28. The Cassandra Who Spent Years Warning About Catastrophe, and the Evil Corporate Callousness That Turned Down Requests for Improved Safety Measures
In 1981, Indian journalist Rajkumar Keswani began to look into the safety protocols and procedures at Union Carbide’s Bhopal plant after a friend died there in an industrial accident. With the help of whistle blowers, he examined that and earlier mishaps and discovered that things were even worse than they looked. There had been repeated screw-ups in which only dumb luck averted catastrophe. In one incident, a gas leak forced thousands of nearby residents to flee their homes in fear. In an internal telex exchange, Union Carbide’s Indian manager sought better pipe coating from the parent company in the US. In one of the more evil replies in corporate history, he was told that it would be too expensive.
After a nine-month investigation, Keswani published the first of a series of newspaper articles that ran from 1982 to 1984. In them, he detailed dismal safety standards at the plant and raised the alarm about a potential catastrophe. With headlines such as “Save Please, Save this City“; “Bhopal Sitting on the Brink of a Volcano“; and “If You Don’t Understand, You All Shall be Wiped Out“, Keswani’s articles left little doubt about the seriousness of the situation. Unfortunately, like a modern Cassandra, his warnings were ignored. Then, on the night of December 2, 1984, the disaster he had spent years warning about struck.