And the Poor Get Gassed: Multinational-Aided Development and the State -- the Case of Bhopal.

The article attempts to describe some of the chief features of the aftermath of the Bhopal, India, disaster, and draw some conclusions about the interaction of the Indian State with Union Carbide Corporation. As far as the legal case is concerned, it has scarcely begun, since the contentious issues of the appropriate judicial forum and the applicable laws of "discovery" have only recently been decided on, and the latter is still being appealed. For the uncounted thousands of victims, the tragedy is ongoing. The nominal gestures of relief and rehabilitation that the Madhya Pradesh government made have more or less stopped, and the shocking condition of the victims worsens, as the effects of a non-decontaminated environment and a non-detoxified people interact and accumulate. Bhopal offers a salutary lesson on the primacy and the enduring nature of social structures, and of the minority-oriented character of the State. The events of the aftermath of the disaster have led many groups working in Bhopal to charge that there is a collusion of interests between the State and Union Carbide, and that the State is minimizing the extent of the disaster in order to protect the interests of the company and its beneficiaries in government.