Five Past Midnight in Bhopal - Dominique Lapierre [32]
“Your company sells more than five hundred million batteries a year in this damn country,” he told him. “Its agents range from the farthest reaches of the Himalayas to the backwaters of Kerala. Only an organization like yours can help me distribute my Sevin.”
The Argentinian raised his arms. “My dear Mr. Singh, a bag of insecticide is not as easy to sell as a pair of batteries for a flashlight,” he pointed out.
The Indian adopted a coaxing tone. “My dear Mr. Muñoz, what you personally have achieved in Mexico and Argentina, you will manage to achieve here too. I have every faith in you. Let’s say no more about it; your smile tells me you will help me.”
The challenge was a colossal one. From behind the wheel of his Jaguar, Muñoz had gauged the enormity and complexity of India. The country bore no resemblance to Mexico or even Argentina, both of which he had ended up knowing like the back of his hand. India was a continent whose three hundred million peasants spoke five or six hundred different languages and dialects. Half of them were illiterate and thus unable to read the label on a sack of fertilizer or a bag of insecticide. Yet they were dealing with chemical products that were potentially fatal. Muñoz had been horrified by the number of accidents the newspapers reported in rural areas: lung damage, burns to the skin, poisoning. The victims were almost always poor agricultural laborers whose employers had not seen fit to provide them with protective clothing or masks. To improve the efficacy of their manure, many peasants mixed different products together—almost always with their bare hands. Some even tasted the combination to make sure it had been mixed properly. In the poorest villages where whole families lived in one room, the bag of insecticide frequently sat in one corner, insidiously poisoning them with toxic emissions. Women drew water, did the milking or cooked food with containers that had once held DDT. The result was an alarming increase in certain disorders. A journey through the Tamil Nadu region horrified the Union Carbide representative. In some areas known for their intensive use of phytosanitary products, the instances of lung, stomach, skin and brain cancer defied counting. In the Lucknow region, half the laborers who handled pesticides were found to be suffering from serious psychological disorders as well as problems with their memory and eyesight. Worst of all, these sacrifices were pointless. Poorly informed peasants thought they could increase a product’s effectiveness by doubling or tripling the manufacturer’s recommended dosage. Their lack of understanding led many of them to ruin, sometimes even suicide. Newspaper headlines reported that the most popular method these desperate people used to kill themselves was swallowing a good dose of pesticide.
Despite his worries about the potential for misuse of insecticides, Eduardo Muñoz responded to his Indian partner’s appeal for help. He dispatched the sales teams for the batteries with the blue-and-white logo to dispose of the surplus Sevin. Soon nearly every single grocery, hardware shop, and traveling salesman would be selling the American insecticide. This apparently generous gesture was not entirely devoid of self-interest. The Argentinian was counting on it to provide him with an accurate assessment of the Indian market’s capacity to absorb pesticides. The information would be crucial when the time came to determine the size and production volume of the Indian plant that Union Carbide had promised to build.
“Work with