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By Root 1048 0

Omar Pasha was present, with a wife on either side of him, each dressed up like a queen in a silk sari that Ahmed Bassi had embroidered and encrusted with pearls. The Muslim tailor was there as well, for the festivities transcended all religious differences. With his crony the goateed mullah beside him, the sorcerer Nilamber, who was acting as pandit, led the procession from workshop to workshop, saying mantras and blessing the tools with purifying fire. Behind him, Padmini walked proudly, in a long dress made out of scarlet cotton, a gift from Sister Felicity. The young Indian girl had persuaded the nun to join in the celebrations. When they spotted the cross around the sister’s neck, many of the workers asked her to come and bless their tools in the name of her god. “Praise to you, oh God of the universe, who gives our daily bread, for your children in Orya Bustee, Chola and Jai Prakash love and believe in you,” Sister Felicity repeated fervently in each workshop. “And rejoice with them at this day of light in all the hardship of their lives.”

23

“Half a Million Hours of Work and Not a Day Lost”

The City of the Begums could not help but bless the chairman of Carbide. No other industrial enterprise housed within Bhopal’s ancient walls had been quite so concerned about its image; no other was quite so solicitous toward its staff. Each day brought new examples of this extraordinary behavior. In the plant, Muslim workers had a place of prayer facing Mecca; Hindus had little altars dedicated to their principal gods. During the Hindu festival in honor of the goddess Durga, the management gave the workers a generator to light her richly decorated statue. The material advantages were no less plentiful. A special fund enabled employees to borrow money for weddings and festivals. The insurance and pension plans put the factory ahead of most Indian firms. A canteen, accessible to all, dispensed meals for a token price of two rupees.

In accordance with what they had been taught in Institute, however, it was the safety of their staff that was the prime concern of the plant management. Carbide equipped Bhopal’s Hamidia Hospital with ultramodern resuscitation equipment, which could treat several victims of gas poisoning simultaneously. The gift was greeted with public celebrations widely reported in the press. In addition a hospital infirmary stocked with respiratory equipment, a radiology unit and a laboratory, was built at the very entrance to the site. “We were convinced all these precautions were unnecessary,” Kamal Pareek said afterward, “but they were part of the safety culture with which we had been inculcated.” Yet this same culture accommodated some surprising deficiencies. The medical staff that Carbide hired did not have any specific training in the effects of gas-related accidents, especially those caused by methyl isocyanate.

It fell to the young assistant manager for safety to share what he had learned at Institute with over a thousand men, most of whom were almost oblivious to the dangers they faced every day. “Making people appreciate the danger was virtually impossible,” Pareek would recount. “It’s in the nature of a chemical plant for the danger to be invisible. How can you instill fear into people without showing them the danger?” Meetings to inform people, emergency exercises, poster campaigns, safety demonstrations in which families took part, slogan competitions … Pareek and his superior were constantly devising new ways of awakening everyone’s survival instinct. Soon, Warren Woomer was able to send a victory report to his headquarters in America: “We are pleased to announce that half a million hours have been worked without losing a single day.”

Safety, Pareek knew, also depended upon a certain number of specific devices, such as the alarm system with which the plant was equipped. At the slightest intimation of fire or the smallest emission of toxic gas, the duty supervisor in the control room had orders to set off a general alarm siren. At the same time loudspeakers would inform personnel,