Jain Spirit 2004 10 No 20

Author(s): Jain Spirit UK
Publisher: UK Young Jains

Page 16

Rashida Bee
Champa Devi Shukla Courtesy of Goldman Environmental Foundation Photos: Prakash Hotvalne
Bhopal Heroines Win Prize
By 1994, ten years after the incident, most of the survivors had received less than $500 of Union Carbide's promised $470 million payout. Dow Chemical took over Union Carbide in 2001 and claims that it has no liability for the
It is twenty years since the gas leak from the Union Carbide plant at Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, killed more than 20,000 people in the world's worst environmental disaster. Dubbed 'Hiroshima of the Chemical Industry', Bhopal has affected two generations as disaster. Bee and Shukla have secured legal victories in India cancer, tuberculosis and birth defects take their toll. Yet two heroic women, Rashida Bee and Champa Devi Shukla, have staged organised protests, hunger strikes and court action to secure justice for the victims of Bhopal. Their tireless dedication has kept the issue alive in India and in a world community beset by environmental and political problems. This year, appropriately, Bee and Shukla, have been awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize.
"We are still finding children being born without lips, noses or ears, sometimes complete hands are missing. Women have severe reproductive problems," says Bee, who herself suffers from respiratory and vision problems stemming from the leak. Bee and Shukla met as labour activists and workers in a stationery factory in 1986, when they formed an independent trade union to fight for better conditions and to organise women workers, who had been neglected by the established unions and were especially lowly paid. They focused increasingly on the gas leak disaster, being personally affected by it as well as seeing it as a powerful symbol of continuing economic iniquity. Bee has lost six family members to cancer and Shukla lost her husband, as well as having a grandchild born with deformities.
and the United States, where they won support from eight US members of Congress, including Reps Frank Pallone (Democrat - New Jersey), Janice Schakowsky (Democrat - Illinois) and Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, who was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. In 2002 the two women organised a 19-day hunger strike in New Delhi, and they are well-known for their Jhadoo Maaro Dow Ko ("Beat Dow With A Broomstick") campaign.
Two years after buying Union Carbide, Dow prices dropped 13 per cent. Forbes magazine has blamed the 'Indian-bred tort litigation' and the 'ruckus' caused by popular protest as major contributors to the decline.
There is another remarkable aspect to the story. Shukla is a Hindu and Bee is a Muslim, which shows that the campaign for social justice along with 'Mahila Shakti', or Woman Power, can break through sectarian barriers.
The Goldman Environmental Prize is given each year to six environmental heroes or heroines, one from each of the six continental regions. The current award is US$125,000. www.goldmanprize.org