The Women’s Walk and the Creation of Chingari

The Chingari Rehabilitation Centre in Bhopal is where I worked for my final three weeks the last time I visited, in 2011. When I went there I had not known about Chingari and, in fact, it was another volunteer, Melanie*, who first told me about it and my first visit there was with her one afternoon after Biju and I had finished working.

When we arrived all the children had left but most of the therapists were still there. I chatted with several, including Sanjay, the head physiotherapist, and the conversation ended with me promising to return the following Saturday to explain and demonstrate Spineworks.

 

I also met Tarun, the ever smiling big man who is the administrator. It was his suggestion that I spend some time here, rather than popping in on odd days. It would give the children time to get used to me and my being there. I should probably point out that there are few white faces in this part of Bhopal. Although there are tourist attractions in Bhopal, they are few compared with other Indian cities so few people make it part of their tour itinerary. Many will arrive there because it is a major railway junction in the centre of India and a crossing for north-south and east-west routes. Further, most of the tourist interest is in the southern part of the city, the north being the old industrial heartland and hectares of slum and semi-slum dwellings.

But let’s take a big step back to that fateful day in 1984.

Rashida Bee (left) and Champa Devi Shukla today, with
Dani one of the volunteers who were there with me in 2011.

Rashida Bee was a young (18 years old), veiled Muslim wife. She and her family were all exposed to the effects of the gas as well as the water and as a result her husband could not support the family so she came out from the veil and involved herself with other local women to find work
 
Champa Devi Shukla was born in 1952, married at 13 and in 1972 moved with her husband’s job to Bhopal. Again, the whole family was affected and none of the men could work, so, like Rashida, she too came out to find work.

Soon both women found themselves involved with the campaign for survivors as well as with many other women who now had to find work to support devastated families.

Even people who had worked previously found they could no longer do the heavy manual work that was common, especially for women. About 100 women took up an offer of training, funded by the Delhi government but even after the training there were no jobs forthcoming. Rashida and Chmapa-devi asked, ‘what was the point of the training if there were no jobs?’ Tired of being pushed around they lead pickets and demonstrations, learned about the legal minimum wage (which no-one had been paid) and petitioned the local government officers. Work came for some of the women in fits and starts but none of it worked for long.

So one day, everyone agrees, Rashida had the idea of walking to Delhi. No-one knew where it was, nor the way, let alone how far it was. (Note: it is about 750 kilometres.) Literally the next day, with no planning, in  late summer of 1989 the band of women and children, with a few men, gathered in the streets of Bhopal to start their walk north along the Berasia Road, (Note: made famous in the diary of my last visit!)

It took 33 days before they reached Delhi. Days of hardship and hunger. Days of welcome support and others when whole towns refused help and marched them on. Days when they had to tell people who thought they had received plenty of compensation and should not march of the true stories of corruption, bribes and no work. One day when a Hindu priest invited them all, Muslims too, to rest the night in his temple, despite a notice declaring, ‘No Muslims’. Long before, any difference between the walkers was forgotten as they shared everything they had. On another occasion they had to walk through a forest notorious for bandits, but news had gone before and the bandits said they would not harm them, even so, the police marched with them through the forest to make sure. The police inspector was in tears as he waved them on their way.

When they returned they continued their work, supporting women workers and campaigning for the survivors. This was the background that lead, in 2004, to the Goldman Environmental Award being presented to Rashida and Champe-devi. They used the award to create the Chingari Rehabilitation Centre which was incorporated as a charity in 2005 with an all-female Board of Trustees.

Chingari exists to support the families that have one or more disabled children as a result of the gas and water. It has created a database of children with special needs, probably the only such database in existence, over 300 children are listed with some 120 receiving treatments at the centre. Apart from running the centre, the trust also provides funding for hospital medical treatments and drugs as well as regular check-ups. As many of the parents are illiterate, the staff also help to get documents, complete forms and write letters for the families

My first day, before they got me doing all those treatments,
looking out from the physio room into the main hall
and a riot of children having fun.

My personal experience of the centre is of the daily flow of the school day, and it is a demonstration of good management. Rani, a diminutive woman, is the keystone in the arrangements. As the staff arrive, 5 mini-buses drive out into the surrounding bastis to pick up the children and parents. We all prepared for our day with a chai prepared by Rani and sometimes a samosa or similar that someone had picked up from a street stall on their way here. As each bus arrived, Rani would help unload and distribute the children to a physiotherapy or occupational therapy treatment, the special education or speech therapy rooms. She would co0rdinate the children through the morning. The buses would do a second run and more children and parents would arrive during the morning. By 12 to 1230 all the children would be in school, the drivers would have a break and registration would take place.
Registration is lead by the special education teacher who then leads a song or call-response, as you can see in this short video clip:

Since early this year there has also been a lunch provided but that wasn’t happening when I was there.

The afternoon reversed the procedure with those early arrivals being taken home first followed in slow succession by the second run later in the afternoon. While this is happening the later arrivals are being directed and sometimes carried to their various therapies and lessons by Rani. The second afternoon run took all these children home and then it was quiet and the staff made notes before going home.

On Saturday, the centre is closed for the children and some of the staff go out into the bastis to look for disabled children who are not registered. In the general society there is a stigma attached to giving birth to a disabled child and some mothers are hidden or will hide a new born themselves which increases the difficulty of making contact. Newly contacted babies and children can attend the  centre on Saturday for the registration process.

There is a wide range of disability in the childhood population. Cerebral Palsy is widespread and that, in itself, has a wide variation of effects and seriousness. Many children have club foot and many of the children with whom I worked had spastic muscle in their legs and arms. Some of the boys have Muscular Dystrophy, including two brothers with whom I worked. Then there are growth retardation, speech, hearing and sight disabilities, learning difficulties.

For my part on the physical therapy side, there was usually (including me) three of us doing treatments and one occupational therapist in the room next door. Each of us would be doing between 10 and 15 sessions every day – the sessions were short for the children, anything from 15 to 30 minutes though with one hyperactive little girl having her lying for 10 minutes was a real achievemen!

This is the physio room where you can see me working with one of the older boys and Sanjay in the rear. In between us is another young boy doing a passive exercise.

And here is the other physio, Kalpana (right) with a mother and child.

Chingari, I am sure, will continue from strength to strength, guided by its two mentors, Rashida and Chanpa-devi who attend on most days and managed by the ever present, ever smiling Tarun. The BMA also supports Chingari so any donations that you give via their website will also support the work of all the dedicated staff there.

Finally, of course, no child born after the disaster with disability caused by the gas or water has ever been offered or received compensation.

 ********

You can read more about the walk of the women at www.bhopalmarathon.org page 50 and also in the www.bhopal.net archive.

Chingari’s website is http://www.chingaritrustbhopal.com/

* Melanie now works for the BMA in the UK.

Unproven Technology, Cost-Cutting, & Indifference

There is a fuller article in the Bhopal Marathon at www.bhopalmarathon.org, page 33 and documents mentioned are at www.bhopal.org/discoverypapers. 

When Union Carbide (India) Ltd (UCIL) was created, Eduard Muñoz was appointed MD. Later, in a sworn affidavit to a New York court he described how he had opposed the parent UCC plan to install three large storage tanks for methylisocyanate (MIC). His opinion, based on safety and economics, had been that only a small storage tank was needed.

He was overruled by UCC heads and so three large storage tanks were installed, and this, according to the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research was the most critical factor in the disaster. At times there would be 90 tonnes of methylisocyanate stored.

It started in 1974 when India passed a law that no foreign company could own more than 40% of a company in India. UCC had 60% of UCIL’s shares and managed to persuade the government that it should be exempted as it was aiding the so called ‘green revolution’. Thus exemption was granted and UCC retained overall control though with reduced share capital.

However, they decided that the proposed state-of-the-art facility was too expensive and installed what they themselves admitted internally had not been proven. This involved batch processing and a large storage capability. With poor harvests and monsoons demand for pesticides fell and the plant started losing money but UCC realised it would be impossible to sell parts of the factory because of the technology used.

Workers in the factory were continuously concerned about safety and in December 1981 Ashraf Khan was critically injured in the phosgene plant and died in hospital.

After this UCC sent in a team for a safety inspection. The report, in May 1982, identified 30 major hazards and 31 others. 10 of the major ones were in the phosgene/MIC unit. As a result UCC improved safety at its USA plant but not at Bhopal. In fact they increased cost cutting measures.

Between 1980 and 1984, the workforce was halved and a single operator had to oversee the control room with about 70 panels, indicators and controllers. Safety training was reduced from six months to two weeks and the manuals were in English which many staff could not read.

In a plant such as this, dealing with corrosive chemicals, all the pipes, valves and pumps should be inspected fortnightly and replaced every six months. Here, under directions from UCIL’s holding company in Hong Kong, inspections were rare, replacements could take two years and even then parts were recycled instead of new.

In February of 1984 a safety audit of the sister plant in USA raised concerns that a runaway reaction could occur and there would be no way to prevent catastrophic failure. Ensuring the tanks are kept at 0°C slows down the reaction and would thus give time for action and evacuation.

The plant in USA was improved but in Bhopal they did nothing and did not even pass on the warnings. Instead they actually turned off the refrigeration to save more money – about $37 a day.

Added to this, the factory site is in a densely populated area of northern Bhopal and UCC had no plan for the evacuation of people from their homes and there had been no training in this either.

Rajkumar Keswani, a local journalist, had been following progress at the factory and written several articles in the press as well as a letter to the Chief Minister which was ignored. His last article was published only weeks before the disaster.

So it appears that a trail of unproven technology, inadequate safety systems and storing a huge quantity of lethal gas compounded by ignored warnings, negligence and cost cutting endangered a whole city and led to the disaster on that night.

Even then, after the explosion, UCC immediately claimed that it had no authority or control over the plant’s design or operation and thus had no responsibility. They attempted first to put the blame on Sikh terrorists and then on an unnamed disgruntled employee. Both claims were rejected by India’s Central Bureau of Investigation which said it was “an attempt to obscure the material facts of this action with irrelevant facts, improbable detail and blatant misrepresentation.”

On the morning of the explosion, with doctors frantic for information, a senior magistrate had to go to the factory to be told the gas was methylisocyanate. The Chief Medical Officer Dr Loya claimed the gas was only an irritant and not fatal. He also said that if UCC had not hidden the dangers, the population would have marched against the factory.

Packing, Leaving and Visa

Sorry there has been a bit of a delay for this post. I attended a weekend conference in Manchester so that put me back a little and then there was a week of packing the contents of my room and gathering my few belongings from elsewhere. Following that I transferred all my earthly belongings (apart from the car and three massage tables) to the storage facilities of Britannia Squab near Leamington Spa.

The box is about 1½ by 2 metres and about 2½ metres tall and my estate doesn’t even fill half of it. But I am still looking to reduce my earthly footprint even further.

Now I have zoomed down to London where I am staying with my friend Sanjay in Stratford. And just to reiterate, that IS the Stratford in London and not the one I have just left.

And the visa  story is that when I applied for a 12 month tourist visa, they were going to charge £300! That seems excessive to me even allowing for administrative overheads. So I had a look at a 6 month option which would mean leaving in mid-November as I want to do a 4-week yoga course that ends in May.

But then I checked out the Employment visa option and discovered that it is much cheaper at only £92 for a 12 month visa. But I needed a founding document as well as an invitation letter. Sathyu was more than happy to provide both but as I contacted him was off to Italy to give some talks in the name of raising awareness and fund-raising. So it is only this week that I now have both and can get on with my application.

Then, as luck would have it, I have been suffering with a cold since Friday so have not done it yet.

Anyway, now I have started work on the next post about the factory standards, staffing and management which I will post over the next few days for the continuing story.