As I write this on June 17th 2010, America is facing one of it's biggest environmental disasters in history. The collapsed BP leased rig - Deepwater Horizon, in the Gulf of Mexico has been spewing oil at an 'indeterminable' rate for more than 6 weeks now. Understandably there has been quite a bit of backlash against BP - political and non-political. BP's share price has taken a knock of nearly 49% hitting a 14 year low on 16th June 2010 amid concerns of a dividend holiday and potential liabilities arising from the escalating and as yet unquantified cost of clean up.
BP has been demonised, victimised, bullied, beaten and bruised. Does it deserve it? Yes surely it does, but so do the 'other' silent parties in this disaster epic. One does not hear the collective American conscience make the same kind of noise regarding Transocean - the firm that owned the rig or for that matter Haliburton - who were responsible for the botched 'well sealing' exercise that cause the spill in the first place. Never mind, I can probably live with that. Who the American people choose to vilify for a calamity in their own backyard is their own business.
What I am particularly peeved about is the American, and dare I say largely International, hypocrisy in terms of their response to another severe industrial disaster, perpetuated by an American corporation, that affects mankind till date. I am talking about the Bhopal Gas Tragey of 1984. A crime committed by a multinational corporation for which the people of Bhopal continue to pay price even today. A price they are paying not just by loosing their economic means or by a few miles of marginally spoilt coast line or even a few thousand tons of dead fish and shrimps. They are paying the price with their lives - day in and day out. Everytime they drink ground water, everytime a new child is born. The Bhopal calamity has caused enough damage for generations to come.
So what is the Indian Goverments response? Well the judicial courts after a quarter of a century, what seems like swift justice in terms of the glacial speed of the Indian judical systems, have ruled that the perpetrators of this crime are convicted of 'gross negligence' and sentenced them to 2 years prison time !! And moreover, no charges against the man who ran Union Carbide at that time. He is an American citizen who was duly escorted out of the country by the Indian political class and nowhere to be seen since then. Granted, there was some kind of settlement paid by Union Carbide back in the 1980's in return for dilution of charges, but did India do the right thing? Why was there no backlash and political will to 'kick ass' from India? Why did India not behave with Union Carbide the way US is now dealing with BP?
I guess, it all boils down to 'who is the big boy in town' and 'who needs who much more'. The rich and the powerful can get away with murder as long as it is perpetrated in the backyards of the poor and the weak. However when crimes of much smaller scale and intensity are perpertated at the backyards of the rich and the famous, all hell breaks loose. Yes, I call the Gulf oil spill a minor inconvinience. I care two hoots if some coastline is damaged and some fishes and shrimps are affected. More people lost their economic livelyhood due to the sub prime crisis than by the Gulf Oil Spill. So where is the escrow account from Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan etc? It's better for the marine life if humans leave them alone to fight a natural battle than to have humans fish them out of existence. Come to think about it, a scenario of a oil spill occuring under the ocean floor is probably a natural phenomenon. Just that in this case, it has been accelerated by man. Similar to what we are doing to climate change. So when a rise in sea levels threaten to wipe out an entire island nation, where is the escrow account for that?
Should we as a society tolerate such hypocrisy? If we are part of such hyprocrisy, then we should not forget that what goes around comes around. There is a natural order of 'setting things right' in this world. For me personally, while I hate the gutless behaviour of the Indian society and political class in standing up for itself, in a way, I don’t feel sorry for the Gulf oil spill either. I just think of it as natures way of 'payback'.
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