Remebering Bhopal, Re-figuring Liability

Abstract

In this essay I ask what it means to assume 'continuing liability' for the Bhopal disaster. The demand for continuing liability has been articulated by victims of the disaster and by political activists working in response to the out-of-court settlement of the Bhopal case by order of the Indian Supreme Court. When the settlement was announced, on 14 February 1989, Chief Justice Pathak argued that 'the enormity of human suffering occasioned by the Bhopal disaster and the pressing urgency to provide immediate and substantive relief to victims of the disaster' made the case 'preeminently fit for overall settlement'. In later proceedings contesting the constitutionality of the role played in the litigation by the Government of India, which had represented gas victims in the capacity of parens patriae , the Supreme Court did acknowledge that the case had departed from principles of 'natural justice' by failing to give victims the right to 'opt out.' The settlement of the Bhopal case was none the less upheld, in October 1991. The message sent by settlement of the Bhopal case was that the appropriate response to disaster is to manage it - to simplify it sufficiently to provide a final solution. Continuing disaster at the local level had to be systematically discounted. Development of forms of responsibility appropriate for a globalized world order were foreclosed. Law became a means of exorcism. Thus the importance of the settlement as a critical reference point and the importance of 'continuing liability,' both materially and symbolically.