In our country, we are used to indifference and apathy, not to mention miscarriage of justice and outright exploitation. Most of us can come up with long lists of what we consider the most egregious cases but it is reasonable to count the Bhopal gas disaster to be among the worst, if not the worst.

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the world’s worst industrial accident. Late into the night of Dec. 2, and early morning of Dec. 3, 1984, over 3,000 died hours after deadly methyl isocynate gas leaked from Union Carbide’s plant. Over all these years, absolutely nothing has been done to punish the guilty and little done to help the victims. Consider the following:

•    Nobody has been brought to book for causing the accident. Union Carbide Chairman Warren Anderson was never vigorously pursued and allowed to leave the country.

•    The victims have been ill compensated — a mere Rs. 12,410 each, according to The Times of India — presumably because the settlement with Carbide was reached without a proper evaluation of the number of victims and the medical costs.

•    It is not clear how many victims there are because the government simply stopped counting for fear of further embarrassment. In fact, it deliberately began to ignore pleas by many suffering from a variety of illnesses in order to avoid paying any compensation.

A report in Mint newspaper, for example, suggests that even a pathologist, who was exposed to the dangerous cocktail of chemicals while conducting postmortems on early victims, is today a victim — suffering from severe lung dysfunction, among other things. The point is: victims are still growing in number and nobody really understands the long-term consequences of the gas leak.

I could add a lot more details but it is redundant to establish my point. What emerges clearly is the collective failure of our entire nation and our entire systems — politicians, the laws, the courts and compatriots all failed the victims. This reflects especially badly on our people if you consider that the most vigorous activists who have fought, and still are fighting, for the victims’ rights are outside India.

In contrast, you have absolutely insensitive politicians such as Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh. On a recent visit to Bhopal, he picked up the soil and proclaimed dramatically that nothing had happened to him. This when local victims are suffering from years of exposure – direct or indirect through contamination of air, soil and water — is the worst kind of insult victims could face. Ramesh surely had his bottle of mineral water when in Bhopal! If highly educated, and arguably erudite, politicians like Ramesh can come up with such stuff, what can we expect from the rest of our political class?

There’s no doubt in my mind that the Bhopal victims are the most wronged ones in independent India and the pity is, we will forever live with that shame.