Bhopal Gas Incident: Union Carbide India Limited

A detailed Summary of Bhopal Gas Incident: Union Carbide India Limited

It all started with the manufacturing of flash light batteries in Calcutta by the Eveready Company Limited of Great Britain. Later on this company became a subsidiary of UCC headquartered in New York. The company later adopted the new name of Union Carbide India limited and also established a factory in India to manufacture flash lights along with expansion of its capacity to manufacture dry-cell batteries.

The company progressed and by the eighties they were involved in batteries, carbon and metals, plastics, marine products, and agricultural chemicals. UCIL established fifteen plants in different parts of India. To expand its agricultural division UCIL sought permission of Indian government to allow them to set up a pesticide plant. Initially the plant was started near the city of Trombay but later on switched to Bhopal. The plant in the beginning imported Sevin powder from the United States diluted it with non-toxic powder and sold it. Later the Indian government pressurized UCIL to manufacture Sevein and its components in India. That's how the Bhopal plant expanded and the investment in the plant increased from initial $1 million to $25 million. The company made its mark among all companies presen

The case reminds us that on the first level basic management should function and operations should be efficiently run. However the management responsibility does not end here. Management should be on toes and keep on scanning both external and internal environmental factors. There should be contingency plans in place to deal with possible mishaps or disasters.

This incident would not have happened had management been active in implementing the basic levels of management. Ideally there should be a contingency plan in place to deal with the possible disasters. In plants dealing with chemicals there is always a possibility of accidents and disasters of any proportion. It was naive of the management to forget about the contingency measures. On another level the government of India also played the political part and tried to trap foreign board in the incident while forgetting that primary responsibility lied on management on ground. Foreign board in Bhopal's case also on the hand tried to safegurd its image as the issue was discussed on all forums There had been many accidents of similar nature in UCC's American plants prior to the Bhopal accident but they did not get much publicity and were not blown out of proportion because they were tackled at the management level on ground. As later there was a ruling that the case should be tried in India. The company denied every charge leveled against UCC and pointed out that no US citizen had been employed there 2 years before the disaster. Foreign board definitely had the moral responsibility of the incident but they cannot be blamed for failed day to day operations.

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Approximate Word count = 1508
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

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