On the night of December 2, 1984, the world’s worst chemical disaster devastated a small town in India. The Bhopal Gas Tragedy has gone down in history and few people are unaware of the facts. Of how 40 tonnes of methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas came swooping out of a Union Carbide pesticide plant. Of how the lethal fumes engulfed a sleeping town. Of how, by the time, people woke up and realised what was happening, it was too late for many of them. The gas had killed 3800 people and maimed another 11,000. The death toll continues to rise with 15,000 dead and 20 years on, tens of thousands still suffer serious symptoms from contact with the gas.
Twenty-three years later, the people of Bhopal are still battling diseases such as paralysis, partial blindness and impaired immune systems and waiting for justice. Dow Chemicals, the company that merged with Union Carbide, washed its hands off the Bhopal tragedy even though it was clearly proven that negligence had caused the disaster. After much fighting, they finally agreed to give survivors, who have to live with chronic illnesses or brain damage their whole lives, an average of $500 dollars each. In a press release, Dow spokesperson said that “$500 is plenty good for an Indian.” Splendid, isn’t it?
Here is a snapshot of how methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas affects the body.
To date, the abandoned factory continues to pollute the environment. Effluents poison the ground water. Lead and mercury float in the breast milk of mothers. Greenpeace has a detailed timeline. They don’t seem to have updated it after 2003 but it gives a snapshot of events until then. Read and weep.
Meanwhile look at Dow’s tremendous PR efforts here. Frankly, there’s something revolting about the public relations (or ‘crisis management’ as it is called) machinery that kicks into action at such times like a pack of well-trained hyenas. All laughing to the tune of lies.
We are part of an ever-evolving global society - one that values organizations such as Dow not only for our products and services, but also for the distinctive image we present to our world and its people. We don’t want people to think “chemicals” when they hear “Dow” — we want them to hear “Living. Improved Daily.” We don’t want them to think of a corporation striving to maximize profits, we want them to think of a good neighbor.
Therefore, our contributions must extend beyond profit performance. We strongly believe that if we are to be successful in the 21st Century, we must simultaneously excel in all three elements of development: economic prosperity, corporate responsibility and shareholder stewardship. And unless we’re frequently and visibly expressing a deep concern about Sustainable Development, we’re missing opportunities to position Dow as the caring, concerned global citizen our customers must believe us to be.
Yesterday, survivors marked the anniversary by going on protest marches to demand justice and holding a torchlight rally to remember the dead. They need all the voice they can muster because their own government is certainly not going to shout, or even whimper, for them. In October, a news article reported:
The centre is all set to pave the way for Dow Chemicals to invest in India, by removing all “legal hurdles” related to the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy, one of the world’s biggest industrial disasters that claimed thousands of lives.
The Department of Industries has moved a Cabinet note asking the government to absolve Dow Chemicals of all legal liabilities.…. The note provides for withdrawal of the affidavit and out-of-court settlement. It is based on the Law Ministry’s opinion that the government can opt to settle out of court with Dow Chemicals as the latter does not own the financial liabilities of Union Carbide, the main accused in the case. The Chemicals Ministry has opposed this view.
When is a good time to start educating children about certain things? This is an ongoing debate in many parenting circles. The more conservative a society is in their attitudes towards ‘morality’, the more likely it is that children will reach adulthood without receiving any coherent information on important topics such as substance abuse or sexuality. Here is an interesting commercial telling people to talk to their children early about things like alcohol abuse. What do you think?
This, of course, brings me to the other big one. World AIDS Day just passed by and there was lots of talk in the print and television media about it. (Unlike a lot of other problems, HIV/AIDS does get its share of public attention and funding.) We had a lot of newspaper coverage on this in India as well but — and this is the part that flummoxes me — there is still no proper sex education offered in schools here. So basically, children can access information on HIV and sex and sexuality from the media, but not formally from the educational system in a structured way. As if doing this would somehow amount to giving them ‘permission’ for things they would otherwise stay away from.
It’s quite clear that educational institutions should include HIV and human rights / non-discrimination issues wherever they can and link it to the more formal subjects that they are relevant to. It’s astounding that some governments around the world still fail to observe this basic measure. For those who think their kids should know more and are looking to take things into their own hands, there’s lots of material available on the Internet. UNAIDS and WHO has a detailed cartoon strip that might help. This is an extract but you can go here for the full thing.
Shifting track slightly, this report by Human Rights Watch caught my attention the other day. It seems that Thailand’s success in dealing with HIV is getting a serious shot in the foot because of discrimination against its highest population of HIV positive people — drug users. Now, it’s obvious that there are severe legal implications here and these are getting entangled with the larger issue of providing treatment and creating a mighty mess. The report says:
In 2004, Thailand rescinded a national policy that explicitly permitted the exclusion of injection drug users from antiretroviral treatment programs.
But drug users still face serious obstacles in accessing needed health care. Many health care providers do not know or do not follow HIV/AIDS treatment guidelines, and continue to deny antiretroviral treatment to drug users, even those in methadone treatment programs.
When drug users do receive treatment, it is under complicated circumstances and often surreptitiously because they are worried about being turned in to the police.
Out of fear of reprisal, drug users who do receive antiretroviral treatment are unlikely to tell their physicians about their drug use, or to seek information about drug dependence treatment from their antiretroviral treatment provider. This fear is not unfounded: the report confirms that many public hospitals and clinics share information about drug use with law enforcement, both as a matter of policy and practice. Some clinicians operated a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy toward drug users, refusing to inquire about patients’ drug use or drug treatment history, in some cases despite knowledge or suspicion of current drug use or methadone treatment.
The government’s failure to ensure conditions in which safe exchange of information is possible compromises drug users’ access to adequate HIV and other health care services. As a result, drug users face harmful drug interactions without health care workers to consult about the dangerous potential consequences for their health and, ultimately, their lives.
The International Guidelines on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights (PDF), a 120-page document published jointly by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, points to the connection between protection of human rights and effective HIV programmes. The incidence or spread of HIV is disproportionately high among some populations because these groups, being vulnerable in any case, find it harder to access treatment or fight discrimination. Typically, these groups include women, children, those living in poverty, minorities, indigenous people, migrants, refugees and internally displaced persons, people with disabilities, prisoners, sex workers, men having sex with men and injecting drug users. Legally and socially, such groups need to be addressed and included in the battle against HIV. And while this may be easier said than done, it’s important to see that an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ attitude is going to hurt everyone in the end.
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It’s very hard to take a serious issue and convey it in a fun manner without losing some of the seriousness. The makers of Wallace & Gromit have done it astoundingly well. Their new campaign for Leonard Cheshire Disability called Creature Discomforts, which you can view here, manages to be sincere and cute at the same time, without slipping over into sentimentality or trivialising the issues. This is probably largely due to the fact that the voices behind the characters are people with real disabilities.
The biggest messages are about stigma and access. Like Kevin Gillespie who gives voice to Brian the Bull Terrier says:
“We went to have a look at a pub that we were considering visiting on a group day out which calls itself disabled friendly, but when we got there we found there was gravel outside which made it difficult to move our wheelchairs around, an extremely sharp right turn to get into the entrance, and then a step to get to the bar! That’s not what I’d call disabled friendly.”
“It’s things like this that make you feel excluded as there are certain places I’d like to go to but can’t because of access problems”.
These barriers, however, don’t stop Kevin getting out and about locally. “It’s really important for me to actually live in, and feel part of the community. I must admit, I have lived here for five years and I cannot recall anyone looking at me as if to say ‘What planet has he come from?’ Everyone has looked at me as they do able bodied people and forgotten about the chair”.
Here is the Guardian’s opinion on the campaign and here is a video on the making of it.
One of the things that struck me is that the campaign talks about access to bars, restaurants, places like that. In developing countries, we are so far behind on this curve that it doesn’t even bear scrutiny. To begin with, there is little data on disability. When poverty and social marginalisation are added to the cesspool, disabled people are discriminated against in many more ways.It is telling that in my social circle, I seldom meet disabled people. It is a quiet but systematic exclusion that takes place so much below the surface that most of us are not even aware of it.
A recent World Bank report found that disability seriously affects economic prospects in India and “physically challenged children are four to five times less likely to be in school than Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes children.” In my own experience, organizations will usually not hire a disabled person. In fact, India’s disabled employment rate seems to be falling. Deprived of economic opportunity (and even before that, education), disabled people seldom earn enough to gain access to more than the basic necessities. You don’t see them in bars or nightclubs, rarely at restaurants or malls. So people forget about the issues of disabled people because it’s easy to.
It’s a vicious cycle and I think schools hold a large piece of the puzzle. If schools sponsored a few classes that were disabled-friendly, it would help bring them into the mainstream besides inculcating awareness from a young age among the other kids, who in turn would hopefully grow up to be less discriminatory as adults. Parents would also possibly understand disabled people better if they were friends with their children, came home, stayed for tea. It would go a long way towards driving up our collective awareness and empathy up a notch. What do you think?
Globally, more than 40 per cent of respondents do not understand that AIDS is always fatal. In India, where rates of HIV are rising, 59% believe that HIV is a curable disease. These are the disturbing findings of this study on what people across nine countries think of AIDS.
In a collusion of opinion and fact, this first-ever perception audit also found that 86 per cent of adults in the United States, U.K., France, Russia, China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa believe stigma and shame to be a contributor to the spread of HIV. Seventy-six per cent report lack of access to treatment to be a problem as well.
Some astonishing fallacies about access to treatment seem to be in circulation as well. According to the survey, many people mistakenly believe there is currently a cure for HIV. People also believe treatment is more widely available than it is. According to the study, “nearly half of all respondents believe that most people diagnosed with HIV are receiving treatment, when in fact only one in five people who needed treatment received it in 2006.”
The survey also suggests an enduring stigma surrounding HIV. Nearly half of the people surveyed reported being uncomfortable working with those who are HIV positive, while slightly more than half of the respondents did not want to live in the same home as someone infected with HIV.
It seems that a quarter century of AIDS education, public health campaigns and a continuous “mainstreaming” of HIV-positive people in the U.S. and Europe have done little to sort out the public’s confusion. The problem may be that while advances in treatment and prevention have fueled a misguided sense of complacency about the disease, personal prejudices have kept the stigma and shame about HIV alive.
Besides public awareness campaigns, mainstreaming HIV/AIDS awareness into education is imperative. But in many countries, attitudes towards sex and sexuality make it difficult to discuss topics like safe sex. Cultural taboos forbid speaking to children or teenagers about such matters and health becomes a distant lower priority as compared to “morality”. Avert looks at how HIV/AIDS education for young people is commonly approached in some detail here. And UNICEF has some resources that you can download here.
Of course, culture is an important parameter to keep in mind while communicating. But innovation and sensitivity should not hinder honesty or plainspeak when it comes to important, potentially life-and-death impacting factors. For example, look at this MTV commercial for AIDS prevention.
It’s funny but I’m unsure of whether it conveys the seriousness of the issue. People will laugh and even remember the ad, but will they really use a condom because it tells them to? What do you think?
The World Toilet Summit took place here in New Delhi earlier this month. Delegates racked their brains to come up with ideas for innovative toilets. And if you can’t help a smirk at that, consider this:
Due to the absence of an organised sanitation system, 1.8 million children across the world die of diarrhoea annually, and close to half the population in developing countries suffers health problems caused by water and sanitation defects, at any given time. The World Health Organisation estimates that 200 million people are infected with schistosomiasis — a disease caused by lack of access to hygienic sanitation facilities. Experts say open defection contaminates water and helps the spread of diseases like diarrhoea, which kills at least 4,900 people everyday, worldwide….(more).
Nothing remotely funny there, unfortunately. According to this video report, self-cleaning toilets and a fourteen-year-old inventor who has come up with an idea for preventing sewage disposal from trains at railway stations were part of the annual summit.
This UN report says that lack of sanitation facilities dooms 3 billion people to a life that is primitive and devoid of basic dignity. Apart from causing disease, lack of proper sanitation facilities can have more indirect impact as well — such as on girl’s education. Girls tend to miss school when there are no sanitation facilities because it is difficult for them to go out in the open. When there are no separate facilities for boys and girls, they don’t attend school during menstruation. It’s worse when there are no latrines at home.
In many cultures, girls and women wait until after dark to defecate if they have no latrine in the household, experiencing discomfort and sometimes serious illness as a result. When girls and women have to walk to a place distant from their home for excreta disposal, particularly at night, they are vulnerable to harassment and assault.
It’s hard to imagine people living without latrines — something that so many take for granted in this era of designer bathrooms and spa treatments — but the number of
people without access to latrines and toilets increased by some 400 million over the last decade. And with increasing migration and urbanisation and burgeoning slums, it is likely to keep doing so unless solutions are provided quickly.
On a lighter note, here’s a hilarious CWS commercial via The Bathroom Diaries. Enjoy.
The image used in the post is of Lam Sai Wing’s Golden Toilet via Travel Channel.
On the night of December 2, 1984, the world’s worst chemical disaster devastated a small town in India. The Bhopal Gas Tragedy has gone down in history and few people are unaware of the facts. Of how 40 tonnes of methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas came swooping out of a Union Carbide pesticide plant. Of how the lethal fumes engulfed a sleeping town. Of how, by the time, people woke up and realised what was happening, it was too late for many of them. The gas had killed 3800 people and maimed another 11,000. The death toll continues to rise with 15,000 dead and 20 years on, tens of thousands still suffer serious symptoms from contact with the gas.
Globally, more than 40 per cent of respondents do not understand that AIDS is always fatal. In India, where rates of HIV are rising, 59% believe that HIV is a curable disease. These are the disturbing findings of 
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