[Aloha]

I'd note that Union Carbine paid out 470m dollars (970m 2018 dollars) to resolve claims - they also paid for and funded a hospital in the area as well.

While its pretty clear that UCIL was very very negligent in plant maintenance, training and operations - its not abundantly clear that any of these were the proximate cause of the disaster - but rather contributory factors (which greatly enhanced the death toll) - its also somewhat unclear exactly how the water ended up in the MIC tank - as subsequent testing was unable to reproduce the condition that set off the disaster. The wikipedia page speculates that it was sabotage, which from my perspective does seem somewhat likely.

[altacc]

Applying Occam's razor, an unusual event like sabotage would need more than circumstantial evidence. There is a long list of contributing factors towards corporate negligence that makes an accident much more likely.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned in this thread yet is that the training for workers at the time of the accident was a small fraction of that originally intended for workers at the plant, and the reason for this was a financial decision taken by plant management under pressure from Union Carbide, not because the training wasn't needed.

A probable cause of the incident was water left in pipes by a worker, ordered by a novice supervisor, washing out a pipe; a process that was prohibited by plant rules. Extensive and repeated training imprints processes & rules into people's minds. If that action was the cause then with better training, both worker and supervisor would have known not to do this.

[hyperman1]

I've seen quite a few tv shows of bhopal, and none mentioned sabotage. All of them mentioned that the plant controls, gauges and alarms were so unreliable they had nothing to do with reality. Alarms went of for no reason at all while major problems went unnoticed.

So 'maybe it was sabotage' seems corporate blame shifting. It was somewhat unclear exactly how anything in there happened. That was their problem. It was only a matter of time before an accident happened.

[Aloha]

If they hadn’t paid money out to the government of India, I’d agree with you whole heartedly. UCIL, was very much responsible for disaster - I’m less convinced that Union Carbide itself was culpable even though it paid.

But even then responsibility is not cause, and for me asan engineer I’m more interested in cause.

[hyperman1]

Of course, the cause is important. But in this case, it seems quite clear that the deplorable state of the plant would increase the risk to the point that any minor error would cause just about anything. No need for sabotage there.

Wikipedia, unfortunately, can't be trusted. There are companies tasked with bending the truth and inventing doubt about anything negative for any big corporations.

And if you buy a company, you own everything, including the nasty parts of its history. I might believe that nobody from the new corporation was directly responsible for bhopal. But they knew what they were buying.

[MrBuddyCasino]

I don’t know why you got downvoted. The sabotage theory makes the most sense when taking into account all the facts.

Yes Union Carbide were criminally negligent, but justice and truth must be respected, regardless of how much people love stories about evil corporations.