Five Past Midnight in Bhopal - The Book

'Five Past Midnight at Bhopal' is another masterpiece from Dominique Lapierre, my favourite French author.  Javier Moro has co-authored this book along with Lapierre, and as the name indicates, it traces the history of the erstwhile industrial giant, Union Carbide(UC), its involvement in India starting from 1969, how it eventually went on to set up a manufacturing plant in Bhopal as a subsidiary company called Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL), and how its subsequent mismanagement led to the worst industrial disaster on the night of 3rd December 1984, when more than 40 tonnes of Methylisocyanate (MIC), a highly hazardous chemical used in pesticide production, was leaked into the surrounding atmosphere, killing thousands instantaneously.  So catastrophic was the event that even 25 years after its occurrence, the wounds are still to heal, and the now abandoned plant in Bhopal continues to pollute the city with all the toxic waste that still remains on-site, with almost no hope for a proper clean-up.

This book is another classic from Lapierre, truy reminiscent of his style - well researched, factual, providing a balanced view without taking sides with any of the role players as the events unfold.  The book starts with a very detailed description of the perennial scourge of agricultural production across the world - pests and insects which simply devoured cultivated crops.  Detailed descriptions of the various type of pests, and their ill effects on the cultivated crops are described, along with how humans come out with various solutions to this problem through pesticides like dimethyl diamine tetra acetic acid (DDT), and other such formulations (some of the solutions were even esoteric, like invoking spirits...!!!).  Although many pesticides like DDT were effective in curbing the menace of the insects, they were also highly toxic, and many were eventually banned in the US (DDT was one of them).  The reader is then introduced to UC, an industrial giant in the US, which is into the manufacture of hydrocarbons for various industrial and domestic uses.  The reader is also shown how in UC's research facility in the US, a new formulation for a very potent pesticide, Carbaryl, is created, and is decided to be sold under the Union Carbide's brand name, Sevin.  Sevin was supposed to have an extremely potent effect on pests, but almost harmless to humans.  Sevin, as such was obviously harmless, but one of the ingredients in the manufacture of Sevin was MIC - which was notorious as a hazardous chemical....

Union Carbide sees India as a huge potential market for its product, and decides to set up a plant in Bhopal, so that it can save India's huge base of farmers from pest-induced vagaries in agricultural production.  The book presents an overall excellent picture of what went behind the scenes before the creation of the plant, what happened during its running, what caused the disaster, and what happened afterward.

From what I could read in the book, I could perceive several notable points....

Conscious and Deliberate Choice of a Highly Hazardous Route for Production of Carbaryl/Sevin  : There were two possible approaches to produce carbaryl - one was using MIC whose toxicity was notoriously legendary, but a route which was very cost effective.  The second approach did not use any hazardous chemicals at all, but had a very high production cost.  World over, UC was the only manufacturer to use the high toxicity route (others like Bayer always used the non-toxic, non MIC route).  MIC storage needed special precautions, and handling MIC was an extremely hazardous task.  But if these tasks were somehow managed, production costs were so much lower.

The main motive to take the hazardous MIC route, it appears, were profits, pure and simple.

Overconfidence of Projected Sales Volume for Sevin, Despite Indications to the Contrary :  Lapierre explains how the Argentine UC representative, Eduardo Munoz, who was involved with the setting up of the  Bhopal plant during the initial phases, gave  projections for Sevin sales which were considered too conservative at that time by the UCIL management, and how they were were largely ignored by the UCIL management.  Believing that there lies potential for a much larger sales volume, a manufacturing unit of a far larger output capability was thus set up.  This was to prove disastrous - to manufacture such large quantities of Sevin, it was imperative to store huge quantities of MIC in storage tanks, which was itself a disaster waiting to happen.

Again, profit motives seemed to cloud UC's judgement.

Within a few years of setting up the plant, UC eventually found that their sales projections were disastrously inaccurate, and Sevin sales were not proceeding as planned.  Production was slowed down and eventually completely stopped, leaving more than 50 tonnes of MIC in storage tanks just lying in the factory - even UC's safety procedures actually prohibit more than 1 tonne of MIC to be kept in storage tanks, beyond which it was considered a hazard.

At the time of the disaster, the quantity of MIC in storage was more than 50 times the prescribed safety limit...!

Profit MotiveLleading to Serious Cutbacks on Maintenance and Safety Mechanisms : Sales were not going as planned, keeping the plant alive was bleeding UCIL, profits were hence plummeting - so what does UCIL do ? Cut back on maintenance procedures and safety systems.  There were so many instances of safety systems simply being shut down, since they were considered a wasteful expenditure.  Where steel pipes were to be used for preventing damage due to corrosion, ordinary pipes were used.  Many safety systems were simply turned off.

Entrusting the Running of the Plant to a Bureaucrat: The fuse for the Bhopal time bomb  was lit when the management of the plant was entrusted to a complete bureaucrat who knew nothing about hazardous chemicals.  To this new Managing Director of UCIL, all that mattered were financial numbers, and his main motive was to simply bring down the expenses.  His (in)experience in the hazardous chemicals industry was limited to overseeing the manufacture of lead-acid batteries.  Appointment of this person at the helm of the Bhopal plant was akin to giving the complete media coverage rights of the Olympics to a person just because he knew how to operate a Sony handycam !

All the factors above cumulatively fed the disaster. A schematic explaining why the disaster took place is captured below.

Finally, on the night of the disaster, regular maintenance work resulted in MIC reacting with water which had entered the MIC storage tanks - MIC reacts violently with water to create a deadly cloud of toxic fumes which travel at ground level rapidly.  The water would not have entered the tanks in the first place if the control valves had been well maintained.  Successive safety mecahnisms such as sprinklers, and flare towers, which had simply been turned off to save costs, only gave an easy vent to the disaster.  The immediate effect of inhalation of the toxic gases was pulmonary or bronchial edema (fluid collection in the heart/lungs).  Many of the victims were slum dwellers sleeping close to the compound walls of the plant, who died within minutes of inhaling the deadly vapours....


Given below are some photos of the disaster I was able to get online...

The disaster brought out several socio-cultural aspects :

Union Carbide's Apparent Lack of Corporate Social Responsibility :  UCIL never shared the chemical structure of MIC,  leading to doctors being rendered helpless on treating victims of the gas leak during the immediate aftermath of the gas leak.  UCIL never revealed neither  the chemical nature of MIC, nor the details of how to medically treat exposure victims.  Doctors were simply left clueless during the initial 24 hours of the disaster.  All for what reason ? UCIL thought that the chemical formulation was their Intellectual Property, and revealing that even in the face of an unfolding human tragedy did not make business sense.


The Heroism of the Doctors and the Bhopal Railway Station Master - The reader is also shown how common men, thrown into the situation, display an almost unbelievable courage and duty consciousness in the face of such adversity.  We see how doctors in the Bhopal's Hamidia Hospital never leave their wards for 3 days together, and how medical students and interns rise up to the occasion in providing care to the victims.  We also witness how the station master at Bhopal station averts the loss of a few hundreds of lives in a train arriving in Bhopal station  just as the gas leak is spreading in the city - he tries in vain to prevent the train from coming into the station.  But after his attempts fail, he takes a decision to clear the train from the station immediately, tactfully making a cool announcement in the public address system, and clearing the train for immediate departure.  By doing so, a large part of the passengers in the train were saved....


Opportunism of Arjun Singh, the CM of MP at that Time : The CM of Madhya Pradesh at the time of the disaster was Arjun Singh (could have better named him as Opportunist Singh).  It is widely speculated that on the intervening night of December 02,2004 and December 03,2004 , when gas leak occurred, Arjun Singh went to his Kerwa Dam palace (near Bhopal) to save himself from deadly effects of leaked gas and was not available to manage the crisis or lead the administration.  With a view to gain political mileage, he even had Warren Anderson, the CEO of UC arrested when Anderson came to India in the immediate aftermath of the disaster.  He even went to the extent of implicating Anderson, and announcing to the people that he will not spare those responsible for the disaster...!!  Adding insult to injury was the fact that Arjun Singh was very close with several people from the senior management of UCIL ! That's what Indian politicians are - despicably opportunistic, to the extent that they may even sell their mothers to touts if that will give them any benefits...


At the end of the whole book, all I could do was weep - yes, literally weep, not just once, but so many times over.  I wept for those poor souls who lost their lives - they were slum dwellers who lived close to the plant - most of them did not even have a proper address, and yet, they were in many ways exploited by so many.  Today, many of them still suffer the ill-effects of the disaster, while the legal wrangling on who is to compensate for all their suffering goes on, with no end in sight.

The strangest irony is that it has taken a French writer, and his love for India, to bring this story to me - I could not get a better view of the history of Union Carbide in India from any other source.  In my personal opinion, this disaster represents, to a very large extent, the nonchalant rape of one section of the most downtrodden of India, by an American multinational, whose only motive was profit, and a callous disregard for Indian lives, for which it is yet to be brought to justice.  It may never be brought to justice, because it no longer exists as an identifiable entity....

In part two of this post, I shall post my own research on the aftermath of the disaster, and why justice seems all the more elusive, even 25 years later....