Recently I had the opportunity to visit Bhopal, Indore, and
Ujjain, the capital, largest, and oldest cities in Madhya Pradesh, one of
India’s few landlocked states. While my tourist activity was strictly limited
because of business meetings, I was able to visit some famous and obscure
places. My driver was Amir Khan, one of the friendliest Indians I have met. We
didn’t talk much but he deleted pictures of his kids off his phone to take a
selfie with me when it was time to part ways.
Bhopal is a city of some significant superlatives. The “City
of Lakes” is located on the east end of Upper Lake, which at 40 square km, is
the largest lake in Asia (or so said the cab driver from the Bhopal airport).
The lake is a site for fishing, swimming and paddle boating, if you care for
that sort of thing. [I am a huge fan, but it’s really not very fun
single-player.] In fact, there are several beautiful lakes around the city,
replete with small white cranes and leafy aquatic cover.
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| Upper Lake, Bhopal / P.Salemme |
Bhopal is also the site of a largest training base for the
Indian Army, whose headquarters overlook the approach road from the airport
from the top of one of the nearby mountains. It’s a sprawling campus with
barracks, firing ranges, obstacles courses, and everything else you apparently
need to turn mere Indians into the world’s third fighting force. The base also
has some huge tanks parked out front for good effect.
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| Tal-uj Masjid, Bhopal / P.Salemme |
North Bhopal’s skyline is dominated by Taj-ul Masjid, the
world’s largest red-stone mosque. Unlike most mosques, this location is also a
madrassa, or Islamic religious school, for around 600 students, who study there
for 13 years (through high school basically), before continuing their studies
in Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh for another two years before becoming alim
(scholars). I met a few of the teachers who were extremely friendly and gave me
a glossy and thorough booklet about the history of the mosque. Built in 1887,
its inception came from Shah Jahan Begum, who desired to make the mosque the
“crown of the of mosques. The pavilion can accommodate 20,000 supplicating
Muslims as a time, and sees over a million faithful over the festival of Eid
twice a year. The teachers explained that Islam was a religion of peace [I
agreed that all true religion is] but when I asked how he felt about Muslims who
resort to violence, they replied, “when others attack, we must defend.” I
thought it was a fair statement. The students of the madrassa I met, Mohammed
Asir and Mohammed Arfit, seemed like really friendly local kids who were just
excited to talk to a white person.
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| Mohammed Asir and Mohammed Arfit, Bhopal / P.Salemme |
Bhopal is also the site of the world’s worst industrial accident, which occurred in early December 1984. Union Carbide, which was later
absorbed by Dow Chemical, accidentally released 30 tons of methyl isocynate and
other poisonous gas, which being heavier than air, flowed downhill towards the
lake, killing anybody unlucky enough to live in the gas’s path. The official
death toll was 3,787 but locals
claim another 16,000 died from the spill, half within two weeks, and others
over time.
Union Carbide, later folded into the family of companies
under Dow Chemical, was fined by the Government of India, and ended up paying a
fine of $407 million, which works out to $107,473 per person (or $20,569 per
person if you accept the Indian reported causalities). That’s just for people
who died and doesn’t include the over 500,000 injured by the poison. Dow
Chemical later performed a nice piece of CSR and offered free crutches,
prosthetic limbs, and wheel chairs to disabled Indians. Local critics fairly
argued that metal and plastic gadgets were woefully poor substitutes for the
lives extinguished. I think about the $4 billion-dollar fine levied on British
Petroleum for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, in which 11 people were killed,
and maybe Union Carbide really did get away with murder.
Another one of the causalities of the disaster was the Eveready
battery. These ubiquitous red batteries
were well beloved across India and benefitted form a great marketing campaign.
Unfortunately, Eveready was also known to be a Union Carbide product, so demand
dried up pretty quickly after the accident.
In the wake of the Union Carbide accident, the city, which
is also the capital of Madhya Pradesh, is much more conscientious about the
environmental costs of development. They have an extensive bus rapid transit
system to reduce car traffic and emissions. The Madhya Pradesh Trade and
Investment Facilitation Corporation, located in Bhopal, has decided to only
invite non-polluting industries to invest in the new areas under the DMIC. Madhya
Pradesh is committed to clean energy; it’s the site of India’s largest solar
power station (130MW) and I saw windmills outside the city. Also, even tough
Madyha Pradesh sits on India’s largest coal reserves, the government officials
I talked to were more excited about building a new gas-fired plant than
excavating lignite.
In a more esoteric shout out to sustainability, Bhopal is
also the site of the State Museum, sprawling complex displaying an amazing
array of works by artists from Madyha Pradesh’s indigenous groups. Chamber after chamber is full of life-size
houses that you can walk though, creation myths illustrated through sculpture
and installation art, and even traditional village games illustrated with
children rendered in the style of the various artistic traditions. I was
totally impressed and a little overwhelmed; I highly recommend it to anybody in
the area.
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| State Museum, Bhopal / P.Salemme |
On the way back from the museum, which is on a hill
overlooking downtown Bhopal and Upper Lake, we passed an all-glass building that
must have had the best view of the city. What was interesting about this
building is that it was totally deserted: busted and dirty windows with grounds
pretty much overgrown with weeds. In a
city that seems to be very much up and coming, I asked Amir what it was: the
Union Carbide guesthouse. As I was leaving Bhopal, I could clearly see this
building from across the lake, occupying what must be some of the most
expensive land in the city. If there was ever a monument that needed to be torn
down, it was this.
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| Union Carbide guesthouse, Bhopal / P.Salemme |
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