Shantytowns crop up in Union Carbide's poisonous shadow

Anu Nagar, a jumble of ramshackle shanties and brick sheds in Bhopal, looks like any other urban slum anywhere in India. Except that this slum, which runs along the boundary wall of the Union Carbide plant, is located right on the detritus of what is often described as the world's worst industrial disaster.

For Union Carbide did not just practice shoddy safety norms, which resulted in the deadly MIC gas leak that caused the deaths of around 25,000 people in the last 30 years. The company-- and Dow Chemicals which bought it in 2001-- also failed to clean up the plant and its surroundings, where hazardous industrial waste was openly dumped.

Environmental activists calculate that there is anywhere between 350 and 20,000 tonnes of toxic chemicals inside and around the closed plant. Most of this comes from 121 pits inside the plant and a large 32-acre solar evaporation pond (SEP), outside where Union Carbide dumped its industrial waste. In addition, there is the rotting machinery inside and the laboratories where bottles of chemicals lie shrouded in dust and cobwebs. Numerous studies, the most recent by the Centre for Science and Environment, have revealed how this waste has contaminated the soil and groundwater and affected the health of the people living nearby. "What's worse is that there has never been a contamination assessment of the area," says Satinath Sarangi, managing trustee of the Sambhavna Trust Clinic in Bhopal. The clinic has just conducted an epidemiological cross-sectional study of the effects of exposure to contaminated water in Bhopal.

Not that Hamid Rehman cares. In 1987, three years after the leak, the 70-year-old moved into his 30x20 feet kuccha house right next to the railway line that runs behind the plant, three years after the leak. "We used to live in the Chola Road area. Those localities in the centre of town were badly affected so we thought this area just behind the plant would be safe," says Rahman. "It is only now that we have come of know of this, but where do we go now?" Rahman, a mechanic, had been affected by the gas too; he was in hospital for a month after the leak.

Pappubhai, who runs a grocery in nearby Blue Moon Colony, suffers from a recurrent psoriasis on his feet, most likely as a result of the contaminated water. "We had no idea about the contamination, so for 19 years we continued to drink water from the hand-pump," he says. The pump remains, though Hafeez has not had to use it for the past three years because the locality has piped water now. But there are days, one or two in a month, when there's no water and he has to fall back on the polluted water of the hand-pump.

An estimated 40,000 people live in the slums around the Union Carbide plant. Colonies such as Aarif Nagar, Nawab Colony, Atal-Ayub Nagar, Prem Nagar, Preet Nagar, and Shiv Shakti Nagar have come up after the gas leak. Thanks to the demand, the value of these shanties has gone up manifold in recent years. "Just last year, a nearby house sold for Rs 85,000," says Rahman. Of course, being completely unauthorised, there is no question of a deed changing hands or the transfer being registered, but the local corporation does provide a piped water connection and an electricity metre to residents of the colonies.

In the last five years, thanks to a newly built flyover and wholesale vegetable market, several new colonies have been added. Some slums like new Aarif Nagar actually hug the boundary wall of the plant. Most residents of this slum, two rows of houses separated by an open, overflowing drain, are casual workers but there is also a madrasa run by an Islamic scholar Abdul Haafiz.

Even the former SEP ponds, now an expanse of wild grass with small patches of dark, noxious looking water, have not been spared. Since there are no walls to demarcate the area where a 1990 study of soil sediment had shown unacceptably high levels of Dichlorobenzenes, Phthalates, Trichlorobenzenes and 1-Napthalenol, houses have been built on areas where the water has dried up and cattle merrily graze on the grass. What effect it has on their health is something that they and the government are not too bothered about.