Bhopal: Continuing Institutional Crisis

Twenty years on, the verdict on how the Indian state has responded to Bhopal should be unequivocal: not only did it neglect its responsibilities, it actively suppressed the rights of the victims. The state of public knowledge about the disaster and the best recourse available to the victims was summed up recently by a doctor who was on duty at a Bhopal hospital on the fateful night: "We still do not know what we could have done that day to save lives; we still are not aware of what we could have done in the months and years since".