Introduction
Around 1 a.m. on Monday, the 3rd of December, 1984, in a densely
populated region in the city of Bhopal, Central India, a poisonous
vapor burst from the tall stacks of the Union Carbide pesticide plant.
This vapor was a highly toxic cloud of methyl isocyanate. Of the
800,000 people living in Bhopal at the time, 2,000 died immediately, and
as many as 300,000 were injured. In addition, about 7,000 animals were
injured, of which about one thousand were killed.
“A series of studies made five years later showed that many of the
survivors were still suffering from one or several of the following
ailments: partial or complete blindness, gastrointestinal disorders,
impaired immune systems, post traumatic stress disorders, and menstrual
problems in women. A rise in spontaneous abortions, stillbirths, and
offspring with genetic defects was also noted.” (The Bhopal Disaster)
This incident we now refer to as the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, which has also
been called
“Hiroshima of the Chemical Industry” one of the worst commercial
industrial disasters in history.(Cohen)
After the incidence, over the next few years, numerous studies were
conducted, many theories were explored, and the involved parties accused
each other. In this paper, I will try to explore the various causes
offered for the tragedy. In the course of my research for this case
study, I came across many articles that put blame on various people and
groups involved in the tragedy. I found one document particularly
interesting from a rhetorical standpoint. This document, titled Union
Carbide: Disaster at Bhopal , was authored by the retired Vice
President of Health, Safety and Environmental Programs in Union Carbide
Corporation. So for this paper, I would also like to rhetorically
analyze this document and also, try to explore the various image
restoration strategies that Union Carbide Corporation used through the
course of the crisis.
The Tragedy: Possible Causes
The post-accident analysis of the process showed that the accident
started when a tank containing methyl isocyanate (MIC) leaked. MIC is an
extremely reactive chemical and is used in production of the insecticide
carbaryl. It is presumed that the scientific reason for the accident at
Bhopal is that water entered the tank where about 40 cubic meters of
MIC was stored. When water and MIC mixed, an exothermic chemical
reaction started, producing a lot of heat. As a result, the safety valve
of the tank burst because of the increase in pressure. This burst was so
violent that the coating of concrete around the tank also broke. It is
presumed that between 20 and 30 tonnes of MIC were released during the
hour that the leak took place. The gas leaked from a 30 m high chimney
and this height was not enough to reduce the effects of the discharge.
The reason was that the high moisture content (aerosol) in the discharge
when evaporating, gave rise to a heavy gas which rapidly sank to the
ground. The weather egged on this process. The conditions on the fateful
day were typical for a clear night in the region, with a weak wind which
frequently changed direction, which in turn helped the gas to cover
more area in a shorter period of time (about one hour). The weak wind
and the weak vertical turbulence caused a slow dilution of gas and thus
allowed the poisonous gas to spread over considerable distances.
(Chemical Accidents...)
Many different terms have been used to describe the events in Bhopal
that early morning of December 3, 1984: accident, disaster, catastrophe,
crisis and also as sabotage, conspiracy, massacre, and experiment,
whichever best suited the arguments that would help to pin the ‘blame’
on somebody. In his book titled The Bhopal Tragedy: Language, Logic and
Politics in the Production of a Hazard, the authorWilliam Bogard “Each
of these descriptions, in its own way, minimizes the problem of human
agency and intention, and thus refuses to address directly the issue of
responsibility.”(ix) Bogard goes on to point out that the best way to
describe this incidence would be a tragedy because,
“In calling Bhopal a tragedy, we are still permitted to say that
intention and agency were involved in how the event unfolded and that
responsibility must ultimately rest with someone or some group. But
unlike saying that Bhopal was the deliberate result of sabotage, a
conspiracy, or some diabolical experiment involving human guinea pigs-
charges that are virtually impossible to prove in any case- a tragedy,
in contrast, emerges out of a complex of confused and misguided
intentions, many of which may be honorable in themselves but when forged
to the actual chain of events produce the worst possible
outcome.”(Bogard, ix)
In the last twelve years, numerous studies have been conducted on the
incident and there are numerous deductions. In most of the studies, the
two main agencies analyzed were the Union Carbide Corporation and the
Indian Government of the Late Primeminister Rajiv Gandhi and the Madhya
Pradesh state government of Arjun Singh. One of the main reasons for the
tragedy was found to be a result of a combination of human factors and
an incorrectly designed safety system. “A portion of the safety
equipment at the plant had been non-operational for four months and the
rest failed. When the plant finally sounded an alarm--an hour after the
toxic cloud had escaped--much of the harm had already been done.”(The
Bhopal Disaster). Union Carbide itself believed the theory that the
tragedy resulted when “ a disgruntled plant employee, apparently bent on
spoiling a batch of methyl isocyanate, added water to a storage
tank”(Browning). Still others, like the many experts in industrial
safety, believe that the tragedy was preventable, arguing that it was
the due to “....the negligence on the part of the Union Carbide
Corporation and its corporate subsidiary Union Carbide of India
Ltd.(UCIL), which had the responsibility for taking care of the
day-to-day operations of the facility”(Bogard 4). The corporation and
its subsidiary were also charged with corporate irresponsibility for
pursuing the profits instead of the safety and hazard standards. The
Madhya Pradesh State government had not mandated any safety standards
and Union Carbide failed to implement its own (i.e. US) safety rules,
apparently comfortable in the knowledge that it was not contravening
Indian regulation. “The Bhopal plant experienced six accidents between
1981 and 1984, at least three of which involved MIC or phosgene, a
highly poisonous gas used in World War I and a component in the
manufacture of MIC. The accidents were generally small scale- one worker
was killed in 1981- but official inquiries required by law were often
shelved or tended to minimize the government’s or the company’s
role”(Bogard 5). It is noted that it was probably this pattern of
neglect that failed to bring about the much needed change in the
malfunctioning safety equipment and improperly trained workers at the
chemical plant. Even so, this negligent behavior on the part of Union
Carbide regarding safety standards raised little concern among the
citizens of Bhopal.
So, why were the people of Bhopal so indifferent when voicing their
concerns on the safety factors in the Union Carbide plant? Why was
nothing done about the defective safety equipment? To understand this,
it is important to understand that India is a poor nation. The country
needed pesticides to protect her agricultural production. MIC is used to
produce pesticides that control insects which would in turn, help
increase production of food - central to India’s Green Revolution, which
was ironically, US imposed. Initially, India imported the MIC from the
United States. In an attempt to achieve industrial self-sufficiency,
India invited Union Carbide to set up a plant in the state of Madhya
Pradesh to produce methyl isocyanate. The license was given to them on
the belief that the chemical industry would provide the desperately
needed jobs and capital for the people of the country. To the people of
the city of Bhopal, Union Carbide was a highly respected , technically
advanced Western company that would bring them the jobs they needed.
This coupled with political power and scientific expertise worked
together to changed the people’s perception of what was dangerous and
more importantly what was safe.
The Analysis: Union Carbide’s Reaction
Through all the months immediately following the incident, Union
Carbide never directly apologized to the Indian government and her
people or to the people of Bhopal. The Indian Government, in response
to the tragedy and pressure from the Indian people, filed a compensation
lawsuit against the UCC for an estimated $3 billion. On the other hand,
Union Carbide strongly felt that the Indian government was to blame.
This was the headlines in The New York Times on Dec. 17, 1986,
The Union Carbide Corporation in Dec., 1986, while continuing to deny
liability, filed a countersuit against the government of India and the
State of Madhya Pradesh regarding the 1984 disaster at Carbide's Bhopal
subsidiary. The company is charging the governments with "contributory"
responsibility for the leak of poisonous gases, saying both governments
knew of the toxicity of methyl isocyanate but failed to take adequate
precautions to prevent a disaster. The government of India has sued
Union Carbide for at least $3 billion in compensation for the victims of
the leak of methyl isocyanate.(D4)
This was iterated in the document titled Union Carbide: Disaster at
Bhopal , written by Jackson B. Browning for the Union Carbide
Corporation. At the time of the Bhopal tragedy, Jackson B. Browning was
the Vice President responsible for the Health, Safety, and Environmental
Programs in the corporation. He was one of the spokesmen for the
corporation during the crisis in 1984 and was also in charge of the
teams that responded to and investigated the tragedy. He retired from
UCC in 1986.
Browning’s document outlines the various aspects of the Bhopal tragedy
from the perspective of the Union Carbide Corporation. In the very
second paragraph on page one of the article, the author notes that the
cause for the accident, as believed by the parent company- “Although it
was not known at the time, the gas was formed when a disgruntled plant
employee, apparently bent on spoiling a batch of methyl isocyanate,
added water to a storage tank.”(Browning). This was the main argument by
UCC in their defense and they still maintain the same. The corporation
needed to divert the blame for the tragedy from themselves to something
or somebody else, especially one that would catch the attention of
anybody remotely interested in the incident. They used “sabotage”. What
I found interesting was that on the one hand Browning called the
incident of December 3rd a “massive industrial disaster” and on the
other hand, a premeditated action- a sabotage. To me, the two don’t fit
together. Disaster would mean ‘even if we knew, we could have done
nothing about it’ and sabotage on the other hand would mean ‘if the
process had not been tampered with, there would have been no leak, no
loss of life’. But this was clearly not the case. Studies conducted on
this incidence by a Dr. Paul Shrivastava, tell a completely different
story. Dr. Paul Shrivastava, an Associate Professor of Business in
NewYork University and Executive Director Industrial Crisis Institute
Inc., NY conducted studies that revealed that Bhopal was neither an
isolated incident nor the first of its kind in the corporation. There
had been many accidents of similar nature in UCC's American plants prior
to the Bhopal accident. He found that 28 major MIC leaks had occurred in
UCC’s West Virginia plant during the five years preceding the Bhopal
incident, the last one occurring only a month before. His studies found
that the ‘sabotage’ theory was UCC’s way to avoid paying the huge amount
that the Indian government had demanded as settlement. Interestingly,
UCC, till date, has been unsuccessful in presenting any evidence to
prove that theory and has never disclosed the name of the supposedly
guilty employee.(Ahuja)
All the previous accidents in the other Union Carbide plants were not
highly publicized events, and hence, there were no repercussions that
UCC had to face. But in the case of the Bhopal tragedy, the magnitude of
the incident worked against them and made it difficult for them to
distance themselves from it. In his article, discussing the theories of
image restoration, Benoit notes that there are two components to an
attack on one’s image: an undesirable act has been committed and you are
responsible for that action. “Only if both of these conditions are
believed to be true by the relevant audiences is the actor’s reputation
at risk...”(71). The Bhopal incident was too big for the public to
ignore and added to everything else, there was a huge loss of human
life. This naturally drew attention. Even Browning notes in his article
that “ the scope of the Bhopal tragedy made it to “page one” material in
the weeks and months that followed.” Union Carbide was under attack from
all sides as news of the leak spread and they needed to make arguments
to achieve one particular goal- “restoring or protecting their
reputation”(Benoit 71). Benoit argues that “....when our reputation is
threatened, we feel compelled to offer explanations, defenses,
justifications, rationalizations, apologies or excuses for our
behavior”(70). But these defenses and excuses needed to be made to the
audience that mattered the most to you. To the Union Carbide Corporation
in the United States, the audiences were the people around them in the
US and the media.
The Press seemed to be the main focus in Browning document. The tone of
the document suggested that the main audiences to pacify would be the
media and once that was done the corporation would have definitely
‘saved face’. The other relevant audiences needed to be identified
carefully. In the document, Browning has a sub-section titled “Keeping
Vital Audiences Informed”. Under this section, Browning himself clearly
identifies that audiences they were responding to: the most visible-the
media, and other interested parties like the customers, shareholders,
suppliers and other employees. Nowhere in this whole section was there a
mention of the people of India or the people of Bhopal. There seemed an
urgency for the corporation to assure the people of the United States
who were their main stockholders, that such an incident would not happen
here. Browning notes in the document that Warren Anderson, the then
chairman of the UCC, and he were summoned to appear before the House
Commerce and Energy Committee to answer one question- “Can it happen
here?” It seems like this pretty much proved that the process of image
restoration for the corporation was not all that difficult because of
the large distance between the ‘vital’ audiences and the site of the
disaster Bhopal. In his discussion of the tragedy, Benoit notes,
The unusual aspect of Carbide’s public image is the fact that the public
believed Union Carbide was responsible for Bhopal and had not told the
truth about it- yet had a generally favorable overall opinion about the
company. This may reflect a partial lack of interest in events that
occurred in distant lands and suggests that salience of the accusations
to the audience of an important factor of image restoration.(140)
This shows an important factor of restoring one’s image in the eyes of
the public depends to a great extent on how relevant the unfavorable
event is in their eyes, in other words, how close to home is the
tragedy.
As the first step towards image restoration, Browning’s main strategy
seems to have been to distance the corporation from the site of the
disaster. Browning, very early in the document, points out that the
Union Carbide Corporation had only 50.9% stake in the affiliate, the
Union Carbide India Ltd. He also makes clear that all the employees in
the company were Indians and that “...the last American employee at the
site had left two years[1982] before.” Union Carbide Corporation
maintained that it did not have any hold over its Indian affiliate. The
UCC argued that the day-to-day working in UCIL was independent of the
parent company and hence it was not to be held responsible. But most of
the research showed that this was not really true.
In spite of denials, it appears the Union Carbide company in Danbury,
Connecticut had substantial authority over its affiliate......Many of
the day to day details, such as staffing and maintenance, were left to
Indian officials, but every major decision, such as the annual budget,
had to be cleared with the American headquarters, and directives were
often issued from the US.(Bogard 28)
And in addition to this, by both Indian and US laws, a parent company
(UCC in this case) holds full responsibility for any plants they operate
through subsidiaries and in which they have the majority stake.Hence, it
seemed like the main aim of making an argument that UCIL was independent
could be for two purposes: 1) to avoid paying the large sum of $3,000
million that India demanded as compensation or 2) to find a ‘scapegoat’
to divert the blame onto. In his article, Keith Michael Hearit, an
Assistant Professor in Communication Studies, Purdue University,
discusses the concept of scapegoating with respect to saving face,
“ .....instances in which corporations cannot deny the validity of the
charges, they are forced to deal with the issue of guilt and
responsibility to restore their social legitimacy. At such time,
corporate apologist offer individual/group dissociations. An
individual/group dissociation is a scapegoating strategy by which a
rhetor seeks too transfer guilt to another.” (8)
In this case, UCC, by noting that UCIL had an all Indian workforce and
the last American employed had left two years before, attempted to
restore its image by differentiating the affiliate from the rest of the
organization. This is one of the many modes of image restoration
discussed by Benoit.
William Benoit has an interesting and detailed discussion of the theory
of Image Restoration in his book titled Accounts, Excuses and Apologies.
He lists five categories that, he argues, identify instances of image
restoration strategies in a defensive discourse:
· Denial
· Evading Responsibility
· Reducing Offensiveness of Event
· Corrective Action
· Mortification
Defense by denial can be done in two ways- simply denying that the
accused committed the act or by shifting the blame on something that the
accused can distance itself from. The accused could also evade
responsibility either by claiming to have been provoked or defeasibility
-claiming lack of information, or declare that the event was an accident
or claim that the act was done with good intentions. The third method
that Benoit talks about is by reducing the perceived offensiveness of
the act by either minimizing or bolstering or differentiation or
transcendence or in turn attack the accuser or by compensation which
reduces the perceived severity of the injury. Another strategy used for
image restoration is corrective action. Audiences may well forgive the
accused if the accused is promise to remedy the problem and never do it
again. The last strategy is mortification, the sincere apology. This is
often a never used strategy.(73-74)
Union Carbide used some of these strategies to restore its reputation
after the gas leak in Bhopal. One of the strategies employed is that of
‘corrective action’ and stands out in an interesting section of
Browning’s document titled “Safety Emphasized”. Under this section,
Browning tries to establishe that Bhopal was a stray incident and should
not be held against the corporation because “No analysis of Union
Carbide’s reaction to the Bhopal tragedy is possible without recognizing
the considerable emphasis the company and its affiliates had placed on
safe operations”(Browning). To lend credibility to the corporation’s
cause, Browning cites an international management specialist, Dr.
Richard Robinson, a professor in Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
commenting on the tragedy as saying that Union Carbide was one of those
multinational corporations who were very dedicated to the safety aspect
of their plants and that “ it is particularly depressing that it was
Union Carbide which was involved”. Browning notes that considering the
company’s strict safety policies that the news of the Bhopal tragedy was
“astounding”. Arguments in this section are more devoted to explaining
that it would be unfair to assume that the accusations that UCC was not
careful with safety, were true. It is, in a sense, a form of apologia-
the corporation is utilizing the “act/essence dissociation. An
act/essence dissociation distances the apologist from the wrongdoing by
arguing that while the wrongdoing admittedly occurred, it was an
isolated act that does not represent the apologist’s true
nature.”(Hearit 9) And this is often followed by the next step -to
point out how the corporation has worked to remedying the unfortunate
incidence. This is exactly what Union Carbide Corporation did.
Under the two sections titled “First Steps At Control” and “Contingency
Planning and Experience Help”, Browning lists out all the things that
UCC did immediately following the first call they got about the tragedy.
He notes that vital decisions were made - the UCC facility making MIC in
the US was shut down; a task force led by the chairman of UCC, Warren
Anderson, was set up; medical and technical teams were dispatched to the
site of the tragedy “within 24 hours”. He also noted that “Union Carbide
had a contingency plan for emergencies” The people of UCC worked
together, with the press and the ‘vital audiences’, in to help in
dealing with the “terrible facts of the tragedy”. What is interesting
is that most of the research done on the incident points to the fact
that Union Carbide did not have any kind of emergency plans in its
Indian subsidiary. So much so that when the accident occurred and
people started pouring into the hospitals in Bhopal complaining about
the various ailments, the hospital staff had on idea of what had
happened or what to do. “The city health officials had not been informed
of the toxicity of the chemicals used at the Union Carbide factory.
There were no emergency plans or procedures in place and no knowledge of
how to deal with the poisonous cloud.”(The Bhopal Disaster)
Browning ends his document noting, with confidence, that the approach
used by UCC at the time of the disaster were in his opinion “correct
ones”. He also notes that today’s Union Carbide Corporation is a very
different company. The Corporation now works twice as hard on its safety
operations and that “money and staff were committed to those
objectives”.
Conclusion
Thirteen years later not much has changed. Union Carbide India Ltd. is
an abandoned site in Bhopal. UCC sold its share of the affiliate. In
October of 1991, the Indian Supreme Court upheld a settlement, which had
been appealed from a lower court decision of 1989, under which Union
Carbide had to pay $470 million in compensation of all claims. In 1996,
at Union Carbide's annual meeting, William H. Joyce, its chief
executive, declared that the company had no intention of doing anything
further for the victims. This resolve was apparently reversed, as the
company announced that it is planning to support the building of a $ 20
million hospital for the victims of the Bhopal tragedy through a London
based independent charitable trust. The construction should be complete
in mid-1998 and will be operational by the end of this year.
Today, Union Carbide is a six billion dollar company, whose worldwide
sales percentage is increasing every financial year. It seems like their
image restoration strategy worked for them. “Union Carbide may have been
aided in this matter by an unconscious ethnocentric bias in the public.
It is reasonable to assume that if this terrible tragedy had occurred
here in the United states (rather than in a foreign country), its image
would have suffered even more.” (Benoit, 141).
Bhopal was one of the worst industrial disasters in history. For all
its horrors, the tragedy had at least one beneficial consequence- the
intense public debate that followed the tragedy made more private
citizens aware of the hazards of the chemical industry as a whole. It
put the lethal nature of the chemical industry in out in the open. In
response to this, the Chemical Manufacturing Association created the
‘Responsible Care Program’ that is now being implemented worldwide in at
least 22 countries. The Program's aim is to improve community awareness,
emergency response and employee health and safety.
In this paper, I attempted analyze Browning’s document and draw from it
the rhetorical implications of Union Carbide’s perspective on the Bhopal
tragedy. This is by no means an in-depth inquiry of the various image
restorations strategies that the Union Carbide Corporation might have
used. This is at best the tip of the iceberg.
Bibliography
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