What was the government doing when there were such blatant violations of safety standards in the UC plant?
First, the safety laws were lax in India. Second, even these weak safety laws were not enforced.
Government officials refused to recognise the plant as hazardous and allowed it to come up in a populated locality. When some municipal officials in Bhopal objected that the installation of an MIC production unit in 1978 was a safety violation, the position of the government was that the state needs the continued investment of the Bhopal plant, which provides jobs.
It was unthinkable, according to them, to ask UC to shift to cleaner technology or safer procedures. Government inspectors continued to approve the procedures in the plant, even when repeated incidents of leaks from the plant made it obvious to everybody that things were seriously wrong.
