Bhopal Rally for Justice Update & Video Footage from Al Jazeera English

I was planning to write something on food today; I've been seeing a lot of interesting links about that lately.  But I put that post on the back burner, as they say, when Bhagwad asked for an update on Thursday's post. 

I confess that when I heard that the march that was to have kicked off Thursday's Bhopal rally had been canceled, I wondered if it had been done on account of low turnout.  That was very far from the truth.  The rally at Jantar Mantar was quite large, in part because 700-800 survivors came up from Bhopal for it.  The march was canceled not for lack of people, but for lack of permission.  (Getting permission to march in Delhi can be difficult, which is a problem in its own right.  I don't know the details of this incident, but I'm sure the request was given late, since all these events are happening so quickly, it would have been impossible to plan this months or even weeks ahead.  Marches and rallies are a vital part of freedom speech and expression, and in cases like this, the government should do what it can to fast track permission.  Otherwise, it looks like it is discouraging dissent, whether or not that is actually the case!)

On Friday, Bhopal survivors protested in front of Home Minister P. Chidambaram's residence.  As far as I know they did not call ahead for an appointment, but I think they made their point.  Photo here.

Thursday's rally got a lot of media attention, but since a picture is worth a thousand words, here's a news report from Al Jazeera English that shows actual footage.

To read more about how the Bhopal organizations feel about the Government proposal, read this editorial at Bhopal.net.

I managed to make it to two of the sessions of the Defense of Democracy event that I mentioned on Thursday, but I had other obligations and missed some of what I'd hoped to see.  Let me just say that what I did see gave me a lot to think about, but right now there are more pressing issues facing this writer: like how to respond to the demands being advanced by my children for a tasty breakfast. Though I will try to win some concessions in the negotiations--help with egg cracking or water boiling--I think I will need to move myself to the kitchen with haste or I'll be faced with  dharna in my own living room!

Delhi Action Alert: Rally for Justice in Bhopal (Today); In Defense of Democracy (Fri.-Sat.)

As we wrote last week, it is good to see the government finally paying some attention to Bhopal.  Unfortunately, it seems that the recommendations made in the Group of Ministers' report will fall far short of reasonable.  Most disturbingly, the proposed compensation process will leave out something like 90 percent of the people affected by the disaster, including children with disabilities caused by the poison their parents were exposed to.  And while it is nice to hear that the cabinet will be discussing renewed efforts to extradite Warren Anderson, one has to take this with a fist full of salt, given the historical reluctance of the US to extradite its citizens and the signals the Indian government has sent on this issue in the past.

There has been a lot written about Bhopal recently: new blog posts, letters to the editors, and mainstream investigative stories are published every day. Many of them are well argued and insightful, like this editorial from CSE's Sunita Narain.  All this public discussion and outcry has been healthy and has moved the issue farther forward than it has moved in years.  

But as much as I like clever essays--after all, that's a large part of what we do here at the Dhaba-- my reading of the tea leaves says that the best thing we can do to move things farther along on the road to a reasonably just outcome to the Bhopal tragedy is to take some more tangible action.  If you live in Delhi and are free today (Thursday, June 24), you are in luck, because there will be a Rally for Justice in Bhopal this morning, organized by a wide range of groups concerned with justice in Bhopal.  Here's the basic information:

WHERE: Mandi House to Jantar Mantar, New Delhi
WHEN: 24 JUNE, 2010. 11 a.m. TODAY
WHY: To condemn the latest betrayal of Bhopal

You can find more details at the Delhi Greens blog or at the Facebook event page. This rally promises to start on time, so don't be late.

BREAKING UPDATE: Just saw this update on the Facebook page: The Rally has been cancelled and the Bhopal people are now camping at Jantar Mantar.  Do join there ! 

(For those of you that spent over an hour in sweaty autos only to find no rally, let me just say that I empathize you, having done the same thing myself. I did finally manage to get a copy of Anindita Sengupta's new collection of poetry while I was in the Sahitya Akademi neighborhood, so there was a silver lining!)

You can still sign this petition from Avaaz.org.  For more about Bhopal and other related issues, see our Toxics & Trash page.

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The BP leak, the Bhopal verdict, and the Nuclear Liability Bill have reminded environmentalists how many issues are closely related.  There are more, of course: farmers-forests-mining-Maoists are all connected to each other in important ways, as is the state's response to these things.  

A coalition of groups concerned with justice and the environment will be remembering the 35th anniversary of the Emergency this Friday and Saturday in Delhi, with a conference called In Defense of Democracy .  This agenda looks outstanding: poets, politicians, activists and all kind of other interesting people will be there.  Do attend if you can.  For more details, see the Facebook event page or look here if you don't do Facebook.

 

Best Dhabas in Delhi: Sanjay’s, Near Sitaram Hospital

Every week, a few people come to the Dhaba looking for the real thing—a  place where you can get good food without the price or the frills you get in more conventional restaurants. Most of these visitors leave disappointed—we are, after all, a virtual dhaba, and the “fresh green” stuff we serve is green in the idiomatic sense of the word only. 

So this summer, I thought it would be fun to review a few of Delhi’s many real-life, brick and motor (or brick and tarp) dhabas.  After all, dhabas the ultimate in low-tech greentech, and if you think about it, most of them have an environmental impact that is almost non-existent, compared to fancier eating establishments.  If dhabas aren’t sustainable, then it's hard to imagine what would be.

 
Our Best Delhi Dhaba series starts on the road just outside Sitaram Hospital in the Qutab Institutional Area, behind the Qutab Hotel.  Mrs. Batti and I had just emerged from the doctor’s office and a cup of tea seemed just the thing to pick us up.

As you come out of Sitaram, and turn to the left, there is a row of dhabas on the side of the road.  We sat down at the first.  It doesn’t really have a name, but it is run by a man named Sanjay, so we’ll call it Sanjay’s. 

This dhaba offers outdoor seating under the shade of large trees and a plastic tarp.  There was no electric fan and no cooler, but a light breeze made the seating comfortable enough even at 11:00 am on a June morning. 

The décor was mixed.  I didn’t care much for the large Coca Cola advertisement under the counter.  But I liked the shoe that hung from the ceiling above.  On it was written that charm, commonly found on the back of trucks: Buri Nazar Wale Tera Mooh Kaala.

On the morning we ate, the spoken menu included a number of items, including bread omelet, alu paratha, and various kinds of biscuits and namkeen. In addition to chai, cold drinks and water from a matka were also available. 

We ordered a cup of tea each (Rs. 5) and an alu paratha to share (Rs. 10).  The tea was fine—standard dhaba fare, served in a plastic cup.  We had to wait 10-15 minutes for the paratha, but it was well worth it.  It was large, steaming hot, and not too oily.   It was served on a steel plate with a generous portion of pickle.   The picture you see to the right is after we’d eaten about half of it--it was so good, we couldn't wait for me to figure out how to use the low-quality camera on my wife's phone.  

Mrs. Batti, who is not easy to please when it comes to parathas, agreed with me about the quality of this one—she declared it “excellent” and said some nice things about the heat of the pan and the variety and freshness of the fillings. 

Looking at this dhaba from an environmental point of view, it looses some points for the plastic cups and bottles it uses.  And not only are the contents of those foil packs of gutka and paan bad for you (which is why I quit buying them a long time ago in spite of their addictive qualities) the packages are, quite simply, just little pieces of litter waiting to happen.

On the positive side, this being Delhi, most of the plastic will end up getting recycled, and in the long run, it would be easy to replace those plastic cups with clay ones.  The low-tech, open air structure didn’t take much energy to build, and it takes very little energy to operate and maintain.  As for the food, most of it consists of atta, eggs, and fresh vegetables cooked over a gas stove—it’s hard to object to that!

So if you find yourself killing time at Sitaram’s and you want to have a low-tech, green tech kind of breakfast, then I’d say you will be hard pressed to find a better place to eat than this.  Convenient location, low prices, decent service—and some of the best alu parathas in South Delhi—make this one of Delhi’s Best Dhabas. 

Bhopal, BP, Cobalt-60: Will there be Enough Magic in this Toxic Confluence to Kill the Nuclear Bill?

The news that the Obama administration has gotten BP to pay $20 billion into an independently administered fund charged with compensating victims of the Gulf oil spill has gotten mixed reactions in the US. Many give Obama credit for wresting such a big "down payment" from BP, while others emphasize the fact that BP could--and may have to--pay much more in the long run.  And some are actually outraged because they think BP has been treated unfairly; this blogger has posted a clip of a US representative apologizing to BP for what he calls an illegal "shake down." This be-nice-to corporations approach may seem hard believe, until you read that the representative in question has received very, very large campaign contributions from BP and other oil and natural gas companies involved in the Deepwater disaster.  (He later woke up to political reality and took it all back.)

There is room to be critical of the BP-Obama agreement, but the plan does accomplish some important things: BP has had to put on hold plans to pay out dividends to shareholders this year, and many of the victims of the disaster will receive substantial relief without having to wait  years for a court settlement. Importantly, the agreement does not preclude the imposition of further fines or settlements against BP.

Now contrast this to India's approach to disaster management.  As we argued here last week, for many years that approach has been concerned, first and foremost, with sending an "appropriate signal" to foreign investors.  As we all know by now, Bhopal is the clearest example of this. After 26 years, very little has happened: the original settlement against Union Carbide was completely inadequate;people thus far tried for their role in the disaster have received ridiculously small sentences; and successive governments have failed to extradite Warren Anderson in large part because the signal they sent to the US were that extradition was not a priority. 

Oh, and one more small detail: the disaster at Bhopal continues, thanks to left over toxins at the old Union Carbide plant that neither Dow/Union Carbide nor the GOI have bothered to clean up. (For more on this story, read this piece in the Economic Times.)

Though it's taken a very long time, it is good to see the Bhopal issue getting some of the attention it should have gotten years ago. In fact there are new and important revelations being made every day.  And The Hindu reports that, after doing nothing for a very long time, the Bhopal Group of Ministers is actually meeting over the weekend.  The article states that "the mood at the meeting, sources said, was that something should be done, and done quickly.” It is hard to resist the temptation to make fun of this sudden change in "mood," but I'm going to sit on my hands and do so.  Instead I'll make three short, serious points:

1. Anything good that comes out of all this will be thanks to political pressure made possible by the insulting nature of last week's Bhopal verdict and the many organizations, both here and abroad, who have been working on this issue for years. The government is only acting because it feels it has to; otherwise it would have done so years ago. 
2. Congress/UPA governments and leaders deserve a large share of blame for this fiasco over the last quarter century; and their responsibility goes far beyond letting Warren Anderson escape in 1984. (In fairness, the BJP should be careful about what they say until they can explain why they did little or nothing to take care of this problem when they were in office.)
3. This is not a problem without a solution! A broad coalition of groups working on this issue has put together a remarkably sensible and clear "Roadmap for Justice and Dignity."  Let's hope the Group of Ministers take heed of these demands.

It is eerie the way the uproar around the Bhopal verdict, the BP oil disaster, and the radioactive Cobalt-60 incident in Mayapuri have all happened so close together.  One speaker at last week's No More Bhopals rally in Delhi called this coincidence of toxic events, "magic."  And maybe it is magic: if nothing else, all these events are making it more difficult for the government to justify its be-nice-to-foreign-companies-even-if-they-cause-disasters attitude!

Last week, for example, the government withdrew an amendment to the Nuclear Liability Bill which would have further weakened the already ridiculously weak bill.  The revised bill wold have offered further protection to US nuclear equipment suppliers from liability in the case of a nuclear incident that “has resulted from the wilful act or gross negligence on the part of the supplier of the material, equipment, or his employee.” It's just a bit difficult to justify that kind of language, given the current climate, no matter what message you want to send to corporations!

But let's not forget the really stupid part of the Nuclear Liability Bill is its ridiculously low liability caps.The bill limits the overall amount of liability for each nuclear accident in India to about US $450 million or Rs 2100 crore.  This happens to be less than the courts awarded in the Bhopal disaster way back in 1989!  But that's not all; the bill limits the liability of the private companies who would operate nuclear plants in India to mere 500 crores--(about $110 million). In the case of a big accident, the Government of India would generously make up the difference between the 500 crore that the responsible company would be liable to pay and the 2100 crore overall limit--a very nice gift to the operators of faulty nuclear power plants.

The government wants this Nuclear Liability Bill very badly; after all, it is part of the Nuclear Deal that UPA I was willing to risk a no-confidence vote over.  If I'm right, even if we kill it once it will return in a new form. And though the magic seems to be going our way this week, we're going to need more than magic to kill this bad bill!  Spread the word; let's stop it while we can!  Sign this online petition, if you haven't already. And while you are at it, sign this one from Greenpeace!

Green Poetry by Janice Pariat

margherita june

summer afternoon,
languorous heat,
the monsoon a shift
of wind away.
ranjit mali says he can
smell it in the earth,
damp, rich and sweet,
sense it by pekoe birds
that fall suddenly quiet.
life here is wholesome
and lonely.

under the lichee tree
is where the world
first formed – watching
small green clusters
in upturned silence, grass
behind my neck. a tilted
view of patchy sky
through crazy tangle
of twig and leaf.

soon, tainted blush
and growing heaviness,
rain drums the earth
to time the season.
bats in their blindness
know when fruit is ripe,
ready to be torn from
papery shell. what’s left
is mine to peel and cradle.
life here drips quietly
from branch to soil.

army stops

driving through assam
meant check points.

obsolete barricades, sand bag
piles heavy as sin.

a slowing down of journeys,
and tightening of air. terse
dialogue in hushed voices.

sometimes they came upon
us suddenly, those clusters
of brown-uniformed men,
waiting like a lazy hunting party.

and we would have no time,
before we stopped, to rearrange
our travelling lives – blankets,
pillows, food basket, slipped-off
shoes. just our faces.

mixture of drowsiness,
and surprise, a steady gaze when
torchlight sweeps across the seats
– hard, brisk and piercing.

sometimes, seeing me (I was eleven)
they’d wave us on without checking
the luggage, beneath the seats, front
or back.

they always inspected the booth.

shadows fell like trees across
the windscreen, glint of barrel
in the queer moonlight,
metallic taste in my mouth.

always that moment of silence
before the engine came to life.
the slow shudder of movement,
suddenly the wind in my face,
an inexplicable feeling of escape.


forest without end

How to explain the forest
behind my house,
the one edged by trees
I climbed to sail
mad march winds
and pluck guavas,
hard, sour as the end
of childhood.

Yet then, it was day
after day of exploring
the stories in my head
In the midst of tall pine
- those undefeated soldiers -
and willows by the water,
fishermen searching for
a girl who drowned.

The moss, a springy carpet
from which to jump on
gnarled root and ancient
rock, fleeing from creatures
I imagined alone, in bed,
watching the stars
or the moon hang
at the edge of night.

How to explain the forest
behind my house,
the one where I avoided
crystal-clear portals
to an upside-down world,
and slipped past the storm-
wrecked cedar, damp, decaying,
smell of age and end of life.

Yet then, it was evening
after evening of chasing
fireflies that died in bottles
- I never understood why -
and searching for crickets
in bamboo thickets, until
light faded and left me
with sound and shadow.
the forest in my head.

Janice Pariat is a freelance writer currently based in her hometown Shillong, Meghalaya after many years of being away in Delhi and elsewhere. She is inspired by her mixed Portuguese, British and Khasi ancestry, literature, Shillong's troubled history, her childhood in Assam, everyday things, travel. Her writing has been published in Soundzine,Tongues of the Ocean, The Smoking Poet, Barnwood International Poetry Mag, Poetry Friends, Tehelka, The Caravan, Art India, Ultra Violet and Literati among others.  Janice has been awarded a 2011 Swiss Arts Council grant for a research residency in Lucerne to work on a short graphic novel. She blogs at http://janicepariat.blogspot.com/

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For more green poetry, interviews and guest posts, see the Dhaba's Voices page.