Five Past Midnight in Bhopal

by Dominique Lapierre; Javier Moro

  To mystical India the Narmada River is the daughter of the sun. One has simply to behold it to achieve perfect purification. One single night of fasting on its banks guarantees prosperity for hundreds of generations, and drowning in it wrests one from the cycle of reincarnations. By a fortuitous stroke of geography this sacred river flowed just twenty-five miles from Bhopal. According to the Vedas, its banks were covered with a sand as magical as the waters they confined. Mixed with the pesticide from America, sand from the Narmada would avenge the Nadar family and all the other peasants ruined by voracious insects. India was going to escape the ancestral curse of its famines.

  “It was the best Christmas present I’d ever received,” the turbaned Sardar Singh, who had bought the 1,200 tons of American Sevin from Muñoz, would confide. The end of that year, 1968, saw the first delivery of Bhopal-produced insecticide arrive in his ministry’s warehouses: 131 tons to be sprayed over the cotton and cereal plantations of the Punjab. Once the requirements of his beloved Punjab had been satisfied, however, Sardar Singh was likely to find himself with about 800 tons of pesticide left on his hands. How could he ensure that other peasants in his country benefited from this providential surplus? He turned to Eduardo Muñoz for help.

  “Your company sells more than five hundred million batteries a year in this damn country,” he told him. “Its agents range from the farthest reaches of the Himalayas to the backwaters of Kerala. Only an organization like yours can help me distribute my Sevin.”

  The Argentinian raised his arms. “My dear Mr. Singh, a bag of insecticide is not as easy to sell as a pair of batteries for a flashlight,” he pointed out.

  The Indian adopted a coaxing tone. “My dear Mr. Muñoz, what you personally have achieved in Mexico and Argentina, you will manage to achieve here too. I have every faith in you. Let’s say no more about it; your smile tells me you will help me.”

  The challenge was a colossal one. From behind the wheel of his Jaguar, Muñoz had gauged the enormity and complexity of India. The country bore no resemblance to Mexico or even Argentina, both of which he had ended up knowing like the back of his hand. India was a continent whose three hundred million peasants spoke five or six hundred different languages and dialects. Half of them were illiterate and thus unable to read the label on a sack of fertilizer or a bag of insecticide. Yet they were dealing with chemical products that were potentially fatal. Muñoz had been horrified by the number of accidents the newspapers reported in rural areas: lung damage, burns to the skin, poisoning. The victims were almost always poor agricultural laborers whose employers had not seen fit to provide them with protective clothing or masks. To improve the efficacy of their manure, many peasants mixed different products together—almost always with their bare hands. Some even tasted the combination to make sure it had been mixed properly. In the poorest villages where whole families lived in one room, the bag of insecticide frequently sat in one corner, insidiously poisoning them with toxic emissions. Women drew water, did the milking or cooked food with containers that had once held DDT. The result was an alarming increase in certain disorders. A journey through the Tamil Nadu region horrified the Union Carbide representative. In some areas known for their intensive use of phytosanitary products, the instances of lung, stomach, skin and brain cancer defied counting. In the Lucknow region, half the laborers who handled pesticides were found to be suffering from serious psychological disorders as well as problems with their memory and eyesight. Worst of all, these sacrifices were pointless. Poorly informed peasants thought they could increase a product’s effectiveness by doubling or tripling the manufacturer’s recommended dosage. Their lack of understanding led many of them to ruin, sometimes even suicide. Newspaper headlines reported that the most popular method these desperate people used to kill themselves was swallowing a good dose of pesticide.

  Despite his worries about the potential for misuse of insecticides, Eduardo Muñoz responded to his Indian partner’s appeal for help. He dispatched the sales teams for the batteries with the blue-and-white logo to dispose of the surplus Sevin. Soon nearly every single grocery, hardware shop, and traveling salesman would be selling the American insecticide. This apparently generous gesture was not entirely devoid of self-interest. The Argentinian was counting on it to provide him with an accurate assessment of the Indian market’s capacity to absorb pesticides. The information would be crucial when the time came to determine the size and production volume of the Indian plant that Union Carbide had promised to build.

  “Work with farmers, our partners in the field.” A tidal wave of notices bearing this slogan soon broke over the Bengali and Bihari countryside. They showed a Sikh in a red turban placing a protective hand on the shoulder of a poor old farmer with a face furrowed with wrinkles. In his other hand, the knight in shining armor was brandishing a box of Sevin the size of a package of supermarket crackers. He was using it to point at an ear of corn. The copy read “My name is Kuldip Chahal. I am an area pesticide technologist. My role is to teach you how to make five rupees out of every rupee you spend on Sevin.”

  Eduardo Muñoz was all the more convinced: to convert the Indian peasants to Sevin, he would need legions of Kuldip Chahals.

  14

  Some Very Peculiar Pimps

  The sudden appearance of concrete mixers, cranes and scaffolding over the bleak horizon of the Kali Grounds caused a stir in the bustees. The blue-and-white logo flying in the vicinity of the mud huts was an even more magical emblem than the trident of the god Vishnu, creator of all things. To Eduardo Muñoz, that flag constituted a considerable victory. He had managed to persuade the New Delhi authorities that Union Carbide should no longer have to rely on an Indian intermediary to formulate its Sevin concentrate. It would be able to operate openly, under its own name. In New Delhi, as elsewhere in the world, international big business invariably found its own ways and means.

  As soon as the construction site opened, several tharagars laid siege to Belram Mukkadam’s teahouse. Carbide needed a workforce. Candidates came running and soon the drink stall became a veritable job recruitment center. Among the tharagars, Ratna Nadar recognized the man who had recruited him in Mudilapa to double the railway tracks. Ratna would have liked to have given him a piece of his mind, let him know just how bitter and angry he was, shout out that the poor were sick of having others grow fat from the sweat of their labor. But this was not the moment. He might have the undreamed of opportunity to work for the American multinational.

  “I pay twenty rupees a day,” the tharagar announced, exhaling the smoke from his bidi. “And I supply a helmet and cover-all, and one piece of soap a week, too.”

  It was a small fortune for men used to feeding their families on less than four rupees a day. In gratitude, they bowed to wipe the dust from their benefactor’s sandals. Among them was the former leper, Ganga Ram. This would be the first job he had managed to land since leaving the wing for contagious diseases at Hamidia Hospital.

  The next day at six o’clock, led by Mukkadam, all the candidates presented themselves at the gateway to the building site. The tharagar was there to check each worker’s employment document. When it came to Ganga Ram’s turn, he shook his head.

  “Sorry, friend, but Carbide doesn’t take lepers,” he declared, pointing to the two stumps of finger that were awkwardly gripping the sheet of paper.

  Ganga Ram foraged in the waist of his lunghi for the certificate to show that he was cured. “Look, look, it says there, I’m cured!” he implored, thrusting the paper under the tharagar’s nose.

  The latter was inflexible. For Ganga Ram the opportunity to don one of Carbide’s coveralls would have to remain a dream.

  That evening, those who had been fortunate enough to receive the blue linen uniform took it home with them. On the way, they presented it to the god Jagannath whose image presided over a small niche at the corner of the alleyway. Sheela, Padmini’s mother, laid her husband’s clothing at the deity’s feet, placing a chapati and some marigold pe
tals sprinkled with sugar water beside it.

  A few days later, Belram Mukkadam’s chief informant brought a piece of news that restored the hopes of Ganga Ram and all the others who had not been hired.

  “This building site is just the thin end of the wedge,” announced Rahul, the legless cripple. “Soon, sahibs will be arriving from America to build other factories and they’re going to pay wages higher than even Ganesh * could imagine.”

  Rahul was one of the most popular characters in Orya Bustee. He traveled at ground level on a wheeled plank, which he propelled with all the dexterity of a Formula 1 driver. With his fingers covered in rings, his long, dark hair carefully caught up in a bun, his glass bead necklaces and his shirts with gaudy, geometric patterns, Rahul introduced a note of cheeky elegance to the place. He was always abreast of any news, the slightest whisper of gossip. He was the Kali Grounds’ newspaper, radio and magazine. His attractive looks, his smile and his generous disposition had earned him the nickname “Kali Parade Ka Swarga dut”—“the Angel of Kali Parade.”

  That morning he was the bearer of another piece of news that was to appall all those gathered at the teahouse.

  “Padmini, Ratna and Sheela Nadar’s daughter, has disappeared,” he announced. “She hasn’t been home for four days. She wasn’t there this morning to help Sister Felicity with her clinic. Dilip, Dalima’s son says he and his friends lost her in the station at Benares.”

  This piece of information sent everyone rushing to the Nadars’ hut. In the bustee, everyone shared their neighbor’s misfortune.

  That winter Dilip, Padmini and the gang of young ragpickers that worked the trains had been extending their expeditions farther and farther afield. They ventured beyond Nagpur, even as far as Gwalior, which prolonged their absence by two or three days. Hopping from train to train, they roved the dense railway network of northern India with increasing audacity. One of the most lucrative destinations was the holy city of Benares, situated some 375 miles away, to which trainloads of Hindus of all castes went on pilgrimage. They could make it there and back in four days, which meant that if Padmini set out on a Monday, she would return in time for Sister Felicity’s clinic, something she would not miss for the world. These long journeys were fraught with danger. One evening when she parted from her friends to run and buy some fritters, the train left without her. It was the last one that night. Alone in Benares’s vast station overrun with travelers, vendors and beggars, Padmini panicked. She burst into tears. A man wearing a white cap approached and pressed a crumpled ten-rupee note into the palm of her hands.

  “Don’t thank me, little one.

  I’m the one who needs you.” He invited the little girl to sit down beside him and told her that his wife had just been called away to Calcutta to look after her dying father.

  “She won’t be back for a few days and I’m looking for someone to take care of my three small children while she’s away,” he explained. “I live close by. I’ll give you fifty rupees a week.”

  Without giving her time to answer, the man scooped Padmini up by the armpits and carried her to a car parked in front of the station. Like all great pilgrimage centers, Benares played host to a fair number of dubious activities. The prostitution of little girls did a particularly brisk trade. According to popular belief, de-flowering a virgin restored a man’s virility and protected him against venereal disease. The city’s numerous pleasure houses relied on professional procurers to supply them with virgins. These procurers often bought girls from very poor families, notably in Nepal, or arranged fictitious marriages with pretend husbands. In other instances, they simply abducted their victims.

  Two other white-capped men were waiting in the car for an adolescent girl to be delivered to them. The vehicle took off at top speed and drove for a long time before it stopped outside the gate of a temple. Twenty girls crouched inside the courtyard, guarded by more men in white caps. Padmini tried to escape from her captors but she was forced through the gate.

  In this city where every activity had sacred associations, some pimps tried to trick their young victims into believing that they would be participating in a religious rite. Padmini was captured during the festival of Makara Sankrauti, celebrated on the winter solstice. Makara is the goddess of carnal love, pleasure and fertility.

  The young captives were driven inside the temple where two pandits with shaven heads and chests encircled with the brahmin’s triple cord were waiting for them. “That was the beginning of a nightmare that went on for two days and two nights,” Padmini recounted. Cajoling one minute, threatening the next, banging their gongs to punctuate their speech, performing all kinds of rituals at the feet of the numerous deities in the sanctuary, the men sought to break down the girls’ resistance and prepare them for the work that awaited them. Fortunately Padmini did not understand the language they spoke.

  Once their very peculiar training was over, the captives were taken under escort to Munshigang, Benares’s brothel quarter, to be divided up between the various houses that had bought them. Padmini and two other little victims were pushed into one of the houses and taken to the first floor where a woman in her fifties was waiting for them.

  “I’m your new mother,” the madam declared with a cajoling smile, “and here are some presents that will turn you into proper princesses.”

  She unfolded three different colored skirts with matching blouses and showed them several boxes containing bracelets, necklaces and cosmetics. The gifts were part of what the pimps referred to as “the breaking of the girls.”

  “And now, I’ll go and get you your meal,” the madam announced.

  Padmini watched as she left the room, locking the door behind her. It was now or never. Barely two yards separated the three little girls from the window of the room in which they were confined. Padmini made a sign to her companions, rushed to the window, unbolted it, then jumped into the void. Her fall was miraculously broken by a fruit vendor’s stall. She picked herself up, and seconds later, was lost in the crowd. Her getaway had been so swift that no one had time to react. Following her instincts, the little girl ran straight ahead as fast as her legs would carry her. Soon she reached the banks of the Ganges and turned left along the ghats, the stairs beside the river. In her flight she had lost her two companions but she was sure that they too had been able to escape. The great god Jagannath had protected her. All she had to do now was find the station and climb aboard the first train for Bhopal. *

  Two days later, as Dilip and his friends prepared to slip aboard the Bombay Express, they suddenly caught sight of their little sister getting out of a train car. They let out such shrieks of joy that the passengers flew to the windows in curiosity.

  “There you are,” said Padmini, pulling a package from her bag. “I’ve brought you some fritters.”

  The boys bore her aloft in triumph, then took her home. News of her return, already broadcast by the legless cripple Rahul, brought hundreds of local residents rushing to her hut.

  15

  A Plant as “Inoffensive as a Chocolate Factory”

  An official letter from the Indian Ministry of Agriculture informed Eduardo Muñoz that the New Delhi government was granting Union Carbide a license to manufacture five thousand tons of pesticide a year. This time it was not just a matter of adding sand to several hundred tons of concentrate imported from America, but permission to actually produce Sevin, as well as its chemical ingredients, in India itself.

  As usual, the Argentinian, along with his wife Rita and his colleagues, celebrated this latest success in the bar of the Hotel Grand in Calcutta. But as he raised his champagne glass to the success of the future Indian factory, he felt a nagging doubt. “Five thousand tons, five thousand tons!” he repeated, shaking his head. “I’m afraid our Indian friends may have been thinking a bit too big! A factory with the capacity for two thousand tons would be quite large enough for us to supply the whole of India with Sevin.”

  The first sales figures for the Sevin formula
ted in the small unit on the Kali Grounds were not very encouraging. This was the reason for Eduardo Muñoz’s reluctance. Despite an extensive information and advertising campaign, the Indian farmers were not readily giving up familiar products like HCH and DDT. The climatic variations of so immense a country with its late or inadequate monsoons and its frequent droughts that could suddenly reduce demand, meant that regular sales of the product could not be guaranteed. A salesman above all else, Muñoz had run his numbers over and over again. His most optimistic predictions did not exceed annual sales of two thousand tons. Wisdom ordained that Carbide should limit its ambitions. Certain that he would be able to convince his superiors, he flew to New York. In his briefcase, meticulously sorted by province, groups of villages and sometimes even by individual village, were the results of his first sales effort. He hoped they would be enough to persuade his employers that they should modify their investment in India, even if it meant leaving room for eventual competitors. He was wrong. That journey to New York was to set the seal on the first act in a catastrophe.

  The Argentinian could never have imagined that his greatest adversary would be a man who had been dead for twenty-one years. The whole of American industry continued to revere as a prophet the man who, shortly after the second world war, had revolutionized relations between management and work-force. As an obscure employee in a Philadelphia bank, Edward N. Hay, who sported a short Charlie Chaplin–style mustache and oversleeves to protect his starched shirts, had seemed unlikely to leave behind much of a legacy. The obsessive ideas of this nondescript clerk, however, would make him as famous a figure in the industrial world as Frederick Taylor, the man who developed the theory of scientific management of factory work. Edward N. Hay was convinced that the members of the industrial workforce did not receive the attention they warranted. Starting from this premise, he had devised a point system to evaluate every job done in a company. The idea was immediately adopted by a number of branches of American industry. By the end of the 1960s Union Carbide was one of the most enthusiastic users of his methods. All of its industrial projects were automatically assigned a point value, according to a system that determined the importance, size and sophistication of any installations to be constructed. The more numerous and complex the project, the higher the number of points. Because each point corresponded to a salary advantage, it was in the interests of the engineers assigned to planning and implementing any industrial project to see that, right from the outset, it was given the maximum number of points possible.