Why has every single Indian corporate organisation, including chambers of commerce that routinely wax eloquent on all types of issues, kept silent on the atrocious judgement in the Bhopal case? How can corporate CEOs not be disturbed, even alarmed, by a verdict that treats the world’s second-greatest industrial disaster that claimed 15,000-plus lives and injured over 200,000 as a mere traffic accident? What does this say about the moral and political character of Indian business and its disdain for social welfare?

The public cannot be faulted for thinking that India’s corporate sector cannot look beyond the bottom line. It treats important issues as irrelevant, including industrial safety, negligence, liability for accidents, justice delivery, and above all, the terrible suffering of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

With its deafening silence on Bhopal, the corporate sector has forfeited much of the middle-class goodwill it recently earned within a climate of economic neo-liberalism. Corporations are widely seen as hostile to public interest and the social imperative of securing a modicum of justice for the victims of Union Carbide (UCC) of the US, its Hong Kong-based fully-owned subsidiary Union Carbide Eastern, and Union Carbide India (UCIL), UCC’s 51 per cent Indian subsidiary.

On Bhopal, the captains of industry cannot hide behind the argument that it is inappropriate to comment on a legal judgment. This excuse is untenable after the law minister’s statement that the law has failed the victims and must be changed if future tragedies like Bhopal are to be averted. The reconstitution of the group of ministers to revisit the Bhopal issue and suggest corrective measures speaks volumes about the issue’s gravity. The step has no precedent.

Consider Carbide’s culpability for the accident. It under-designed the Bhopal plant for safety and used inferior standards to those prevalent in its pesticides plant in West Virginia. Carbide knew the Bhopal factory was accident-prone. Fatal accidents had occurred, with leaks of methyl isocyanate (MIC), a potent toxin, and phosgene, a war gas. A factory safety audit by Carbide’s US engineers found 30 flaws. But the management cut costs by shutting down safety systems and reducing staffing levels.

Carbide cannot pretend that UCIL was responsible for the plant. UCIL merely followed the parent’s instructions on operation and production schedules to the minutest detail and had no autonomy. At work was gross negligence, compounded by criminal underplaying of the plant’s hazards. When MIC leaked in 1984, Carbide tried to minimise its harmful effects. But 3,500 people were dead in two days. Even after this, Carbide suppressed material facts about MIC’s toxicity, which it alone possessed. These could have saved hundreds of lives.

It is unarguable that UCC was strictly and absolutely liable for what until Chernobyl was the world’s worst industrial disaster. It was in the society’s supreme interest that it be brought to justice through hefty damages and criminal prosecution. Had the accident occurred in an OECD country, Carbide would have soon been bankrupted of its assets of $9 billion; its directors would have served prolonged jail terms. Instead, thanks to the pusillanimity, treachery and collusion of the Indian government, which deprived the victims of their right to legal defence, it got away with a compensation totalling its insurance cover plus interest.

Even the criminal liability was dropped until a new government moved the Supreme Court, which restored it — only to dilute the charges unconscionably, to causing death by negligence. The latest judgment ordered a shamefully disproportionate penalty on UCIL and its officials; it did not even bring UCC, Union Carbide Eastern or Warren Anderson to trial. Nothing could be a greater travesty of justice.

This raises larger issues. Any civilised society based on the rule of law must severely punish corporate malfeasance, negligence and crime. This is essential if corporations are not to indulge in unsafe practices that harm the public and be deterred from using money power to evade justice. Even healthy capitalism needs the rule of law and tough environmental and occupational safety regulations. Crucial too is a developed law of torts. This does not exist in India.

The Bhopal disaster could have spurred the creation of such a regime in India. Regrettably, the government and industry colluded in sabotaging its development. Worse, big businesses are siding with Dow Chemical, UCC’s successor, in helping it evade its responsibility for cleaning up the dangerously contaminated Bhopal plant site, and instead pass it on to the public. This won’t do.

The Indian industry faces a critical choice. It must decide whether it wants to be seen as opposing the public interest and the larger social good while pursuing its narrow parochial self-interest, or whether it wants to be a responsible component of society, which upholds the public interest. Business will only shoot itself in the foot if it chooses the first option, and invite opprobrium and ignominy. Can it afford this?