File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_2001/postcolonial.0110, message 50


From: "Margaret Trawick" <trawick-AT-clear.net.nz>
Subject: Re: arundhati roy in the guardian
Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2001 11:14:57 +1200


I sent this post yesterday but it bounced back because I had exceeded my
daily limit of posts to this list.  So I am sending it again (with some
modifications) today.  This is in response to Salil's defense of Union
Carbide.

***********

Salil - We may be talking past each other to some extent.  I agree with most
of what you have said.  I don't agree with what you have said about
Arundhati Roy. Your argument against her is ad hominem, and that is not
helpful to anyone. As to whether the issue is of intention, or something
else, I guess that is a matter of opinion.  But to me, intention is not an
issue at all, in the sense of being a matter of debate.  Few would doubt
that the attack on the WTC was intentional, and few would doubt that the UCC
did not intend to kill all those people in Bhopal.

To me the real issue is, to what extent are people responsible for the
consequences of their actions, even if those consequences are "unintended"?
We cannot foresee all the consequences of all the things we do.  But we can
calculate, with reasonable accuracy, the probability of certain
consequences, and we can calculate whether, to quote the currently
oft-quoted Madeleine Albright, "it was worth it."

Union Carbide must have known (or should have known) that there was
a significant probability of loss of life from a leaky chemical installation
in
a populated area.  They must, or should, have known that local operators
were susceptible to corruption.  But to them (Union Carbide, as well as the
local operators) the risk was sustainable.  They could afford to pay a
certain
amount of money to compensate the victims, and carry on.  The risk would
not have been sustainable if they had been sued by the Indian Government
for punitive damages - i.e., if they had been sued enough to make such risks
not sustainable financially. The fact that some members of the Indian
Government
were equally selfish in their manipulation of this case does not absolve
Union
Carbide of its share of responsibility.

The comparison that you (Salil) contest is the one made by Arundhati Roy
between the Bhopal disaster and the WTC disaster.  You think Union
Carbide is not as bad as the people who destroyed the WTC.

I am not saying that the people who drove the airplanes into the towers had
their values straight.  I am saying that they accepted responsibility for
their
actions by dying with their victims. They left behind a clear trail of
evidence
so that their identities were easily found.  At least they did that much. In
a
way, they showed that they knew very well the sacred value of human life.

Corporate capitalism treats human life as a cheap commodity.  The Bhopal
disaster and its sequelae illustrate this fact very well.  If Union Carbide
did not intentionally kill the people in Bhopal, it knowingly put those
people's lives at risk.  It gambled those people's lives, because *it* could
afford to lose them.  In the same way, countless human lives have been lost
because of the negligence of corporate capitalists, and the governments
allied with them.  It is not that they necessarily always intentionally go
out
of their way to kill innocent people.  It is that they do not care, one way
or
the other, how many lives are destroyed as a consequence of their actions.
(As for Union Carbide, the fact that they sell their pesticides in India
just
increases their murderousness). To me, this not caring, this cold-
blooded insentience to everything but profit, is as destructive as the
cruellest
of religions.

MT



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