sydras said:
Meaning why didn't we charge Anderson with a non-bailable offence.
As a result, he was able to get out and skip the country otherwise he would not have been able to do so. Now, i'm not clued up on the minutaie here about penal codes but from what i could understand he was not directly,
personally, responsible for a screwup at the plant but rather the company was.
sydras said:
I meant that the govt. should have represented the people's interests instead of the company's. They should have forced a cleanup by the company and sought much greater compensation for victims. They were least bothered about their own people. They aided and abetted Anderson's escape from the country citing flimsy reasons when they should've been concerned about the aftermath of an industrial disaster.
The govt can only do what the law at the time allowed. Can you show that the law was not followed to the letter wrt to this ? I asked Magnet the same question earlier.
If you can indeed show this then you can claim that the govt did not do its job otherwise its just hot air.
The main point i think that no one wants to admit is that our laws at the time were inadequate to deal with such a situation, this is why we hear this talk about 'aiding & abetting'. If so then we must accept this and strengthen these laws so the same does not happen in the future.
It's for this very reason that the nuke liabilities bill needs to be stronger otherwise we will see the same happening again. Bhopal has to be a 'never again' moment and we have to learn from that painful experience.
sydras said:
1> You mean to say that the govt of India had a stake in UCIL and 2> that UCIL did not figure in the list of Union Carbide's liabilities in the US? Hmm...I believe that Union Carbide had paid paltry compensation and settled the issue with the indian govt. If Dow acquired Union Carbide after the settlement then what you say could be true. But 1> is news to me. What are the implications for the govt in such an arrangement?
The plant in Bhopal was a subsidiary of UC that means the govt had some stake in it if not a controlling one. This necessarily has to be the case as to date we still don't allow foreign companies to be fully foreign owned here ie no convertibility of the rupee on the capital account.
When you hear talk abroad about how companies would like to exploit the market here the main obstacle in their way is the above, when those laws relax as they inevitably will then more companies will setup shop here. It means a company can setup an operation and if it fails they can fully repatriate what they invested here, curently they cannot do that or not as easily.
sydras said:
Hmm...I believe that Union Carbide had paid paltry compensation and settled the issue with the indian govt.
In that case there are no more liabilities for UC in India. Again, was the compensation in line with what the laws at the time stated for liability ?
UC could have cut a deal and used every loophole in the book to lower the liabilities but in the end was it legal ?
sydras said:
What are the implications for the govt in such an arrangement?
UC is off the hook and the govt, ie the taxpayer might be liable to shell out the difference. When that happens is anyone's guess ?
