2. A Plucky Journalist Raised the Alarm for Years but Was Ignored
Indian journalist Rajkumar Keswani began to investigate the safety protocols and procedures at Union Carbide’s Bhopal plant in 1981 after a friend died there in an industrial accident. Helped by whistle blowers, he examined that and earlier mishaps and discovered that things were even worse than they looked. There had numerous screw-ups in which only dumb luck averted catastrophe. In one incident, a gas leak forced thousands of nearby residents to flee their homes in terror. In an internal telex exchange, Union Carbide’s Indian manager sought better pipe coating from the parent company in America. In one of the more evil replies in corporate history, he was told that it would be too expensive.
After a nine-month investigation, Keswani published the first of a series of newspaper articles that ran from 1982 to 1984. In them, he detailed dismal safety standards at the plant and raised the alarm about a potential catastrophe. With headlines such as “Bhopal Sitting on the Brink of a Volcano“; “Save Please, Save this City“; and “If You Don’t Understand, You All Shall be Wiped Out“, Keswani’s articles left little doubt about the seriousness of the situation. Unfortunately, like a modern Cassandra, his warnings were ignored. Then, on the night of December 2nd, 1984, the catastrophe he had spent years warning about occurred.
