Prakash Pillai

Thirty-four years after world’s worst industrial holocaust, Madhya Pradesh and Union governments still mulling ways to dispose poisonous Carbide waste & undertake remedial measures to treat ground water contamination.

Victims of Bhopal Gas Disaster, their families and offspring are still suffering— there is no long-term healthcare or economic rehabilitation for them. Barring a pittance paid as compensation, the governments could neither provide safe drinking water and medicines nor a continuous mechanism to ensure economic rehabilitation for them. It can happen only in India.

Of the 34 years, 17 years each Congress and the “nationalist” BJP government have been in power in MP. Three-time Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has lived in a delusion that he made MP roads better than the US, while our other politicians are tracing and redefining their gotras and chasing statues and mandir. It seems these are the only pressing issues left to be addressed in this country, where still one-third of the population goes to sleep without one-time food. Jai Ho!”

The author, Prakash Pillai, is a senior journalist, now with the Times of India.