhile, speaking at the release of the study report, CSE Director Sunita Narain said: “Our findings suggest that the entire site is highly contaminated. The waste stored within the factory is a small part of the total contamination present in the site. The focus of the government to just dispose off the stored waste and ignore the site contamination problem is, therefore, not going to solve the environmental problems from the UCIL factory”. (pervezbari@eth.net)
Bhopal, December 01 (Pervez Bari): The latest tests show that groundwater in areas even three km away from the Union Carbide India limited, (UCIL), pesticide manufacturing factory in Bhopal, contains almost 40 times more pesticides than the Indian standards.
The chronic poisoning due to the contamination of land and water even though it was closed down 25 years back following the fatal leak of Methyl Isocyanate, (MIC), from its plant in December 1984.
These are the findings of a study released here on Tuesday by Ms Sunita Narain and Chandra Bhushan, Director and Associate Director respectively of the New Delhi-based research and advocacy organization, Centre for Science and Environment, (CSE). The CSE’s Pollution Monitoring Lab has tested water and soil samples from in and around the Union Carbide factory, and found high concentrations of pesticides and heavy metals inside the factory as well as in the groundwater outside.
Thus, this pooh-poohs the stand taken by the Madhya Pradesh Government and the Indian Government that the defunct Union Carbide factory and the adjoining areas are free from toxicity and is safe for the inhabitants living around it.
It may be recalled here that on the fateful intervening night of December 2/3, 1984 nearly 40 tonnes of MIC and other lethal gases spewed out of the Union Carbide Corporation’s pesticide plant in Bhopal, exposing over 5,00,000 people to the toxic fumes. While 25,000-35,000 people have died since then and hundreds of thousands of persons have been maimed for life.
Chandra Bhushan, who is also in-charge of the CSE laboratory, while releasing the report said UCIL used to manufacture three different kinds of pesticides: Carbaryl (trade name Sevin), Aldicarb (trade name Temik) and a formulation of Carbaryl and gamma-hexachlorocyclohexane (trade name Sevidol). The plant also used heavy metals like mercury and chromium. Most of these products and elements are persistent and toxic. The CSE laboratory chose the same chemicals for its tests.
In October this year, one water and eight soil samples were collected from various places inside the factory. Eleven more water samples came from locations outside, ranging from colonies next to the factory’s boundary to those 3.5 km away.
All the samples collected from within the factory were found to be highly contaminated. The waste stored within the premises had Carbaryl content of 9,856 parts per million (ppm) and mercury content of 1,065 ppm. The soil sample near the Sevidol plant had 2,782 ppm of Lindane; soil from solar evaporation pond had chromium content of 1,065 ppm, while that from the Sevin plant had mercury concentration of 8,188 ppm.
It must be noted that there is no standard for these pesticides. Surface water samples had a pesticide concentration of 0.2805 ppm – which is 561 times more than the Indian standard.
Bhushan warned: “The reason this is extremely worrying is because we have found the toxins in the groundwater we have checked from almost 3 km below the factory”.
All 11 groundwater samples collected from colonies around the UCIL factory were found to be contaminated with chlorinated benzene compounds and organo-chlorine pesticides. Carbamates were found in four samples. The concentration of pesticides was 1.1 to 38.6 times higher than the Indian standard. The water sample from a hand-pump near the Chaurasia Samaj Mandir in Shiv Nagar – more than 3 km from the factory – was the most contaminated. It had the highest concentration of Carbaryl (0.011 ppm, 110 times the standard); Lindane (0.004 ppm, 40 times the standard); and mercury (0.024 ppm, 24 times the standard), the report said.
“The profile of chemicals found within the UCIL factory and in the waste disposal site of UCIL matches the chemicals found in the groundwater sample in the colonies outside. There is no other source of these chlorinated benzene compounds and pesticides than UCIL”, Bhushan added.
Meanwhile, speaking at the release of the study report, CSE Director Sunita Narain said: “Our findings suggest that the entire site is highly contaminated. The waste stored within the factory is a small part of the total contamination present in the site. The focus of the government to just dispose off the stored waste and ignore the site contamination problem is, therefore, not going to solve the environmental problems from the UCIL factory”. (pervezbari@eth.net)
Madhya Pradesh CM meets Manmohan Singh on Maheshwar Dam issue
Madhya Pradesh CM meets Manmohan Singh on Maheshwar Dam issue
New Delhi, May 5 : Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan met the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, on Wednesday and requested him to intervene on the Maheshwar Dam issue, which is facing objections from Ministry of Environment.
"We have appealed to the Prime Minister to intervene and help the people of Indore and Devas to get water and Madhya Pradesh in getting rid of power crisis," said Chauhan after his meeting with Dr Singh.
"We have requested the Prime Minister and he has assured of resolving the issue after holding discussion," he added.
Chauhan accused Union Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh of having an agenda to stall development projects in the state.
"We feel that Jairam Ramesh is working like the activists of Narmada Bachao Andolan. He is not seeing from a development perspective, people's perspective, water and electricity point of view but is only concerned only of environmental issue, which is one sided," said Chauhan.
The Union Environment Ministry has ordered suspension of work on the Maheshwar dam till the dislocated people are rehabilitated.
The Madhya Pradesh Government says that stoppage of the project at this juncture would result in the loss of 702,000 units of power per day starting in 2010.
Earlier, the Madhya Pradesh government had written a letter to the Prime Minister seeking intervention on the issue.
On February 17, the Union Environment Ministry had issued a show cause notice to the Shree Maheshwar Hydel Power Corporation Limited (SMHPCL) stating that there has been no satisfactory compliance with the conditions of environmental clearance.
The ministry also asked the SMHPCL to show cause as to why the clearance should not be revoked and directions for the closure of the Maheshwar project should not be issued.
The reply filed by SMHPCL in response to the show- cause notice confirmed that there was no rehabilitation plan with details of the agricultural land to be allotted to the oustees, and that the relief and rehabilitation measures are far lagging behind the construction of the dam.
On April 2, Jairam Ramesh acknowledged during a media conference in Bhopal that conditions of clearance in the Maheshwar Project have been violated and status of rehabilitation is appalling.
He also said that he is ready to suspend work on the dam until rehabilitation is completed. However the Ministry of Environment and Forests has not suspended the work till now.
The dam is said to be one of the largest being built on the River Narmada in Madhya Pradesh.
The Madhya Pradesh Government privatized the project in 1992, by handing it over to the S.Kumar Group.
New Delhi, May 5 : Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan met the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, on Wednesday and requested him to intervene on the Maheshwar Dam issue, which is facing objections from Ministry of Environment.
"We have appealed to the Prime Minister to intervene and help the people of Indore and Devas to get water and Madhya Pradesh in getting rid of power crisis," said Chauhan after his meeting with Dr Singh.
"We have requested the Prime Minister and he has assured of resolving the issue after holding discussion," he added.
Chauhan accused Union Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh of having an agenda to stall development projects in the state.
"We feel that Jairam Ramesh is working like the activists of Narmada Bachao Andolan. He is not seeing from a development perspective, people's perspective, water and electricity point of view but is only concerned only of environmental issue, which is one sided," said Chauhan.
The Union Environment Ministry has ordered suspension of work on the Maheshwar dam till the dislocated people are rehabilitated.
The Madhya Pradesh Government says that stoppage of the project at this juncture would result in the loss of 702,000 units of power per day starting in 2010.
Earlier, the Madhya Pradesh government had written a letter to the Prime Minister seeking intervention on the issue.
On February 17, the Union Environment Ministry had issued a show cause notice to the Shree Maheshwar Hydel Power Corporation Limited (SMHPCL) stating that there has been no satisfactory compliance with the conditions of environmental clearance.
The ministry also asked the SMHPCL to show cause as to why the clearance should not be revoked and directions for the closure of the Maheshwar project should not be issued.
The reply filed by SMHPCL in response to the show- cause notice confirmed that there was no rehabilitation plan with details of the agricultural land to be allotted to the oustees, and that the relief and rehabilitation measures are far lagging behind the construction of the dam.
On April 2, Jairam Ramesh acknowledged during a media conference in Bhopal that conditions of clearance in the Maheshwar Project have been violated and status of rehabilitation is appalling.
He also said that he is ready to suspend work on the dam until rehabilitation is completed. However the Ministry of Environment and Forests has not suspended the work till now.
The dam is said to be one of the largest being built on the River Narmada in Madhya Pradesh.
The Madhya Pradesh Government privatized the project in 1992, by handing it over to the S.Kumar Group.
Kalīlah wa Dimnah’ stirred & fired imagination of writers in West also: Prof. Abdul Ali
Kalīlah wa Dimnah’ stirred & fired imagination of writers in West also: Prof. Abdul Ali
Bhopal, January 21 (Pervez Bari): The diffusion of Indian literary wisdom through the Arabic monumental works, "Kalīlah wa Dimnah" and “The Arabian Nights” was not confined to the Arab world alone. It rather stirred and fired the imagination of writers in the West also. It only became an inseparable part of European folklore, but also contributed to the development of modern literary genres, particularly the novel, the story and drama. In view of the great impact it has exerted on European writers, Prof. Louis Massignon (July 25, 1883–October 31, 1962), a French scholar of Islam and its history, has rightly observed that it quickened the mentality of Europe which the Greek and Roman fables had made dull and languid.
When modern writers of the East in general and those of Egypt and Syria in particular, started studying and borrowing new Western ideas and literary forms, it was to a great extent the old Indo-Perso-Arabian wine in new European bottles.
The above observations were made by Prof. Abdul Ali of Aligarh Muslim University while delivering his keynote address in the three-day international seminar on “Arabic Panchatantra and Indo-Arab Cultural Relations” which concluded here in Bhopal recently. The seminar was organized by Barkatullah University, Bhopal, wherein eminent scholars from Kuwait, Lanka and from all over India participated.
Prof. Ali said that the “Panchatantra” (five chapters), a Sanskrit collection of animal fables, work is a frame story containing numerous fables aimed at teaching man political wisdom and shrewdness. It was intended to guide people to right behaviour as well as to instruct rulers in the law of polity. It also contains a fine analytical account of human psychology and sentiments. The original Sanskrit work, now lost, was a mixture of Sanskrit prose and stanzas of verse. It was written by a learned Brahmin named Vishnusarman in the 4th century in Kashmir.
Two hundred years later this book, he said, was first translated into Pahlavi (old Persian) by Burzoe at the instance of the Sassanid king Khusraw Anushirwan (531-579 AD), who is said to have taken keen interest in Indian literature and science. He was also well informed about the significance of the book “Panchatantra”. When he sent his personal physician Burzawaih to India in search of its scientific and medical works the latter brought with him, in addition to scientific works, the game of chess and “Panchatantra”.
Then about two hundred years later the same Pahlavi version of the book was translated into Arabic by Ibn al-Muqaffa (d. 760 AD) in the middle of eighth century under the title "Kalīlah wa Dimnah" after the two jackal-councellors to the lion king in the frame story. “Dimnah” is depicted as cunning, shrewd, jealous and evil while “Kalilah” is portrayed goody-goody This Arabic version of the book has got a special significance in the sense that the Persian rendering of it was also lost, as was the Sanskrit original.
The Arabic version, therefore, became not only one of the earliest secular prose works in Arabic, but also the basis of existing translations into the major languages of the world including, besides European tongues, Hebrew, Turkish, Ethiopic, Icelandic, Malay, Javanese, Laotian and Siamese. In the 19th century it was translated into Hindustani, thus, completing the circle which had started 1700 years ago in Kashmir. It is worthy of mention in this context that the five chapters of the original “Panchatantra” became six chapters in its Arabic version.
The overwhelming impact of the book "Kalīlah wa Dimnah" is clearly visible in a number of early collections of Latin stories. The renowned French writer Jean de La Fontaine (1621-95 AD) clearly admitted to having been greatly influenced by the stories of “Kalīlah wa Dimnah”. It s quite obvious that he took the basic material of his fables, ranking among the greatest masterpieces of French literature, from this great Arabic work of Indian wisdom and other Eastern sources.
Prof. Abdul Qadir Jafari, Head of Department of Arabic/Persian in Allahabad University, presented a paper entitled “Story Writing with special reference to "Kalīlah wa Dimnah” and its Persian versions”. Prof Jafari said Abu Abdullah Rudaki (d. 940 AD) transformed the Arabic "Kalīlah wa Dimnah” into Persian verses. Later it was rendered into Persian prose by Nasrullah Mustaufi. The high flown language, full of metaphorical and other ingenious devices, ended in rhymed constructions. Invariably, verses were abundantly mixed with prose. Being closer to poetry it naturally allowed all sorts of exaggeration.
Prof. Jafari said that in fact this widely known book "Kalīlah wa Dimnah” of Nasrullah Mustaufi (537/1144) was based on the model of Maqamat. Taking into account the typical character of Maqamat literature, it must be accepted that no genuine historian would have preferred it for narrative purpose. Sir Denison Ross wrote “It is a fact that Nasrullah’s text abounds in Arabic quotations, but otherwise the style and language are exceedingly simple while Kashif’s text furnished an example of that rhetorical hyperbole and exaggerated metaphor which though giving much pleasure to those who enjoy linguistic gymnastics and furnishing an admirable text books for students of Persian language, is wearisome in the extreme for those who merely wish to read the stories for their own sake.
He said 14 versions of "Kalīlah wa Dimnah” in Arabic and Persian are available and after an analytical study of these versions it can safely be said that the stories have been transferred from one book to another in such a manner that despite their uniformity in type they are different in style of presentation. In addition the reader also gets the feeling of repetition in their texts.
This book is so fascinatingly beautiful that despite the passage of thousands of years since it was written it has still appeal for the human mind and mirrors the gradual development of man and human society, Prof. Jafari concluded.
Dr. Laila Khalf Al-Sabaan, Professor of Linguistics in Kuwait University, presented a paper on “Indo-Arab relationship” with special reference to book "Kalīlah wa Dimnah". She talked about bilateral cultural relations between India and Arab world and the role of this book in bringing these two nations together.
She was all praise and thankful to Abdallah Ibn al-Maqaffa, the author of "Kalīlah wa Dimnah”, for providing an opportunity to Arabs and Indians to understand and come closer to each other. He gave them a chance to analyze and give boost to their literary works.
Dr. Laila, while emphasizing the significance of the book "Kalīlah wa Dimnah", said the translations of Indian, Persian and Greek books of literature in the Al-Ma'mun (The Abbasid Caliph) period were of great literary and cultural importance.
Dr. Joshna Nigam of Sanskrit Department in Barkatullah University in her paper said that while translating "Kalīlah wa Dimnah” the originality of the text has not been maintained as many changes have occurred, though animal characters have remained as t is.
Dr Joshna said in "Kalīlah wa Dimnah” together with advisory there is talk of through the characters of animals to teach humanity how to understand people, bow to choose reliable and trustworthy friends, how to meet difficulties and solve problems through tact and wisdom, and how to live in peace and harmony in the face of hypocrisy, deceit and many pitfalls in life. Besides there is mention of importance social values in life and political upheaval and its intricacies which have been underscored through tales in the book, she pointed out.
Dr. Maya Dube also of Sanskrit Department in Barkatullah University said in "Kalīlah wa Dimnah” factors influencing entire mankind and human society have been discussed to bring a revolution in practical, educational, literary and social life of man. The book has played a basic role in boosting cultural values between Indian and Arab world relations, she opined.
Dr. Syed Jahangir, ex-chairperson of Centre of Arabic Studies, the English & Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, chairing the sixth and last session of the seminar in his presidential address observed that for the success of this seminar it is sufficient that experts of Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic openly, without any inhibitions, discussed the topic and translated the books of Arabic and Sanskrit.
Dr. Jahangir congratulated Mohammad Hassan Khan, Head of the Arabic Department of Barkatullah University, and Prof. Mrs. Ayisha Rais, Professor of Arabic & Dean Faculty of Arts, Barkatullah University, and their colleagues for their untiring efforts in convening a successful seminar on such an important topic.
The Arab world through translating "Kalīlah wa Dimnah” introduced the ethos of Indian cultural and educational values to the world, he noted.
It may be recalled that Prof. Ravindra Jain in his presidential address in the inaugural session of the seminar had said that Arabs are very intelligent people and are ahead of Indians. They took full advantage of the literature in Sanskrit and Hindi which flourished in India during the period of the Rig-Veda and Upanishads (from 1500 B.C. to 500 B.C.) and translated it into Persian and Arabic.
In all 30 papers were presented in the seminar were in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, English and Hindi languages in total six sessions spread over three days. The foreign participants were Dr. Laila Al-Sabaan & Prof. Laila Usman (both from Kuwait University, Kuwait) and Prof. Humdoon Mohiuddin (Sri Lanka). Among other Indian scholars who presented their papers included Prof. Kafeel Ahmad Qasmi (from Aligarh Muslim University), Prof. Fayyaz-ul-Huq (from Allahabad University), Prof. Manzoor Ahmad (Kashmir University), Prof. Mustafa Shareef, Prof. Abdul Majeed, Dr. Abdul Jameel Khan & Dr. Syed Abdurrahman (all four from Osmania University, Hyderabad), Prof. Iqbal Hussain & Dr. Syed Jahangir (both from English & Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad), Dr. Fazlullah Shareef (Avanti College, Hyderabad), Maulana Shoeb Koti (Mumbai), Maulana Dr. Afroz Qasmi, Sr. Journalist Arif Aziz; Dr. Iftekhar Masood; Maulana Syed Sharafat Ali Nadwi, Maulana Ahsan Ali Khan Nadwi, Maulana Dr. Javed Zafar Nadwi, Ms Khaledah Siddiqui, Dr. Marzia Arif, Dr. Sangeeta Gundecha, Dr. Shamsa Arif, Dr. Mohammad Hassan Khan & Prof. Ayisha Rais (all from Bhopal) etc. (pervezbari@eth.net)
Bhopal, January 21 (Pervez Bari): The diffusion of Indian literary wisdom through the Arabic monumental works, "Kalīlah wa Dimnah" and “The Arabian Nights” was not confined to the Arab world alone. It rather stirred and fired the imagination of writers in the West also. It only became an inseparable part of European folklore, but also contributed to the development of modern literary genres, particularly the novel, the story and drama. In view of the great impact it has exerted on European writers, Prof. Louis Massignon (July 25, 1883–October 31, 1962), a French scholar of Islam and its history, has rightly observed that it quickened the mentality of Europe which the Greek and Roman fables had made dull and languid.
When modern writers of the East in general and those of Egypt and Syria in particular, started studying and borrowing new Western ideas and literary forms, it was to a great extent the old Indo-Perso-Arabian wine in new European bottles.
The above observations were made by Prof. Abdul Ali of Aligarh Muslim University while delivering his keynote address in the three-day international seminar on “Arabic Panchatantra and Indo-Arab Cultural Relations” which concluded here in Bhopal recently. The seminar was organized by Barkatullah University, Bhopal, wherein eminent scholars from Kuwait, Lanka and from all over India participated.
Prof. Ali said that the “Panchatantra” (five chapters), a Sanskrit collection of animal fables, work is a frame story containing numerous fables aimed at teaching man political wisdom and shrewdness. It was intended to guide people to right behaviour as well as to instruct rulers in the law of polity. It also contains a fine analytical account of human psychology and sentiments. The original Sanskrit work, now lost, was a mixture of Sanskrit prose and stanzas of verse. It was written by a learned Brahmin named Vishnusarman in the 4th century in Kashmir.
Two hundred years later this book, he said, was first translated into Pahlavi (old Persian) by Burzoe at the instance of the Sassanid king Khusraw Anushirwan (531-579 AD), who is said to have taken keen interest in Indian literature and science. He was also well informed about the significance of the book “Panchatantra”. When he sent his personal physician Burzawaih to India in search of its scientific and medical works the latter brought with him, in addition to scientific works, the game of chess and “Panchatantra”.
Then about two hundred years later the same Pahlavi version of the book was translated into Arabic by Ibn al-Muqaffa (d. 760 AD) in the middle of eighth century under the title "Kalīlah wa Dimnah" after the two jackal-councellors to the lion king in the frame story. “Dimnah” is depicted as cunning, shrewd, jealous and evil while “Kalilah” is portrayed goody-goody This Arabic version of the book has got a special significance in the sense that the Persian rendering of it was also lost, as was the Sanskrit original.
The Arabic version, therefore, became not only one of the earliest secular prose works in Arabic, but also the basis of existing translations into the major languages of the world including, besides European tongues, Hebrew, Turkish, Ethiopic, Icelandic, Malay, Javanese, Laotian and Siamese. In the 19th century it was translated into Hindustani, thus, completing the circle which had started 1700 years ago in Kashmir. It is worthy of mention in this context that the five chapters of the original “Panchatantra” became six chapters in its Arabic version.
The overwhelming impact of the book "Kalīlah wa Dimnah" is clearly visible in a number of early collections of Latin stories. The renowned French writer Jean de La Fontaine (1621-95 AD) clearly admitted to having been greatly influenced by the stories of “Kalīlah wa Dimnah”. It s quite obvious that he took the basic material of his fables, ranking among the greatest masterpieces of French literature, from this great Arabic work of Indian wisdom and other Eastern sources.
Prof. Abdul Qadir Jafari, Head of Department of Arabic/Persian in Allahabad University, presented a paper entitled “Story Writing with special reference to "Kalīlah wa Dimnah” and its Persian versions”. Prof Jafari said Abu Abdullah Rudaki (d. 940 AD) transformed the Arabic "Kalīlah wa Dimnah” into Persian verses. Later it was rendered into Persian prose by Nasrullah Mustaufi. The high flown language, full of metaphorical and other ingenious devices, ended in rhymed constructions. Invariably, verses were abundantly mixed with prose. Being closer to poetry it naturally allowed all sorts of exaggeration.
Prof. Jafari said that in fact this widely known book "Kalīlah wa Dimnah” of Nasrullah Mustaufi (537/1144) was based on the model of Maqamat. Taking into account the typical character of Maqamat literature, it must be accepted that no genuine historian would have preferred it for narrative purpose. Sir Denison Ross wrote “It is a fact that Nasrullah’s text abounds in Arabic quotations, but otherwise the style and language are exceedingly simple while Kashif’s text furnished an example of that rhetorical hyperbole and exaggerated metaphor which though giving much pleasure to those who enjoy linguistic gymnastics and furnishing an admirable text books for students of Persian language, is wearisome in the extreme for those who merely wish to read the stories for their own sake.
He said 14 versions of "Kalīlah wa Dimnah” in Arabic and Persian are available and after an analytical study of these versions it can safely be said that the stories have been transferred from one book to another in such a manner that despite their uniformity in type they are different in style of presentation. In addition the reader also gets the feeling of repetition in their texts.
This book is so fascinatingly beautiful that despite the passage of thousands of years since it was written it has still appeal for the human mind and mirrors the gradual development of man and human society, Prof. Jafari concluded.
Dr. Laila Khalf Al-Sabaan, Professor of Linguistics in Kuwait University, presented a paper on “Indo-Arab relationship” with special reference to book "Kalīlah wa Dimnah". She talked about bilateral cultural relations between India and Arab world and the role of this book in bringing these two nations together.
She was all praise and thankful to Abdallah Ibn al-Maqaffa, the author of "Kalīlah wa Dimnah”, for providing an opportunity to Arabs and Indians to understand and come closer to each other. He gave them a chance to analyze and give boost to their literary works.
Dr. Laila, while emphasizing the significance of the book "Kalīlah wa Dimnah", said the translations of Indian, Persian and Greek books of literature in the Al-Ma'mun (The Abbasid Caliph) period were of great literary and cultural importance.
Dr. Joshna Nigam of Sanskrit Department in Barkatullah University in her paper said that while translating "Kalīlah wa Dimnah” the originality of the text has not been maintained as many changes have occurred, though animal characters have remained as t is.
Dr Joshna said in "Kalīlah wa Dimnah” together with advisory there is talk of through the characters of animals to teach humanity how to understand people, bow to choose reliable and trustworthy friends, how to meet difficulties and solve problems through tact and wisdom, and how to live in peace and harmony in the face of hypocrisy, deceit and many pitfalls in life. Besides there is mention of importance social values in life and political upheaval and its intricacies which have been underscored through tales in the book, she pointed out.
Dr. Maya Dube also of Sanskrit Department in Barkatullah University said in "Kalīlah wa Dimnah” factors influencing entire mankind and human society have been discussed to bring a revolution in practical, educational, literary and social life of man. The book has played a basic role in boosting cultural values between Indian and Arab world relations, she opined.
Dr. Syed Jahangir, ex-chairperson of Centre of Arabic Studies, the English & Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, chairing the sixth and last session of the seminar in his presidential address observed that for the success of this seminar it is sufficient that experts of Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic openly, without any inhibitions, discussed the topic and translated the books of Arabic and Sanskrit.
Dr. Jahangir congratulated Mohammad Hassan Khan, Head of the Arabic Department of Barkatullah University, and Prof. Mrs. Ayisha Rais, Professor of Arabic & Dean Faculty of Arts, Barkatullah University, and their colleagues for their untiring efforts in convening a successful seminar on such an important topic.
The Arab world through translating "Kalīlah wa Dimnah” introduced the ethos of Indian cultural and educational values to the world, he noted.
It may be recalled that Prof. Ravindra Jain in his presidential address in the inaugural session of the seminar had said that Arabs are very intelligent people and are ahead of Indians. They took full advantage of the literature in Sanskrit and Hindi which flourished in India during the period of the Rig-Veda and Upanishads (from 1500 B.C. to 500 B.C.) and translated it into Persian and Arabic.
In all 30 papers were presented in the seminar were in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, English and Hindi languages in total six sessions spread over three days. The foreign participants were Dr. Laila Al-Sabaan & Prof. Laila Usman (both from Kuwait University, Kuwait) and Prof. Humdoon Mohiuddin (Sri Lanka). Among other Indian scholars who presented their papers included Prof. Kafeel Ahmad Qasmi (from Aligarh Muslim University), Prof. Fayyaz-ul-Huq (from Allahabad University), Prof. Manzoor Ahmad (Kashmir University), Prof. Mustafa Shareef, Prof. Abdul Majeed, Dr. Abdul Jameel Khan & Dr. Syed Abdurrahman (all four from Osmania University, Hyderabad), Prof. Iqbal Hussain & Dr. Syed Jahangir (both from English & Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad), Dr. Fazlullah Shareef (Avanti College, Hyderabad), Maulana Shoeb Koti (Mumbai), Maulana Dr. Afroz Qasmi, Sr. Journalist Arif Aziz; Dr. Iftekhar Masood; Maulana Syed Sharafat Ali Nadwi, Maulana Ahsan Ali Khan Nadwi, Maulana Dr. Javed Zafar Nadwi, Ms Khaledah Siddiqui, Dr. Marzia Arif, Dr. Sangeeta Gundecha, Dr. Shamsa Arif, Dr. Mohammad Hassan Khan & Prof. Ayisha Rais (all from Bhopal) etc. (pervezbari@eth.net)
SDPI hails Supreme Court ruling on narco analysis
SDPI hails Supreme Court ruling on narco analysis
Bhopal, May 07 (Pervez Bari): The Social Democratic Party of India, (SDPI), has hailed the Supreme Court of India for ruling narco analysis, brain-mapping and polygraph tests without the consent of accused as illegal.
A. Sayeed, SDPI's general secretary, in a statement said: "Hats off to Supreme Court for realizing that these tests violated the constitutional provisions and amounted to cruel and degrading treatment and unwarranted intrusion into personal liberty?.
Sayeed said such tests invade into the privacy of an individual considered sacrosanct under the Right to Life and Liberty provided in the Constitution of India. The Supreme Court has rightly said: ?We have elaborated how the compulsory administration of any of these techniques is an unjustified intrusion into the mental privacy of an individual. It would also amount to ?cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment? with regard to the language of evolving international human rights norms. Furthermore, placing reliance on the results gathered from these techniques comes into conflict with the ?right to fair trial?.?, he stated.
The SDPI general secretary expressed satisfaction that Supreme Court has trashed the argument of the Central Government that overriding public interest to investigate terrorist offences would require administration of such tests to procure evidence. The Bench rightly noted: ?Invocations of a compelling public interest cannot justify the dilution of constitutional rights such as the ?right against self-incrimination?,? Sayeed said.
Sayeed pointed out that the Supreme Court has also said the Central Government?s contention that the use of these techniques will only be sought in cases involving heinous offences only rings hollow since there will no principled basis for restricting their use once the investigators are given the discretion to do so.
He hoped that the investigating agencies would adhere to the directives of the Supreme Court and follow the guidelines of the National Human Rights Commission which had published it for the Administration of Polygraph Test (Lie Detector Test) on an Accused in 2000. The Court has observed that these guidelines should be strictly adhered to and similar safeguards should be adopted for conducting the `narco analysis technique? and the `brain electrical activation profile? test. (pervezbari@eth.net)
Bhopal, May 07 (Pervez Bari): The Social Democratic Party of India, (SDPI), has hailed the Supreme Court of India for ruling narco analysis, brain-mapping and polygraph tests without the consent of accused as illegal.
A. Sayeed, SDPI's general secretary, in a statement said: "Hats off to Supreme Court for realizing that these tests violated the constitutional provisions and amounted to cruel and degrading treatment and unwarranted intrusion into personal liberty?.
Sayeed said such tests invade into the privacy of an individual considered sacrosanct under the Right to Life and Liberty provided in the Constitution of India. The Supreme Court has rightly said: ?We have elaborated how the compulsory administration of any of these techniques is an unjustified intrusion into the mental privacy of an individual. It would also amount to ?cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment? with regard to the language of evolving international human rights norms. Furthermore, placing reliance on the results gathered from these techniques comes into conflict with the ?right to fair trial?.?, he stated.
The SDPI general secretary expressed satisfaction that Supreme Court has trashed the argument of the Central Government that overriding public interest to investigate terrorist offences would require administration of such tests to procure evidence. The Bench rightly noted: ?Invocations of a compelling public interest cannot justify the dilution of constitutional rights such as the ?right against self-incrimination?,? Sayeed said.
Sayeed pointed out that the Supreme Court has also said the Central Government?s contention that the use of these techniques will only be sought in cases involving heinous offences only rings hollow since there will no principled basis for restricting their use once the investigators are given the discretion to do so.
He hoped that the investigating agencies would adhere to the directives of the Supreme Court and follow the guidelines of the National Human Rights Commission which had published it for the Administration of Polygraph Test (Lie Detector Test) on an Accused in 2000. The Court has observed that these guidelines should be strictly adhered to and similar safeguards should be adopted for conducting the `narco analysis technique? and the `brain electrical activation profile? test. (pervezbari@eth.net)
Muzaffar Ali of Bhopal Cynosure of All Eyes with 4 titles in Gulf Cup Dirt Track Racing - 'Clash of Titans' - Finals
Muzaffar Ali of Bhopal Cynosure of All Eyes with 4 titles in Gulf Cup Dirt Track Racing - 'Clash of Titans' - Finals
Bhopal, February 07 (Pervez Bari): Muzaffar Ali of Bhopal was cynosure of all eyes as displaying his spectacular skills and stamina he finished on top in all the four races he participated in the Gulf Cup ‘Clash of the Titans’ in Bhopal here on Sunday to emerge the undisputed king of dirt track motorcycle racing in India. He won the maximum races in the event to be richer by Rs. 35,000/- and certainly proved himself on the National motor sports scenario and will be the one to watch out for in events to follow.
Following closely Muzaffar was Bangalore's Pramod Joshua who came up with a brilliant display to reach the finish line first in the two races he participated in the Gulf Cup.
If the experienced riders, like Joshua, Pradeep, Muzaffar Ali and Nataraj dazzled, young novice Murthy R. of Bangalore was equally good as he won Novice championship for bikes up to 165cc 4-strokes and up to 130cc-4 strokes.
A. Anand of Coimbatore came first in Novice Class Group C championship for bikes up to 165cc 2-strokes and was placed second in up to 165cc-4 strokes.
Muzaffar Ali of Bhopal and Joshua & H K Pradeep from Bangalore, who showed the class champions are made of in the previous legs of the dirt track motorcycle racing held in Jaipur, Hyderabad and Nashik, again proved a distinct class above the field featuring only the top riders from the previous rounds in this final leg.
The event was organized by Sportscraft, Mumbai, in association with Bhopal Automobile Sports Club at the BHEL Dussehra ground, Govindpura.
Muzaffar Ali, a motorcycle mechanic by profession having studied up till Std. XII only, won the Private Expert Class Group B up to 260cc 2 & 4 strokes, with Firoz Khan of Aurangabad and Jes David of Jaipur coming in second and third place respectively. Muzaffar received Rs. 28,000/- while Firoz and Jes got Rs. 20,000/- and 15,000/- respectively.
The three events in which Muzaffar won hands down were Scooters - Group C - up to 110cc 2 & 4 strokes (Prize money Rs. 2000/-); Local Class - Group C - Motorcycles up to 165cc - 4 strokes (Prize money Rs. 2500/-) and Local Class - Group C - Motorcycles up to 165cc - 2 strokes (Prize money Rs. 2500/-).
Talking to this Correspondent Muzaffar said he had passion for motorcycle racing since childhood and his ideal has been Syed Ehtesham, an international motorcycle racing champion who has now settled in Dubai. He hopes to participate in international events and would ride a foreign motorcycle in 260cc category next year. He was champion in Novice Class in 2007.
Meanwhile, besides winning the Indian Expert Class Group A Foreign Motorcycles up to 260 cc, Joshua also won the Indian Expert Class Group B up to 260cc 2 & 4 strokes to garner total amount of prize money Rs. 54,000/-. Like in all the previous rounds, the Bangalore rider, astride a TVS was a clear winner in the Indian Expert class Group A for foreign motorcycle despite being challenged all the way by Pradeep, who finished second, and R. Nataraj, who was placed third.
Joshua was always under pressure as he went through the motions on the serpentine course but, to his credit, did well to strike the perfect balance on the sharp bends and stay ahead of the rest of the field and come out trumps.
If his first race was rather easy, his second outing in the Indian Expert Class Group B was a close affair. Sudeep Kotegar, who ran him close in the previous rounds, tailed him right through, but again had to settle for second best. Vishal Barguje took third place.
Much was anticipated from this Clash of the Titans, and none disappointed as they went through the motions on a specially-laid out course at high speeds, their superbly prepared bike raising a dust storm all over.
The course laid out by organizers Sportscraft was really tough. In addition to the sharp bends there was also loose gravel and water-logged areas which made riding a dicey proposition, but all riders displayed excellent skills to come through this test of man and machine in flaying colors.
Maninder Singh won the Private Expert Class for foreign motorcycles 260cc 2 & 4 stroke, beating back a strong challenge from Vineeth Kurup and Jatin Jain, who finished second and third respectively.
While the goodly crowd that turned up was appreciative of the event, the riders too were all praise for Sportscraft’s conduct of the Gulf Cup which saw four legs being held at different venues and culminating with the “Clash of the Titans” here in Bhopal. They all thanked both Gulf Oil and Sportscraft for giving motorcycle riders an opportunity to parade their skills and expressed hope that the event will be held next year too.
Shrikant Karani, Chairman Organising Committee and founder member of Sportscraft, appeared pleased as punch at the successful completion of the event (pervezbari@eth.net)
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Bhopal, February 07 (Pervez Bari): Muzaffar Ali of Bhopal was cynosure of all eyes as displaying his spectacular skills and stamina he finished on top in all the four races he participated in the Gulf Cup ‘Clash of the Titans’ in Bhopal here on Sunday to emerge the undisputed king of dirt track motorcycle racing in India. He won the maximum races in the event to be richer by Rs. 35,000/- and certainly proved himself on the National motor sports scenario and will be the one to watch out for in events to follow.
Following closely Muzaffar was Bangalore's Pramod Joshua who came up with a brilliant display to reach the finish line first in the two races he participated in the Gulf Cup.
If the experienced riders, like Joshua, Pradeep, Muzaffar Ali and Nataraj dazzled, young novice Murthy R. of Bangalore was equally good as he won Novice championship for bikes up to 165cc 4-strokes and up to 130cc-4 strokes.
A. Anand of Coimbatore came first in Novice Class Group C championship for bikes up to 165cc 2-strokes and was placed second in up to 165cc-4 strokes.
Muzaffar Ali of Bhopal and Joshua & H K Pradeep from Bangalore, who showed the class champions are made of in the previous legs of the dirt track motorcycle racing held in Jaipur, Hyderabad and Nashik, again proved a distinct class above the field featuring only the top riders from the previous rounds in this final leg.
The event was organized by Sportscraft, Mumbai, in association with Bhopal Automobile Sports Club at the BHEL Dussehra ground, Govindpura.
Muzaffar Ali, a motorcycle mechanic by profession having studied up till Std. XII only, won the Private Expert Class Group B up to 260cc 2 & 4 strokes, with Firoz Khan of Aurangabad and Jes David of Jaipur coming in second and third place respectively. Muzaffar received Rs. 28,000/- while Firoz and Jes got Rs. 20,000/- and 15,000/- respectively.
The three events in which Muzaffar won hands down were Scooters - Group C - up to 110cc 2 & 4 strokes (Prize money Rs. 2000/-); Local Class - Group C - Motorcycles up to 165cc - 4 strokes (Prize money Rs. 2500/-) and Local Class - Group C - Motorcycles up to 165cc - 2 strokes (Prize money Rs. 2500/-).
Talking to this Correspondent Muzaffar said he had passion for motorcycle racing since childhood and his ideal has been Syed Ehtesham, an international motorcycle racing champion who has now settled in Dubai. He hopes to participate in international events and would ride a foreign motorcycle in 260cc category next year. He was champion in Novice Class in 2007.
Meanwhile, besides winning the Indian Expert Class Group A Foreign Motorcycles up to 260 cc, Joshua also won the Indian Expert Class Group B up to 260cc 2 & 4 strokes to garner total amount of prize money Rs. 54,000/-. Like in all the previous rounds, the Bangalore rider, astride a TVS was a clear winner in the Indian Expert class Group A for foreign motorcycle despite being challenged all the way by Pradeep, who finished second, and R. Nataraj, who was placed third.
Joshua was always under pressure as he went through the motions on the serpentine course but, to his credit, did well to strike the perfect balance on the sharp bends and stay ahead of the rest of the field and come out trumps.
If his first race was rather easy, his second outing in the Indian Expert Class Group B was a close affair. Sudeep Kotegar, who ran him close in the previous rounds, tailed him right through, but again had to settle for second best. Vishal Barguje took third place.
Much was anticipated from this Clash of the Titans, and none disappointed as they went through the motions on a specially-laid out course at high speeds, their superbly prepared bike raising a dust storm all over.
The course laid out by organizers Sportscraft was really tough. In addition to the sharp bends there was also loose gravel and water-logged areas which made riding a dicey proposition, but all riders displayed excellent skills to come through this test of man and machine in flaying colors.
Maninder Singh won the Private Expert Class for foreign motorcycles 260cc 2 & 4 stroke, beating back a strong challenge from Vineeth Kurup and Jatin Jain, who finished second and third respectively.
While the goodly crowd that turned up was appreciative of the event, the riders too were all praise for Sportscraft’s conduct of the Gulf Cup which saw four legs being held at different venues and culminating with the “Clash of the Titans” here in Bhopal. They all thanked both Gulf Oil and Sportscraft for giving motorcycle riders an opportunity to parade their skills and expressed hope that the event will be held next year too.
Shrikant Karani, Chairman Organising Committee and founder member of Sportscraft, appeared pleased as punch at the successful completion of the event (pervezbari@eth.net)
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