Bhopal verdict — a disappointment?

The Bhopal verdict came and went.
Many people were disappointed. But seriously, what were they expecting?
We lost the Bhopal battle long ago, again and again. Yesterday, it was just once again that we lost it.
December 3, 1984: People dying like flies after inhaling the Methyl Isocyanate emanating from the Union Carbide factory. Doctors helplessly watching them die as they did not know what the poison was and what drug to administer.
Warren Anderson CAME to India. You cannot fault him on that. Then we just helped him leave, made all the arrangements and wished him Godspeed... Am not surprised he never came back.
We said it was criminal negligence when it was culpable homicide. If people working at a pesticide plant did not know switching off a refigeration unit would have affected the safety standards at the factory and proved devastating, as they did in 1983, what were they doing there? Why were they allowed to be there? And if they did something so inane, should it be negligence or homicide? It could be negligence if they did not know...but there is evidence that they were informed about the act and the dangers it posed.
Why did we let them off?
We asked for more than 3 billion dollars in compensation. Forget the 15,000 and counting lives lost. That sum, disbursed well, could have helped those who survived live a life of dignity with better medical facilities and probably research that could prevent the disastrous effect the fumes had on generations to come.
We settled for a pittance. $470 million...We sold ourselves and our people for that sum. Whom were we trying to appease?
We let a case that involved the immediate death of 3,000 people and the subsequent deaths of thousands others drag for more than two decades. We never made the attempt to make the man who headed the Union Carbide accountable for the disaster the company caused.
We forged new ties with the company in its myriad forms. We accepted funds from it in other ways. We told the people they were hallucinating when they claimed the water in the area was poisoned.
We allowed the generations that followed forget the Bhopal Gas Tragedy so much so that in Bhopal today there are people who did not what happened on a cold winter night of 1984.
We clamour for justice. We want those men to be sent to the gallows. And we are disappointed when seven of them get two years in prison. Why?
The people who are struggling everyday for pure drinking water, adequate compensation and more may be agitating because they believe in justice. I am sure they will appeal the trial court's verdict.
But I am a cynic. Or have I become one? I know the same politicans who allowed Anderson to get away, who claim the water from the area surrounding Union Carbide's skeletal factory is drinkable, will be voted back to power. And they will continue to spend millions on building a memorial for the gas victims even as they cite paucity of funds when it comes to spending on research into the ongoing effects of the dance of death.
And the same politicians will set up more memorials when another such industrial disaster, god forbid, occurs in some other unsuspecting factory in some other part of the country.
For God's sake, there's more to worry about right now. And public memory is short-lived. We will wait for the next anniversary before raking the same old facts again. Meanwhile, life will go on in the ghettoes of old Bhopal, and in a sunny villa somewhere in the US.