Issue 22 — Meet The Women Survivors of the World’s Worst Industrial Disaster

Just after midnight, as the winter chill settled across the city of Bhopal, Bano Bee awoke to a sudden rumble outside. Under the shadow of a hulking industrial factory in the neighborhood of JP Nagar, the lights became smothered in a fog that snaked under the doors and coiled into homes roofed with metal sheeting. Thousands of people—coughing, choking, and gasping for air—woke up as if they were on fire. Screams echoed across the city. 

Bano Bee coughed and wheezed from her home opposite the factory. Her eyes burned as if smeared with chili powder. Run, run, run, she heard her neighbors cry. She took her five children in tow and fled into the darkness.  

Families scrambled toward the train station and hospital. Many were separated in narrow alleyways. Bodies lay scattered on the streets, crumpled and still. Bano Bee ran, fighting the urge to vomit, until she collapsed, too. 

 Nobody knew what was happening. How could they? No siren sounded. No emergency lights flashed. No warning to stay inside and cover your nose and mouth. By the time the sun crested the horizon, more than 3,000 people would be dead.

***

I met Bano Bee at the end of the monsoon rains in 2024, nearly 40 years after the world’s worst and deadliest industrial disaster. 

On December 3, 1984, the American-owned Union Carbide pesticide plant leaked more than 27 tons of methyl isocyanate into Bhopal’s air. Half a million people were exposed to hazardous levels of a chemical once described in a company safety report a decade earlier as “a poison to humans” if inhaled. More than 10,000 people died within three days of the disaster, and that figure more than doubled in the years to come. Decades of internal documents have shown that the Union Carbide Corporation, or UCC, considered the low-caste residents of Bhopal expendable; they did not expect survivors to form one of India’s most important, female-led environmental justice movements.  

Now in her 70s, a white cotton dupatta draped around her head, Bano Bee gathered alongside a dozen survivors at the seemingly seldom-used office of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, or ICJB, a coalition of five survivors organizations. For these women, who have orchestrated sit-ins, die-ins, protests, and marches, activism involves little desk work. Seated in a circle on a black and brown mat, some survivors, such as Verma Bai Puri, explained they were only children at the time of the disaster. Others, like Usha Dongre, arrived years after the gas leak but have dealt with the aftermath. Only two—Bano Bee and Ramkali—were mothers with young children at the time.

The UCC factory—operated through an Indian subsidiary with Union Carbide as the majority shareholder—was built in the late 1960s. Despite securing loans with the help of former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the plant was built under budget. It was equipped with inferior technology and shirked the safety standards that were mandatory in Europe. UCC initially imported methyl isocyanate, an ingredient in the company’s pesticide, but in 1979 began manufacturing MIC on-site as a way to profit from India’s ongoing “green revolution” toward agricultural modernization. But early on in Bhopal, many suspected the volatile chemical was dangerous. 

 Seeking better pay, one of Bano Bee’s relatives moved from another state to work at the UCC factory. The stench of the factory followed him home every day; sometimes, she noticed lizards and flies would suddenly die as they neared his work shoes. Son, her family implored him, take off your clothes, leave them outside, stop working there. But he had no other option. Even as he struggled to go to the bathroom without pain, he could not quit.

“We knew,” Bano Bee said. “We knew it was very toxic.”

What they didn’t know is that for months, the refrigeration system, a crucial safety feature, had been switched off to save on electricity. They didn’t know that on the night of the disaster, the factory was storing 134 times the maximum permissible storage limit of MIC in Europe. In fact, despite years of concern from workers unions, journalists, and city officials, so little public information about MIC was released that when people arrived at the hospital that December morning, no one knew what they had been exposed to. 

Read the full story on Atmos

Yesterday was the International Day of Action against Dams, for Rivers, Water and Life. Across the Global South, rivers, land, and communities, often indigenous peoples and peasants, are sacrificed for the construction of large-scale hydropower projects that displace and destroy.

In the Philippines, activists fighting hydropower projects have faced harassment and violence at the hands of both the government and the corporations, all too often leading to the killings of environmental defenders. In occupied Tibet, monks and activists protesting a hydropower project — one that would flood their communities and monasteries and displace thousands of people — were beaten and jailed by state forces.

A joint statement from communities resisting large hydropower dams and shared by World Rainforest Movement, best explained the recent expansion of dams:

Communities across the Global South, those most impacted by climate change, are not only fighting for the end of financing and construction of large dams but also a shift to a community-led energy transition, one that is grounded in communities and not for the profit of corporations.

If you feel so inclined, you can sign the World Rainforest Movement statement in solidarity.

Thank you for reading this issue of Defender.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be sharing more about the women survivors of the Bhopal Gas Disaster. Unfortunately, the published story was much shorter than I had hoped and as always, I have so much more reporting to share. Even after 40 years, the disaster is hardly history and these women’s stories are more relevant than ever.

On a more personal note, reporting this piece was extremely meaningful to me. As an undergraduate student, I learned about the disaster and always hoped that as a journalist, I would report on it. It took years to finally do so, but the experience was more powerful than I ever expected and this reporting will stay with me for the rest of my life.

It is because of this that I feel compelled to share the pieces of these stories that don’t get published — the quiet moments, the anecdotes, the connections between countries and issues and communities that others reveal to me. If that’s something of interest to you or others you know, please share this newsletter or follow me on Instagram, Bluesky, or TikTok.

More so, please consider making a donation to the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal. Their advocacy work is truly grassroots and they deserve all the support they can get. You can also follow ICJB on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

Rage On. ❤️‍🔥