The contrast between the disasters, more than a quarter-century and half a world apart, could not be starker. In 1984, a leak of toxic gas at an American company’s Indian subsidiary killed thousands, injured tens of thousands more and left a major city with a toxic waste dump at its heart. The company walked away after paying a $470 million settlement. The company’s American chief executive, arrested while in India, skipped...

Regular helpings of fruit are a dietary given, but increasing use of harmful chemicals for artificially ripening has often left buyers helpless. The Union health ministry has now stepped in, deciding to punish guilty vendors with up to six months in jail and fine of Rs 1,000. Vendors often resort to use of chemicals such as calcium carbide to ripen fruits, specially mangoes, bananas, papayas, apples and plums before time....

The Group of Ministers (GoM) on Bhopal gas disaster is understood to have decided on Monday to recommend enhanced compensation to the families of those dead in the gas leak and to those debilitated permanently or partially. Sources said the compensation would be to the tune of Rs. 10 lakh for the kin of those dead. Those with permanent disability would be compensated to the tune of Rs five lakh...

They are based on faulty medical categorisation and miscalculated figures: survivors' organisations The report on the Bhopal gas leak submitted by the Group of Ministers (GoM) to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday drew mixed reactions from survivors' organisations here, which have decided to write to him to allow them a hearing at a Cabinet meet to be held on Friday. While welcoming it as “at least some hope after all,”...

Conflicting recollections on Bhopal tragedy highlight need to make old government papers public I was on the last unaffected train out of Bhopal that night, or so I was told. It was the Dakshni Express from Hyderabad to Delhi. There was nothing unusual at the station and next day in Delhi, I went through an entire working day unaware of that night’s news. It was not the age of 24x7 television...