India has moved from tongas to metro rail and typewriters to laptops between December 1984 and June 2008. But the unfinished tasks related to the Bhopal gas disaster of 1984 continue to remain like a blot on industry as well as the state and central governments.

The Prime Minister's Office this week said it would address the pending issues concerning the rehabilitation of the gas tragedy victims. It has agreed to set up a commission on rehabilitation of Bhopal victims and ensured clean drinking water for people affected by groundwater contamination. There is also a promise of medical research into the impact of the chemical on the health of people affected by the gas tragedy that happened in 1984! About 9,000 tonnes of toxic chemicals were left buried at the site by Union Carbide when it left the country about two decades ago.

Not only did the company vanish without warning the country about the chemicals it has left behind, it merged into another company, Dow Chemicals, and has remained out of reach of the country's courts.

No representatives of the company have been responding to court summons after the US refused extradition plea for the then head of Union Carbide.

The gas survivors and activists have been demanding that the government at least seek extradition of other Union Carbide representatives who have been declared absconders by Indian courts. But instead, Reliance Industries has been allowed to buy the Union Carbide patented UNIPOL technology, while Dow Chemicals has been allowed to sell pesticides in India.

The PMO has, for the first time, agreed to address these issues and come out with a response on June 3.

All that came in the last 24 years after the gas tragedy was money (about Rs 50,000 per beneficiary) in three instalments to those who managed to prove their claim of being a victim.

Bhopal is another story maybe because the victims were mostly poor and hence their destinies largely go unsung.

But for the social activists from the 1980s, like Satinath Sarangi, and young professionals of today, who have quit their jobs and joined the movement for justice in Bhopal, the industrial crime committed by Union Carbide would have been a closed chapter.

There are people like Nityanand Jayaraman, a researcher from Chennai who writes for a living, Rachna Dhingra, a former employee of Dow Chemicals who quit her job in the US to fight Dow, Shalini Sharma, a student leader from Uttarakhand, and Madhumita Dutta, an environment specialist, who form a big rainbow community of young people aligned with the invisible Bhopal survivors.

The government has already taken the first step, one which restores faith in the working of a democracy: the law ministry has said that Dow Chemicals will have to take responsibility for cleaning up the toxic garbage left behind by its predecessor.

The government has even refused to guarantee the well-being of the company's proposed $ 1 billion investment in India.

Is this the confidence of a 9 per cent GDP nation or a rare case of lost-and-found spine?




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