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Twenty-five years ago, the government introduced the stand-alone Bhopal Gas Disaster (Processing of Claims) Act, 1985 to do just the opposite. By becoming the representative of the Bhopal victims, the government denied them their right to take the Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) and its subsidiary, Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL), to court for compensation. But could the government have represented the victims when it was as guilty and liable to the victims as UCC and UCIL?

We can’t ignore the fact that at the time of the disaster, various Indian investors, including Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), the Industrial Development Bank of India Limited (IDBI) and other public sector institutions, owned 49.1 per cent of UCIL. Further, by granting a licence to manufacture pesticides, the government made the collaboration agreement between UCC and UCIL subject to Indian laws, which include the Insecticide Act of 1968 that regulates the import, manufacture and use of insecticides with a view to safeguard human life from danger. Many central and state agencies, empowered under various acts like the Factories Act 1948, regulated at all times Carbide’s operations, which were approved by the government.

Despite the Canadian government asking UCC in 1972 to shut down its Bhopal operations for fear of damage to life and environment, the Indian government let the plant set up in the heart of the city.

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It’s difficult to understand how the executive in India escaped its liability towards victims both as a joint tortfeasor (wrong-doer) with UCC and UCIL and for failing to discharge its constitutional obligations of providing pollution-free air and water to people.

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The Indian State, as a representative of sovereign people, may be sovereign in relation to other countries. But it can’t be sovereign qua its own people from whom it derives its ‘sovereignty’.

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The executive is as guilty as UCC and UCIL. Unsurprisingly, Parliament came to its rescue by enacting the aforesaid Act and the Supreme Court upheld it. As a result, one guilty party negotiated with another for the compensation due to victims who were precluded by law from even asserting their claim against the State or Union Carbide.

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And now, the government feels that the existing laws have failed to hold companies financially responsible for man-made disasters and there is a need for a stand-alone law to encourage citizens to claim damages from companies. What’s perhaps been overlooked is that it’s not the laws that have failed us, but the men and women who run the Indian State.