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Case Study Analysis: Union Carbide Corporation and Bhopal
A single slip in action may cause lasting sorrow. A slight mistake in operation at a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal of India causes a lot of deaths and injuries. What a tragedy it is. Undoubtedly, there must be something wrong with the management of the plant.
In addition to the plant, the governments related in India that issued permits and provided incentives for the plant, Bhopal community officials who permitted slum dwellers to move near the plant in illegal settlements, Indian environmental and safety inspectors should also be responsible for this. The governments related in India issued permits because people need jobs, or people would starve to death. This was one reason in my opinion. Soft money from Union Carbide plant may be another reason for issuing permits. It was clearly that the governments in America would not issue a permit to Union Carbide plant under such circumstances, which lacked of severe environmental standards and permitted slum dwellers to live near the plant and so on. Such actions were the fuses leading to more deaths. Before the major gas leakage from the MCI unit on December 3, 1984, some people were killed because of phosgene gas leakage. However, no one took it seriously in spite of the report by media. One of the reasons that people ignore this was because people didn¡¦t know the potential danger of the chemical plant. The other reason was that there are not enough environmental inspectors to cover so many plants in India. Besides, those inspectors had a record of loose enforcement. Consequently, danger emerged just as the saying goes ¡§Nothing comes of nothing.¡¨
As for the management of Union Carbide¡¦s Bhopal plant, some steps indeed needed to be improved. Let us take a look at the whole process of the gas leak and see what actions can be improved. The first mistake in my opinion was that R. Khan, an operator in the MIC complex, neglected to insert a slip blind above the point of water entry. This omission violated instructions in the MIC processing manual, the technical manual that set forth procedures established by the chemical engineers who set up the plant. Obviously, the plant failed to emphasize the importance of obeying the processing manual and the danger of disobeying ...
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...nk he should be responsible for the whole case. In other words, he should resign for the whole incident.
Generally speaking, the legal system didn¡¦t play a very active role in this case. First of all, the India government could do more on digging the truth of the gas leak out and set a more strict standard to regulate such dangerous plants in case that another crisis. Second, I didn¡¦t see any one who worked in the Union Carbide¡¦s Bhopal plant should be responsible for that tragedy. Does it mean that all that the India court wanted was money or it just wanted to reduce trial and subsequent appeals because it might have taken more than twenty years?
To sum up, Union Carbide handled the crisis cleverly but not well enough because it knew what would the India government and court react to this incident. Union Carbide controlled the whole situation and took lead of the lawsuits itself. The India government and court didn¡¦t help those victims as much as they needed instead. The function of government, designed to protect its people, disappeared in this case.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
¡§Union Carbide Corporation And Bhopal,¡¨ in Steiner and Steiner, pp.147-161.
Ans. 6 The Court can overrule the decision for terminating Paul as he was not involved in the scheme. Due to his honesty he even admitted to be aware of the scheme. Moreover, no fraud was found in his facility and he should be held responsible for the warehouse for which he is in charge. Furthermore, higher management should be held responsible for not keeping an eye on the activities of supervisors at different locations.
The United States Enrichment Corporation (Producer). (2013). USEC issues WARN act notices to Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant workers [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.usec.com/news/usec-issues-warn-act-notices-paducah-gaseous-diffusion-plant-workers
The author describes each chapter with a surreal narration. It begins with “A Fable for Tomorrow”, which starkly declares a bleak future of every U.S village if they erred to use pesticides. “The Obligation to Endure” describes the lack of public awareness and how it would become grievous. She justly reasons that if the public might suffer from long-term misfortunes due to insecticides usage, they have a right to know the facts. Felicitous “Elixirs of Death” describes the nature of insecticides in three apt words. Chemical structures of common biocides are explained in an uncomplicated fashion. A series of three successive chapters is dedicated to Earth and its components. These chapters include the closely inter-connected ecological cycles, existing in the water, mantle and soil horizons. Pesticide dispersal in soil followed by its access into the ground water table and the waterways is an inconceivable process. The book promulgates the escape of biocides from their place of application, and their integration into natural bodies. All her chapters thereafter revolve around the various short-term and long-term effects of biocides on the biosphere. Rachel Carson had stated countless dire cases wherein complete ecosystems faced annihilation. The influx of detrimental chemicals extended their reach over animals and plants, and were causing human mortalities as well. Humans are a part of
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Arnold & Porter chose to sue Pittston rather than the Buffalo Mining Company because the value of the corporation allowed for adequate compensation to the victims. Author and head lawyer for the plaintiffs, Gerald M. Stern, writes that the original goal was sue to sue for $21 million for the disaster to have a material effect on the cooperation (51). To avoid responsibility Pittston attempted to prove that the Buffalo Mining Company was an independent corporation with its own board of directors. The lawyers for the plaintiffs disproved this claim by arguing the Buffalo Mining Company never held formal meetings of the board of directors and was not independent of the parent company. During this case Pittston’s Oil division had applied to build an oil refinery in Maine. The ...
Steve Condie’s 2004 docudrama, One Night in Bhopal is about the Indian gas tragedy which occurred in 1984. Like many other documentaries, Condie presents his particular interpretation of the event and manipulates audiences to view the gas leak accident as an avoidable disaster, which could’ve been averted by the Union Carbide America. My own unique, however, was shaped by factors personal to me and my way of understanding the world. Amongst these were my belief in the appropriate role of money in society, my psychological tendency to emphasise with the sick and my persistent nature.
In that case, unions have already blamed the fiasco. That is because the fiasco make the decision to outsource much of the company’s IT jobs, as Indian staff are paid little compared with their British counterparts.
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This gas tragedy occurred in Bhopal’s multinational Union Carbide Corporation's pesticide formulation plant. Around 40 tons menthyl-iso-cyanate gas leaked on 2nd December, 1984 causing instantaneous deaths of more than 20,000 people over the two weeks. Nearly half of the Bhopal’s then populations were severely affected. People had not known what hit them, and ran for shelters which led to excessive inhalation of the deadly gas. More than 1, 00,000 children
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