The work I am doing here
I have yet to explain what I am actually doing here and what I might be doing as time passes. I came here with the intention and promise of doing whatever was most needed, within my capabilities. This week I have been helping Matthias with transcriptions of interviews he did in both Bhopal and Delhi with about a dozen different government officials and government scientists who have something to do with the Bhopal disaster. He presented himself only as a student from Switzerland doing some innocent research individually and carried a hidden digital audio recording device. The broken English of most of the interviewees is very difficult to understand, especially through Matthias's shirt, and especially for Matthias, whose native language is German. So, I've been sitting with headphones and my finger on the pause and rewind, trying to catch the words.
For me it has been a very good introduction to Indian government bureaucracy and the variety of understandings around here of what the Bhopal situation was and is. The material is both technical (about ground water contamination and clean-up) and political (questions of culpability, responsibility, and human rights). A rough summary: The abandoned Union Carbide factory site has still not been cleaned up and the drinking water is poison. The people who live closest to it are extremely poor. Their neighborhoods are actually just encampments that are not officially or legally recognized by the local government, which does not provide normal municipal services or protection to anyone who lives there. Union Carbide says they settled long ago, of course (for peanuts), and they were bought by Dow, anyway. Dow is a brick wall, of course. They have absolutely no reputation to lose. India has a State-Federal system of government much like the U.S.'s. The state government of Madhya Pradesh says it is too poor to handle the problem on its own and only the Central (national) Government has the resources to pull Bhopal out of this mess. The Central Government says they weren't the ones on the corporate dole while the factory was operating. The hot potato game. Meanwhile Bhopal is still a poison pit after 21 years. (This is all just a super-quick stream-of-thought overview of what I've been hearing in all these audio-recordings.) The medical doctors won't say a word about all the dangerous chemicals people are drinking because they're just doctors and only know about whatever medical case is right before their eyes. The other scientists won't say a word about the fact that people are being poisoned because they are not doctors. One office even resorted to asking Matthias if he had a permit to be asking any of these questions in the first place -- that his tourist visa did not cover this sort of thing. I have been very impressed with his persistence and cool through it all.
So, that's what I've been doing so far. The rest of this week I will probably be doing a variety of other things, ranging from graphic design and writing stuff to helping arrange boulders around a new pond they just created downstairs. The library also needs a lot of work, too, I am told.
Then there is something really huge and important coming up. Starting on Feb. 20th, about two to three hundred gas survivors and people poisoned later by the water here are all going to march -- yes, walk -- from here to Delhi, stopping at certain other places victimized by transnational corporations and others through poison and pollution. This march was done only once before, 17 years ago. The chosen route is 900 kilometers (550 miles), and is expected to take a little over a month to complete. I am going to walk with them and document the journey in writing, journal-style, through interviews and my own observations. I have a lot of work to do before then -- the more educated and familiar I am before the march starts the more meaningful my coverage can and will be. So I am going to spending a lot of time reading and talking with gas-affected people who are planning to march. I also badly need to build up my Hindi vocabulary. The plan is that we will have a dial-up account and be able to use payphone jacks (they are like regular phones here) to dial in and upload text and images along the way. We can make it work somehow.
For me it has been a very good introduction to Indian government bureaucracy and the variety of understandings around here of what the Bhopal situation was and is. The material is both technical (about ground water contamination and clean-up) and political (questions of culpability, responsibility, and human rights). A rough summary: The abandoned Union Carbide factory site has still not been cleaned up and the drinking water is poison. The people who live closest to it are extremely poor. Their neighborhoods are actually just encampments that are not officially or legally recognized by the local government, which does not provide normal municipal services or protection to anyone who lives there. Union Carbide says they settled long ago, of course (for peanuts), and they were bought by Dow, anyway. Dow is a brick wall, of course. They have absolutely no reputation to lose. India has a State-Federal system of government much like the U.S.'s. The state government of Madhya Pradesh says it is too poor to handle the problem on its own and only the Central (national) Government has the resources to pull Bhopal out of this mess. The Central Government says they weren't the ones on the corporate dole while the factory was operating. The hot potato game. Meanwhile Bhopal is still a poison pit after 21 years. (This is all just a super-quick stream-of-thought overview of what I've been hearing in all these audio-recordings.) The medical doctors won't say a word about all the dangerous chemicals people are drinking because they're just doctors and only know about whatever medical case is right before their eyes. The other scientists won't say a word about the fact that people are being poisoned because they are not doctors. One office even resorted to asking Matthias if he had a permit to be asking any of these questions in the first place -- that his tourist visa did not cover this sort of thing. I have been very impressed with his persistence and cool through it all.
So, that's what I've been doing so far. The rest of this week I will probably be doing a variety of other things, ranging from graphic design and writing stuff to helping arrange boulders around a new pond they just created downstairs. The library also needs a lot of work, too, I am told.
Then there is something really huge and important coming up. Starting on Feb. 20th, about two to three hundred gas survivors and people poisoned later by the water here are all going to march -- yes, walk -- from here to Delhi, stopping at certain other places victimized by transnational corporations and others through poison and pollution. This march was done only once before, 17 years ago. The chosen route is 900 kilometers (550 miles), and is expected to take a little over a month to complete. I am going to walk with them and document the journey in writing, journal-style, through interviews and my own observations. I have a lot of work to do before then -- the more educated and familiar I am before the march starts the more meaningful my coverage can and will be. So I am going to spending a lot of time reading and talking with gas-affected people who are planning to march. I also badly need to build up my Hindi vocabulary. The plan is that we will have a dial-up account and be able to use payphone jacks (they are like regular phones here) to dial in and upload text and images along the way. We can make it work somehow.
posted by Michael M. at 5:14 AM
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