Five Past Midnight in Bhopal - Dominique Lapierre [84]
It would not be long before Dutta had an explanation for this apparent indifference. If no one at the top of Union Carbide seemed interested in the neglect to which the factory had fallen prey, it was for a reason: in Danbury the Bhopal plant had already been written off. Dutta would have formal confirmation of the fact at the conference, which, every year, assembled the heads of the company’s agricultural divisions in the Connecticut countryside. At this meeting, in August 1984, marketing strategies for products made by Carbide throughout the world—sales prices, methods of beating the competition and acquiring new clients—were discussed and agreed upon. The topics included the Bhopal factory. As early as 1979, the economic viability of the plant had been subjected to extensive debate. One of the various options management considered was simply stopping its construction but because of the late stage in the building process, this idea had been abandoned. Five years later, the situation had further deteriorated. The plant was now losing millions of dollars. The sales prospects for Sevin in 1984 did not exceed a thousand tons, half the amount for the preceding year and only a fifth of the plant’s total production capacity. It was a financial disaster. At the August 1984 meeting, therefore, approval was given for a liquidation program. In fact, the multinational was counting on getting rid of its costly Indian factory by moving its installations to other third world countries. Brazil, for example, could accommodate the phosgene, carbon-monoxide and methyl-isocyanate units. As for the Sevin formulation and packaging works, Indonesia seemed the ideal place for them to be relocated.
In the autumn of 1984, Carbide’s vice president for Asia sent a top-secret message to Bhopal. He wanted to know the financial and practical feasibility of dismantling and moving the plant, “taking into account the moderate price of Indian labor.”
The task of gathering the necessary information was entrusted to the Hindu engineer Umesh Nanda. Nine years earlier, a brief advertisement in the Times of India had enabled this son of a modest industrialist in the Punjab to fulfill the dream of all young Indian scientists of his generation: that of joining a renowned multinational. Now, he was charged with shattering his own dream. “Dismantling and shipping the Sevin production unit should not pose any problem,” he responded in a telex to his superiors on November 10. “The same would not appear to be true of the MIC unit, however, because of extensive corrosion damage.” Nanda warned that the unit could be reassembled only after repair work involving considerable expense was completed. The Indian’s telex provided the answers to Carbide’s queries. It also confirmed what had been Rajkumar Keswani’s worst fears. The beautiful plant had been abandoned.
After a two-year absence, Rajkumar Keswani was back in Bhopal. He was not yet aware that Carbide had decided to write the factory off and was preparing to transfer parts of it to other third world countries. Ever more alarming information from his contacts inside the plant prompted him to sound a fourth alarm, entitled “BHOPAL ON THE BRINK OF DISASTER.” This time he really believed that his article would rouse public opinion and convince the authorities. Jansatta, the regional daily that ran his piece, was not a local journal but one of India’s biggest newspapers, and a part of the prestigious Indian Express group. Once again, however, Keswani was a voice crying alone in the wilderness. His latest apocalyptic predictions provoked not the slightest interest in the public, any more than they incited the municipal authorities to take any safety measures. The journalist sought an explanation for this latest failure. “Wasn’t I convincing enough?” he asked himself. “Do we live in a society where people mistrust those interested in the public good? Or do they just think I’m putting pressure on Carbide to fill my own pockets?