Messing up Liability

Both the BJP and Left parties are hypocritical in their thrusts as they attack the Government on the Nuclear Bill.

Recently, on a TV discussion on the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, I encountered Ravi Shankar Prasad of the BJP bemoaning the heartlessness of a government that has allowed contamination from the tragedy to persist in the city, so much so that the pollutants are now even showing up in mother’s milk. It was a valid concern. What he left unsaid was that it was a BJP government that has been in power in Bhopal for the past seven years, and arranging for the supply of piped drinking water, a task any government should have carried out regardless of the tragedy, would have been sufficient to prevent the contamination of mother’s milk.

At a time when Bhopal is being invoked over and over again in the context of the Nuclear Liability Bill, the incident illustrates the unsurprising point that politicians are largely interested only in scoring points and manipulating facts to suit their political agenda.  The national interest or the actual plight of the victims is hardly their concern. The conduct of political parties over the passage of the Nuclear Liability Bill has once again illustrated this.

The opposition’s need to score debating points may well have left us with a Bill that does not even serve one of its major intended purposes. Consider what the statement of objects and reasons for the Bill says, ‘It is, therefore, considered necessary to enact a legislation which provides for nuclear liability that might arise due to a nuclear incident and also on the necessity of joining an appropriate international liability regime.’

Now, as far as nuclear liability of an operator is concerned, India has so far no provision for allowing private operators to run nuclear plants. In this entire debate, it would have helped if someone had asked the Government if there was any consideration being given to letting such operators run plants in the country. 

But even assuming private operators are eventually allowed in, if we look at the Bill from the point of view of potential victims (a category that includes all of us but one we should hope never actually comes into being), supplier liability makes no difference. The case for speedy and ample compensation is addressed by the Bill in any case. Supplier liability is an odd concept. There is no easy way of affixing it, and where in the supplier chain does it end? It should have been left to the operator to settle contractual claims with the supplier. And once again, the comparison with Bhopal is deliberately misleading. Union Carbide was the operator, not supplier.

On the other hand, attaching stringent provisions on supplier liability does run the risk of losing us access to international funds for compensation. As long as the Government is the operator, the cap in the final Bill stands at Rs 2,100 crore with the proviso that the Government could consider additional measures if the amount of compensation exceeds this.

The Convention of Supplementary Compensation of 1997 has created an international pool of funds that members can access if compensation exceeds Rs 2,100 crore. This, among other reasons, is why the objective of joining an appropriate international regime makes sense, but here is where the problems start. The three major international agreements for civil liability for nuclear damage do not have as stringent a provision for supplier liability as the provision actually included in the final Bill thanks to the BJP.  The two countries that have provisions on supplier liability as stringent as the final Indian Bill are Japan and South Korea, and they are not part of the international liability regime.

The BJP has thus managed the amazing feat of supporting the Bill while ensuring one of its objectives is subverted, while the Left has indulged in its usual hypocrisy. When the Left says the Government is selling out to American companies by not holding suppliers liable, it forgets that for over 20 years India has been operating nuclear reactors without supplier liability. In the main, these reactors have been supplied by the former Soviet Union, their operating record and safety standards have been worrisome and what little has gone onto the public record gives ample cause for concern. How many times do you think the Left has raised this issue? No surprises for guessing.

About The Author

Hartosh Singh Bal

Hartosh Singh Bal turned from the difficulty of doing mathematics to the ease of writing on politics. Unlike mathematics all this requires is being less wrong than most others who dwell on the subject.