THE BHOPAL BOTCH-UP By: Bennet Paes
Mired in a legacy of lethargy, India is now trying to bring back the horse that had bolted away from its stable 26 years ago. That horse is one Mr. Warren Anderson, now 90, and living on borrowed oxygen. It’s almost like flogging a dying horse, but the Indians see wisdom in shutting, no matter how late, the very gate they had once left wide open for Anderson to flee. Let us for a moment imagine that they succeed, and Anderson is down here on a stretcher, hardly able to speak, and his lawyer doing the talking. Putting it bluntly, India tells him that he is accountable and charged for the Bhopal disaster. The lawyer rejects the charge saying, after 26 years it sounds like a ‘broken record’ and prepares to file a counter suit. If it had taken 26 years for India to reach thus far, God alone knows how many more years it would take for a 90-year old Anderson to be finally convicted or acquitted. The ensuing judgment could at best only serve as an epitaph on his tombstone.
