Yesterday’s NY Times reports that eight former executives of Union Carbide India Limited (a subsidiary of the American chemical company Union Carbide) were convicted of negligence as a result of their failure to stop the explosion at the Union Carbide India factory which killed more than 2500 people in 1984. The NY Times reports that the executives were sentenced to “two years in prison and fined 100,000 rupees, or $2,100”. The Bhopal disaster is rightly considered one of the most serious industrial accidents in modern times and is often used as an example of ‘the race to the bottom’ whereby countries with low levels of regulation attract foreign economic activity. Not surprisingly the verdict has been criticised for being too lenient in light of the scale of the disaster.
The so called ‘developed’ countries have always been exploiting and disadvantaging the ‘third-world-countries’. Just look at the way how Shell International is operation in the Niger delta and polluting Nigerian water/environment just for the sake of profits. Such multinationals don’t care about the local people, all they want is exploit, make profit and vanish.