HYDERABAD: Thirty-five years ago, deadly plumes of poisonous Methyl Isocyanate gas - 500 times more toxic than cyanide – leaked from the Union Carbide factory and killed more than 8,000 immediately. But Carbide’s poisons continued to kill – over 25,000 people have succumbed to the effects of the gas disaster in the last 34 years. In 1999 a report was released where it was found that mercury levels during gas leak increased by 20,000 to 6 million times more than expect levels.
More than half a million continue to live with lingering health problems like cancer, respiratory illnesses, developmental disabilities, birth disabilities, cancer and reproductive disorders. The next generation of children in Bhopal were born with serious conditions like musculoskeletal disorders, twisted limbs and brain damage.
The toxic contamination of underground water and soil in and around the abandoned factory site is one of the persistent testimonies of corporate crime and impunity.
More than 35 years later artist Avani Rai visited Bhopal to document the third and fourth generation victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy. With almost no help or acknowledgment from the government, these children, who come from middle to lower-middle-class families suffer. I visited Chingari Trust which has been working for the congenitally disabled children born in the same families.
The story has changed. Now it’s not about the victims who inhaled less gas and dying slow death, but the next generation of children being born with distorted limbs, damaged minds and incurable disabilities. The poisons got into their drinking water, via wells, bore-pipes and underground streams. They came from a derelict pesticide factory where, in sheds open to wind and rain, lethal powders sift from rotting sacks, tars ooze from rusting oil-drums, and barge-loads of toxic sludges lie dumped in lakes whose liners perished long ago.
The pictures clicked by the photographer depict the horror the children go through every day since they are born deformed surviving life somehow.
Exhibition ongoing at Goethe Zentrum, on till February 14