Environmental Law in India - Essay Example

Indian government had desires to boost its economy. Boosting the agro based and agro supporting industries was one of her key economic preferences. However, the government, to achieve the abovementioned aims, ignored all the safety measures that should have been taken. In 1969, Union Carbide (UCC-the parent company) set up a small plant (Union Carbide India Ltd.- UCIL) in Bhopal, the capital city of Madhya Pradesh, to formulate pesticides. The United Carbide also had no risk management plans nor did the government bothered to ask them to develop any.

This intentional ignorance led to more than 20000 causalities. BBC - On This Day.3rd December,1984.In Context, Bhopal Disaster. The MIC facility was located in the existing Carbide plant adjacent to an existing inhabited locality and hardly two kilometers from the railway station. Although Union Carbide claims that the "squatter settlements" around the plant arrived only after the inception of United Carbide, modern research has convincingly rejected the claim. As described earlier, in 1960's and 1970's, the developing countries were in a desperate desire for the economic growth through the industrial promotion.

The Indian economy is mainly based on agriculture. It thus required the growth in agro based and agro supporting industries in order to boost their agricultural sector in general, and the economy on the whole, in line with the modern technologies. Since these countries lack the essential infrastructure (for example, training, communication, education etc.) required to maintain the emerging technology, they are specially at the greater degree of vulnerability. As a result of it, these nations often find themselves competing for international investors and during this race to excel in attracting the foreign companies, they tend to ignore, sometimes without significant deliberation but often deliberately, the health and environmental violations in which these multinational corporations engage in.

"Developing countries confer upon MNC's a competitive advantage because they offer low-cost labor, access to markets, and lower operating costs. Once there, companies have little incentive to minimize environmental and human risks. Lax environmental and safety regulation, inadequate capital investment in safety equipment, and poor communications between companies and governments compound the problem." (Cassels 279).This happened with India too. They also ignored the safety, health and environmental violations by the Union Carbide on a mass scale. A. UNION CARBIDE AND THE INTRODUCTION OF PESTICIDES The Indian economy was based on agriculture.

This project was the part of India's Green Revolution. During the late sixties and early seventies of the twentieth century, the total agricultural production increased dramatically by the use of pesticides. The government wanted to have the plants for the pesticides within India in order to gain self sufficiency in the agricultural production without losing significant amount of foreign exchange. (Cassels 39) In 1969, a small plant was set up at Bhopal with the name Union Carbide India Limited,