Bhopal Case Study

1.0 INTRODUCTION

The Bhopal disaster also known as the Bhopal gas tragedy was the incident of gas leak in India. This incident also was considered the world’s worst industrial disaster (BBC News, 2010). It occurred on the night of 2 December 1984 at the Union Carbide India (UCIL) pesticide plant located in Bhopal, a city in Madhya Pradesh, a state in India. This incident causes a lot of consequences to the citizens and natures surround. Over 500,000 citizens in Bhopal city were exposed to harmful gaseous such as methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas and many others. The cause of the disaster remains under debate. The Indian government and local activists argue that the improper management and deferred maintenance from UCIL is the main factors this tragedy happened. While UCIL denied that they were fully responsible on that tragedy and they also blame the government that still allow them to continue the plantation activities even the expert authority warned both the company and government about the risks and consequences if the plantation not close. This is because of the interest of both party, for the business perspective, UCIL want create profits and make money from that plantations, in the other hand from the government perspectives, they want to secure the job opportunity for their citizens and gain huge amount of tax from the plantations activities. Thus, they ignored the warning and continue the activities without considering the consequences for the next generations.

2.0 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Causes of the disasters

There are two main arguments that involving in this disaster. Firstly, the “Corporate Negligence” point of view argues that incident was caused by improper management as mentioned by Eckerman, Ingrid (2001). The maintenance and decaying facilities in a bad condition at that time, in addition, the staff also has inadequate knowledge about the risk that they might face if any incidents happen because the management does not provide adequately the...