Episode 2: The World Will Never Really Know

EPISODE 2: THE WORLD WILL NEVER REALLY KNOW

ACT I

0:00

Molly: The morning after the Bhopal gas tragedy revealed a scene of death, destruction, and heartbreak. Corpses lined the streets — corpses of cows, of dogs, of people. The leaves on the trees had turned black. Birds had fallen out of the sky. People wandered around in a daze, unable to find their loved ones, barely able to see or breathe. Around 7 or 8am, rumors began circulating of a second gas leak, and people ran again until the panic wound down. Among the most famous and most disturbing images of the tragedy is a black-and-white photo showing the body of a baby girl, almost completely covered by rubble, as someone’s hand reaches delicately to uncover her face, revealing a half-open mouth and wide, lifeless eyes. 

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Apoorva: I’ve thought so many times to myself, if it was this hard to listen to, how hard must it have been to live through. When I got to India, I spoke to hundreds of people, learning their stories, their losses, their tragedies.

     I would spend days in bed trying to work up the energy to go out and hear more. It seemed so pointless at times. What is the point of making them re-live their pain and inflict this pain on myself? What is the point of hearing these stories? 

     Many of the women I spoke to for my research are not only survivors, but also activists. Even more importantly, they are sisters. Bi means sister in Urdu, bai means sister in Hindi. The survivors would never refer to each other by just their name. In India, you add your relationship, whether it be a blood relation or otherwise. Rasheeda Bi. Vishnu Bai. All the women, all the survivors. They are a community — a community that extends much further than Bhopal. Their power comes from this foundation of sisterhood. 

Molly: Most Bhopalis barely knew anything about the Union Carbide factory before the tragedy, and many of them still don’t. Those who survived – those who were left behind – have spent years trying to understand what happened that night, educating the world on one night’s global consequences, and fighting for justice. They see themselves and their stories in the news everytime a corporation causes a catastrophe, a government turns a blind eye to its people’s suffering, a community finds the agency that was stolen from them in how they rebuild.

[music] 

Apoorva: The survivors of the Bhopal gas tragedy tell their stories not only as an effort to honor the dead – but also to keep their story from being repeated again and again around the world. 

     In this podcast, you’ll hear these stories – hear survivors’ tragedies, their hopes, their fears, their fight. These stories echo stories still unraveling around us today. Tragedies that boggle our minds and leave us feeling hopeless and helpless. But they are a lens to understand the world, of where the world falters, of where the world steps up, and how to react in the face of the worst kind of tragedy. 

INTRO

03:50

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Molly: This is the story of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy; of the men, women, and children who survived it; and the decades-long struggle for justice, compensation, and the right to clean drinking water.

Apoorva: This is the story of the Bhopalis who were shaped but not defined by the disaster; of hope, of resilience, and of memory.

Molly: This is They Knew Which Way to Run. Please note that this podcast contains depictions of death and loss that some people may find disturbing. I’m Molly Mulroy.

Apoorva: And I’m Apoorva Dixit. 

Molly: Episode 2: The World Will Never Really Know

 

ACT II

04:54

Apoorva: J.P. Nagar is the – what used to be the slum that stands right across the street from the Union Carbide factory. It stands for Jai Prakash Nagar; Indians love shortening long names. And I say it used to be a slum because now it has been transformed into a permanent community. If you look at it now, you would almost not be able to tell that it was the site of such a horrific tragedy. It’s a really bright, beautiful little neighborhood, with all the houses painted in bright blues and pinks and other pastels. And that’s where many of the survivors lived 30 plus years ago, and where many of them and their families and descendants continue to live today.

     In J.P. Nagar, I met many of the survivor-activists that I interviewed for this series. One of them was Savitri Bai. Savitri Bai had the most sincere face I had ever seen. She was soft-spoken, and she herself wore this pink-purple sari that matched her walls perfectly. Here’s her telling me of the morning after the gas tragedy.

Savitri Bai: The next morning, I was so dazed. On the road, they were piling up the corpses, ticking them off, covering them with white sheets. We were sure we would die that way too. And then they brought in the truck full of dead children, and they just dug a hole and dumped them. That’s when we really lost our minds. There was no hope. 

Apoorva: Another mistake made in the chaos  – and many people talked to me about this – was that the clean-up crews would just throw bodies into corpse piles or into the backs of trucks without checking to see whether they were actually dead. In fact, this was so common that books and articles were written about the “dancing bodies.” One of the survivors I spoke with had personally experienced this chaos. 

Kamla Bai: That happened to my husband.

Apoorva: This is Kamla Bai, who I met in her childhood home. She is the matriarch of the family, having had 13 children. She was among the most optimistic people I met in Bhopal, wearing a bright yellow sari and surrounded by her grandchildren, as she told me her unimaginable story. 

Kamla Bai: He had fainted so they threw him into the corpse pile. They were burning corpses, dumping them into the river, driving them to Sehor. He came conscious within the corpses and he made it out and ran all the way to Sehor. There was even a news article on him coming back to life from the pile of corpses.

Apoorva: Rahana Bi’s experience the next morning was just as chaotic and hopeless. 

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Rahana Bi: In the morning, there were so many corpses everywhere. I couldn’t take it. We went to the hospital to get some treatment. They gave us injections of some kind, but by the time we got home, my 3 year old brother had died. In the sadness of his death, my parents became very quiet. As we were standing around him, another ambulance came from the 1250 Hospital. By this time, even my mom’s state was very bad because she was 8 months pregnant. She was so weak, and she died in the hospital. We were with our dad in the park outside. He was so weak, and all he kept repeating was that he wanted to see our mom. He wanted us to call our mom. We said that yes we would call her but once we got home. My mom’s brother had already told us that our mother was dead, but he had told us that if we cried, our dad wouldn’t be able to take it and might die too. So we didn’t cry. As soon as we sat in the car, his state got even worse. He asked to lay down in our lap in the backseat, and we thought he’d gone to sleep. But in reality, he’d died.

Apoorva: Rahana Bi told me her story with a grimness that initially I found pretty startling. Oftentimes, when gas survivors would tell me their story, it was said quickly and without emotion, almost clinically. I realized that this was a protective measure, and they had to do it that way to avoid re-living the pain every time they told their story, which they had told so, so many times over the years. Besides, how could I, or any of us, possibly understand it anyway? Laxmi Bai put it this way. 

Laxmi Bai Barkhedi: The world will only ever know the facts of what happened that night, but the world will never really know. They have no way of understanding what happened that night.

[music]

Molly: In 1963 and 1970, Union carbide commissioned two studies by Carnegie Mellon on the toxicity of Methyl isocyanate – the deadly chemical Union Carbide was producing that would eventually cause the destruction and mayhem in 1984. The studies revealed that heat caused the chemical to break down into many molecules, including hydrogen cyanide, which if inhaled in strong doses, invariably caused rapid death. However, there was an antidote. Injection with sodium thiosulphate could, in certain cases, neutralize the deadly effects of hydrogen cyanide. Union Carbide never bothered to tell local authorities about the studies, or about the antidote.

Apoorva: In 1982, the Union carbide factory had an accident so severe that someone actually died due to a leak. A journalist named Rajkumar Keswani began investigating the factory and reporting on the issues inside, including the danger of catastrophic leaks and inadequate safety standards. “They’re lying to us, no one is regulating them, something is wrong,” he reported. But his warnings fell on deaf ears, and local authorities failed to investigate the safety of the factory or the potential of leaks.

Molly: Not only were the local authorities not investigating this issue, they decided to take the opposite step. In May of 1984, instead of warning the local citizens of the danger, or what happens more often, forcing them to relocate, the local government decided to make the slums closest to the factory, like J.P. Nagar, permanent neighborhoods. They gave the settlers property deeds and built up the neighborhood’s infrastructure, like electricity, sewage, and paved roads. 

Apoorva: A J.P. Nagar resident and activist, Hazra Bi, talked to me about this. Finding her was a simple task, as hers is a well-known name. As I walked into her cement square house, her daughter was washing clothes at the door, her sick son was bent over on the bed, and Hazra sat on a cotton mattress on the floor. Her grandchildren peaked out from behind the kitchen door as I made my way in. The green walls were decorated with Arabic verses from the Quran and nursery school posters illustrating the English alphabet.

     Speaking with Hazra Bi was the first time I realized that the government turned J.P. Nagar into a permanent settlement just seven months before the gas leak, and two years after being alerted of the plant’s danger.

Hazra: We were cursed by the government’s treacherous laziness. In 1982, the factory was already dangerous. You may have read about it. They hid it. We never knew. In December of 1984, the gas leaked but in May of 1984, they gave us locals property deeds, and they gave us electricity, they gave us water. But if they’d known about the danger since 1982, why did they settle us right at the mouth of death? The government is so strong. They could have gotten rid of us, but all of J.P Nagar was settled. And in December, the gas leaked.

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ACT III

14:43

Apoorva: Not everyone felt the effects of the tragedy immediately. Even though my dad was at the train station two hours before the gas leak started, he made it home and slept through the night unscathed. Many families, including mine, who lived at higher altitudes or to the east or west of the gas cloud’s trajectory, were fine. The next morning, my dad headed to college without any idea what he would find in his very own neighborhood. Here’s my dad again. 

Ashish Dixit: Next day was Monday. So my class was around 8:00 AM. So I must have woken around 6:30, 7:00 AM just to get ready and go for my first lecture 

Apoorva: And had, did you know anything had happened? 

Ashish Dixit: Nothing, except for, as we were all getting ready in the morning, my cousin said, in fact, he was laughing. He said, you guys won’t believe what happened yesterday night around 4:00 AM. Neighbors came and they rang the bell and they were saying, we are all leaving this place. We are hearing something is going on in old city. And you guys, do you want to join us since your parents are not here? We were all so tired. My cousin just told them, no, you guys go ahead. We are just going to sleep here.

Apoorva: And you, I remember you saying that you actually laughed about it because you thought it was so ridiculous. 

Ashish Dixit: It was a very, yeah, it was, we were all making fun of that. Can you imagine just at 4:00 AM getting in with neighbors and driving someplace because who knows what the hell is happening in old town? So we all had a good chuckle and then we got ready and then I left the home to go to college for my first class. 

Apoorva: Okay. And what was the scene like as you walked to catch your bus? 

Ashish Dixit: I did not have a motorcycle or a car, so I was taking public transport. So the nearest place where I would catch what’s known as a tempo, which is like a slightly bigger auto rickshaw where 10-12 people sit. It was probably, I want to say not more than 300 feet from my home. So as I was walking there, there was just this scene around, it was a very scary eerie scene, silent scene.

Apoorva: And that’s really weird for India, right? Like, India’s very loud all the time. 

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Ashish Dixit: Yeah, India’s very loud all the time. There was just this kind of eeriness in the air. And as I was walking to my tempo stop, that’s where some people started talking. There was a hospital around the turn. So just next turn was that hospital called 1250 hospital, Baarah-So Pachaas Hospital. So somebody said there are lots of dead people around there. And it’s just all over the place. And that’s when, instead of catching my tempo, I just walked over to the hospital. And that’s where I saw the entire scene unfold, where there were just bodies all across the hospital entrance, not even the floor inside it’s outside, parking lot, Just, it was bodies and people. And it was just like, everything has gone crazy that time. 

Apoorva: And do you remember what you thought? Like, you’re 18 years old, seeing dead bodies for the first time.

Ashish Dixit: That time, this is 1994, no social media, no mobile phone, no internet. We didn’t even have an actual phone in our home. Our neighbors had a phone. So if somebody wanted to reach us, they would have to call the neighbors. Obviously I had not bothered to check the morning newspaper because that was something my dad did more than I did at that time. So, yeah, it was first shock. I didn’t know what was going on until they started talking about that there was a gas leak and lots of people have died because of the gasoline.

Apoorva: Who’s they? People around the hospital?

 Ashish Dixit: Correct. As I was walking, and the people around who were there. 

Apoorva: So like, had a crowd assembled? 

Ashish Dixit: There’s always people around, right? So you will never find total empty space anywhere. So they’re bystanders. They’re paan-waalas. They’re these, all of these other people who are there, the hospital staff, the rickshaw-waalas. So as an 18-year-old, I did not know what to do much. So my first thought was, wow, what has happened? And my second thought was, what can I do here? So there was this big area where people were assembled in. And they were asking for volunteers to help. So I went in there and I said, do you guys need some help? And they said, yeah, there’s this area where we have set up a tent where people are coming in, who have lost their relatives. Their son, daughter, mother, father. They’re looking for them. So they’ll come in and they’ll describe the person they’re looking for. So you take note and then if somebody else comes looking for a similar person, you do the matchmaking in that way. Because again, no internet, no connectivity. So the first day, I don’t remember till what time I managed that stall, where I was taking a missing person’s information. And then if somebody had someone missing, they’ll come asking if you have in your register an entry for such and such person. So you look up and you tell them.

Apoorva: So you didn’t go home? You just like, started doing this?

Ashish Dixit: Yeah. There was no time to go. So I think I saw my sister then. 

Apoorva: How did she find out? 

Ashish Dixit: That’s a good question. That’s a question for her probably. 

Apoorva: I talked to my aunt about the scene at the hospital the next morning, as well. Here’s her perspective.  

Neelam: So you know, the family members, maybe the mother or the father or the brother or the sister, they went out looking for their loved ones. Where would they go to look out for? They went to the hospitals. So then as a volunteer, we were given the toughest job: just to get the dead bodies identified by their family members. And that was a very tough job. You know the person who is looking, he is wishing his family member is not there. And when you look at that person, it was very difficult… I mean,ven we wished that the corpse under the white sheet wasn’t this person’s family member, you know? But we kept on going. And not just for one body, but 250, 300 dead bodies in just one day. And not just for a day, but for multiple days. And everytime we wished that this corpse wasn’t their loved ones. 

Apoorva: It’s hard to imagine, but despite having seen the aftermath with their own eyes, my dad and aunt — and many other Bhopalis — did not really grasp how bad it was until they heard how the news described it. 

Ashish Dixit: I think the realization had started coming in because newspapers were full of the photos of what was going on. News was, the radio was talking about what was going on. So slowly, I think that realization that the city has gone through something so dramatic was finally sinking. 

Molly: I mean, it probably not only had to do with how young your dad and aunt were at the time, but also the shock factor of seeing all those dead bodies. They woke up thinking the day was going to be like any other, and then they’re confronted with this horrific scene. And their first reaction is “What can I do to help?” so their bodies probably just probably went into auto-pilot, and didn’t allow themselves to take a minute and think about what they were actually witnessing. And also the magnitude of a large-scale tragedy that slaughtered thousands of people in a matter of hours.

Apoorva: Yes, I also think without context, it’s hard to figure out where this slots in on the spectrum of bad things that have happened in the world. And to be a normal college kid living a relatively normal life and to just wake up to this moment, you trick yourself into believing that this must be normal, too, despite all of the details that tell you otherwise. You just can’t imagine you’re experiencing history when you’re right in the middle of it.

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ACT IV

23:48

 

Molly: So how did this situation get so bad so quickly? What mistakes were made that caused the methyl isocyanate to react? Was it just a freak accident? Did the factory do everything in its power to prevent reactions like this from happening?

Apoorva: To answer all these questions, we have to go back and see how exactly the factory was run in the months before the tragedy. Even today, there are conflicting reports, and multiple theories around what happened. Molly and I consulted many experts, articles, documents, and books to understand the full story. Even so, we do not claim to have all the answers and we would love to hear from you, our listeners, if you have more to add. Here’s the best understanding of what happened, according to our research: 

Molly: The Bhopal plant had problems from the very beginning. They planned a factory that was entirely too big, it was too close to the city, and there were shortcuts taken in the actual construction of the plant because they were behind schedule and over budget. For example, another UC factory in Institute, West Virginia — the only other site producing the methyl isocyanate-heavy pesticide Sevin that we mentioned in Episode 1 — had a state-of-the-art alarm system with a variety of failsafes built in to catch a leak before it became unsafe. The alarm would sound inside the factory to alert the workers, and outside the factory to alert those who lived near it. The Bhopal factory, on the other hand, didn’t have nearly as robust a system.

     According to Kenneth Bloch, a process safety supervisor for Marathon Petroleum who has spent years studying the Bhopal tragedy, all of the failsafes of the factory in Bhopal depended on one another to function. So if one of them failed, all of them failed. This meant, in Bloch’s words, “a contamination incident could progress to a very late stage before an unexpected, undeniable system response would signal a problem.”

Apoorva: At the time of the tragedy, the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal had more than 600 employees and produced 2,500 tons of pesticides annually. Methyl isocyanate was one of the chemicals used to make these pesticides, specifically the pesticide Sevin. Because methyl isocyanate, MIC, was unstable, the factory was always supposed to keep the chemical in three refrigerated tanks, each pressurized with inert nitrogen gas. If the temperature rose, or if the tanks were somehow contaminated, MIC could become a gas. 

     Bloch also noted that the factory should have used a rust-resistant material such as stainless steel for the tanks to ensure the MIC didn’t come in contact with rust, which could lead to devastating chemical reactions. Instead, he says, they used carbon steel, which rusts upon contact with air, in order to save money.

Molly: Regardless of the material, evidence suggests that one of those three tanks, tank number 610, stopped working about a month or two before the tragedy. But workers had trouble opening the tank, and so they left it there, untouched, until the night of the tragedy. 

     The official Bhopal factory operating manual instructed that the tanks were not to be filled above 60% capacity, roughly 9,000 gallons of liquid. Union Carbide reported the tank in question had 11,000 gallons of MIC in it the night of the tragedy. But workers at the factory later told The New York Times that the tank was actually filled to 87% capacity, filled with 13,000 gallons of the toxic chemical liquid.

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Apoorva: If that wasn’t bad enough, the list of shortcuts that Union carbide took continued. They cut training time for employees from 6 months to 6 weeks; they reduced the MIC staff from 12 people to 6 people; they turned off the refrigeration system for the tank; they ignored the need for instrument repair; they turned off the alarm systems because they sounded so frequently; and they decided to completely forego a computer system that would alert workers to a leakage. Instead, workers reported that they just relied on their own bodies to detect an issue: when their eyes started to water, they knew there must be a leak.

Molly: So that brings us to the night of December 2nd, 1984. Here’s the way Dr. Ingrid Eckerman, a Swedish doctor and author of The Bhopal Saga, describes what happened: 

Dr. Ingrid Eckerman: We know that large amounts of water entered the tank 610. And that started a chemical reaction that released 43 tonnes of toxic gases. There are lots of theories why and how did the water enter the tank. The two main theories is the water washing theory… These workers had been moved from another unit, and were told to clean the pipeline system with hoses. There was a supervisor also, he was also moved from another factory just a few weeks earlier, and he didn’t know much about this. He was not taught anything about this special unit. And he forgot to tell them to put the slip bind that should have been at the end of the pipelines so the water could not go the wrong way. And they attached these hoses and then left because it’s supposed to go on for hours, which it did. So the water was going into the pipelines for many, many hours. 

Apoorva: The reaction made the temperature, and the pressure inside the tank, skyrocket. In fact, some of the higher-level employees at the factory saw the pressure levels around 11:00pm, and each separately thought that those high numbers must be a mistake. They knew how faulty their instruments were, after all.  

Molly: This reaction, which could be very bad on its own, was sped up by the rust corroding inside the pipe, along with other contaminants and elements that had been building up over time.

Apoorva: Around 11:30pm, some of the employees’ eyes started watering. They alerted their supervisor, who was just about to start his own chai break. Later claiming that he understood his subordinates were reporting a “water leak,” he told them to wait until after the break to fix it.

     An hour went by, and as the employees returned from their own breaks, they realized that they were dealing with a much bigger problem than they could have imagined.

Molly: By this point, the temperature ratings on the tank were maxing out their limits. The pressure in the tank only continued to increase, even after the MIC had already started leaking. Three separate safety features failed, two due to maintenance issues, and the third had just been deactivated all together. And the alarm system to alert the sleeping citizens of Bhopal that there had been a leak – the one that had been disabled months before – sounded only once, alerting the Union Carbide employees to evacuate, and shut off again.

Apoorva: It wasn’t until 1:30 or 2:00am that the hospitals were finally alerted that there was an issue. They first tried to treat the patients, who were now flocking to the hospital in panicked, suffering droves, for a chemical called ammonia. Then, for phosgene. Finally, they were told to treat for “MIC” – not “methyl isocyanate” – which no one had ever told them anything about.

Molly: Bhopal police received repeated, conflicting calls about what was happening, until around 2:00am, when they were finally informed that the leakage had stopped. 

     Fifteen minutes later – three or four hours after the MIC reaction had begun – someone finally turned on Union Carbide’s alarm system.

[music]

 

ACT V

32:24

 

Molly: So what was Union Carbide doing in India to begin with? To answer that, we actually should go back even further in time. India was a very young country in the 1980s, having just won its freedom from the British in 1947. Because they had spent such a long time under British Raj, Indian politicians were wary of the western world. 

Apoorva: It wasn’t until 1966, less than 20 years after India’s freedom, that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi decided to open India up to foreign direct investment. She was an iconic political figure. The daughter of freedom fighter and India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhi was a strong but controversial leader who centralized power, went to war with Pakistan to create Bangladesh, and declared a state of emergency to suspend civil liberties when there were rumors of a revolution. She was assassinated on October 31st, 1984 – a month before the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. This was actually an event that many of my interviews used as a landmark. They’d often say, oh, it was soon after Gandhi’s assasination. 

Molly: During her tenure, an American company called Union Carbide decided to invest in Bhopal and 13 other cities. Union Carbide was a household name back in the day. They were a chemical company that produced batteries, tupperware, and other household items like Glad trash bags. 

Apoorva: But they were also in the business of making chemical weapons. Once WWII ended, they had a surplus of chemicals that they had to dump. So they figured out different uses for those deadly chemicals, one of which was pesticides. 

Molly: Union Carbide had originally decided to invest in India because India was undergoing what was called the “Green Revolution,” a time in the 1960s when farmers were encouraged to use modern technology like genetically modified seeds, tractors, fertilizers, and pesticides to increase crop yields and feed India’s booming population. Union Carbide moved into Bhopal in the late ‘70s because Bhopal was an up and coming city, the capital of Madhya Pradesh, and right in the heart of India. Union Carbide figured it would be a good location to access India, particularly the farm states in the north, and the rest of Asia.

Apoorva: But growing up in Bhopal, my dad never learned any of that. He recalls only having heard of Union Carbide’s VIP House. He had no idea what the company made, just that all of the who’s-who of Bhopal – the politicians, the celebrities, factory management – would party at the VIP House that overlooked Bhopal’s gorgeous lake – Bada Talab. 

Ashish Dixit: They had a guest house near the Chief Minister’s bungalow in Shamla Hills, and that’s where most of the VIPs would go for their meet-and-greet and entertaining. So in that context, I did know about Union Carbide. I didn’t know what they were manufacturing or doing, but I knew that they were a big lobbying company in Bhopal. They had all the big politicians that were kind of on their list. So they had this guest house, and they would have parties there, and the Chief Minister also. It was in that same Shamla Hills area, so all the elite of Bhopal were seen in that guest house and in the parties there.

[music]

 

ACT VI

36:23

 

Apoorva: To this day, we don’t know how many people died that night. The official government death toll from that night is 3,787. A city of almost one million caught in a literal gas chamber with no idea of where to run or what to do – and only 3,787 deaths? Here’s Dr. Eckerman again on why there is no possible way that is accurate. 

Dr. Ingrid Eckerman: Around more than 500,000 people were exposed to the gases. And nearly half of them were below 15 years of age and around 3,000 pregnant mothers. And the official figure from the state of Madhya Pradesh is that around 3,000 died. My figure is 8,000, and that is more probable. 

Apoorva: What is that figure based on?

[music]

Dr. Ingrid Eckerman: My figure? It is based on several different things. For example, we know that registrations at the hospital were capped off when an upper limit or top number was reached. So we know that all death cases are not registered. We know also that they dumped dead bodies into the River Narmada without counting. It was one of them was not dead. He could tell us. And, um, we know that between 500,000 bodies were taken away from Hamidia hospital without registration, and we know that 10,000 shrouds for Hindu and Muslim death services with distributed. 10,000. We know that more than 7,000 corpses were cremated at the Hindu funeral site. So, we have many figures like this. So probably 8,000 is also an underestimation. 3,000 is definitely, but, 8,000 is very – at least 8,000, I would say. But some of them died later on because they left for other villages, to relatives, and they died over there. So this is within a few weeks. 

Molly: At least 8,000 people in one night. As many gas survivors will tell you, nobody even knows what happened to all of the bodies. Here’s Apoorva’s aunt again.

Neelam Misra: There were so many dead bodies that they wouldn’t fit in the hospital. Some had to be kept outside. And slowly, the bodies started deteriorating, so the government must have taken a photograph, and the body was buried or burned. We don’t know about that.

Apoorva: Many people I spoke to thought the government was covering its tracks, trying to downplay the impact of the tragedy by purposefully eliminating bodies to lower the death toll. Here is Sathyu Sarangi, or Sathu Bhaiya as he’s often called in the community. He runs Sambhavna Clinic, an NGO that I worked with during my time in Bhopal that provides free healthcare to gas survivors and the larger J.P. Nagar community. 

Sathyu Sarangi: The ICMR, Indian council of medical research, was downplaying the damage done to the bodies of people, to the health of people. Yeah. And the government was downplaying the number of dead.

Apoorva: My Baba had a different take on the death toll. If you asked government officials, they would tell you that the bodies had to be disposed of quickly or else Bhopal could face an epidemic of disease spread by rotting corpses. Baba once told me that he was surprised that the government didn’t “fail,” quote-unquote, altogether. Here’s a phone call I had with Molly the night after I interviewed Baba.

Apoorva [phone interview]: I was really grilling him on whether he thought the government had done enough, and whether there were still things to be done. And one of the most fascinating things my grandfather told me is that he thinks it’s a big deal that the government didn’t crash.

Molly [phone interview]: Really?

Apoorva [phone interview]: And I was kind of taken aback by that, because I just hadn’t really thought of that as a possibility.

Molly [phone interview]: Yeah, even considered…

Apoorva [phone interview]: But then when you actually slow down to think about the fact that – India became an independent country in 1947. This state, Madhya Pradesh, became a state even after that. So when this disaster happened in 1984, India as a country had only been functioning 37 years. But that’s it. India wasn’t even middle-aged yet. So he has a point. He has a point that when something of this magnitude hits a city, the fact that the government didn’t just fail, that it wasn’t just total chaos, that the system continued to function, and there were still hospitals, and there were still police? A miracle.

Molly: There is something to be said for the overwhelming-ness of it all. It’s entirely possible that volunteers, doctors, people with their hearts in the right place made mistakes. We’re talking about an era when most people didn’t have a landline. Many people didn’t have birth certificates, so the government didn’t even know how many people lived in the area to begin with. Even if government workers or even volunteers started with the corpses lying on the street, they were soon joined by more corpses days or even hours later. It would be almost impossible to keep track of them all.

[music]

Apoorva: The death toll should be a fact. We like to think that facts are non-negotiable and non-political. But talking to Baba, I started to see how deeply negotiable a death toll can be when it points the finger at the government – especially a government that seemed to be protecting a corporation more than its own people. Yes, the sheer logistics of counting the dead were immense, but the politics of saving face were of global consequence for a nation not yet 40 years old.

Molly: Whether the government was lost in the chaos of the moment or exploiting the chaos of the moment, their response did not bode well for what was to come. 

 

OUTRO

43:30

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Molly: You’ve been listening to They Knew Which Way to Run. Tune in next time to hear how the world reacted to the news of the tragedy; the beginnings of, and the botching of, the many, many lawsuits to come; and how the survivors began to take things into their own hands.

Apoorva: We encourage you to check out our website at www.TheyKnewWhichWaytoRun.com, where you can learn more information about the tragedy, see photos of the survivors, and make a donation to NGOs on the ground still supporting survivors and fighting for justice. This podcast series is written, edited, and produced by me and Molly Mulroy. Quinn Mulroy is our sound editor. 

Molly: All the interviews used in our podcast were conducted by Apoorva Dixit both independently and while working with Sambhavna Clinic and photographer Francesca Moore. Our transcription specialist is Avi Dixit, our copy editors are Julia Hamilton and Quinn Mulroy, our cover art was designed by Amey Zhang, our website designer is Ljiljana Brusic, and all of our music is composed by Derek Renfroe. 

Apoorva: Very big thank you to everyone who supported us with this podcast and the following Bhopalis for sharing their stories: Savitri Bai, Kamla Bai, Rahana Bi, Laxmi Bai, Hazra Bi, Ashish Dixit, and Neelam Misra. Also, thank you to Dr. Ingrid Eckerman and Sathyu Sarangi. Finally, thank you to our voice actors: Garima Saxena, Durrain Noorani, Nandini Basu, Shikha Rathi, and Meena Kasargod.

     I’m Apoorva Dixit.

Molly: And I’m Molly Mulroy. Thank you for listening.