Much is being made out of $ 470 million that the Union Carbide paid as compensation for the Bhopal gas tragedy of 1984 that killed at least 15,000 people and caused grievous injury to over 500,000 others. It is being pointed out that this compensation amount means a paltry sum of Rs 12,410 to each victim.

But that was in 1999, when the compensation amount was decided in an out-of-court settlement. At the current exchange rate (Rs 46.90 to an US dollar), $ 470 million would mean a cool Rs 2,206 crore—that is a hell of a lot more (more than four times actually)  than what our government has fixed in the case of a nuclear disaster.

That’s right. The Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill of 2010, which the Manmohan Singh government surreptitiously introduced in Lok Sabha on the last day of the last budget session, fixes the maximum amount of liability for the operator of a nuclear plant in case of a disaster at Rs.500 crore!
If the successive state and central governments failed the victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy and sold them cheap, our present government intends to sell us even cheaper in the case of a nuclear disaster.

Shouldn’t Law Minister Veerappa Moily be focusing on ridiculously low amount of liability fixed in the nuke bill, rather than going around giving sound bytes to television channels how justice was “buried” in the Bhopal case?