Bhopal to BP: A Stark Contrast

“When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”

Thomas Jefferson

People in America are seething with discontent about their President’s handling of the immediate aftermath of the BP rig explosion and oil spill. They feel he has not done all he could and that the Federal government has dragged its feet, not putting the full weight of their resources behind fixing the problem. Many Republicans even believe the government should have taken over the cleanup effort, even though the government does not have the necessary equipment, expertise or means to cap a deep water oil well break. Obama’s popularity has taken a huge beating as a result of this discontent around the country. There has also been growing resentment to his constantly cool and calm demeanor. That he never shows emotion and certainly never seems to fume or display any indignation or rage. Ironically, it was this same trait that catapulted him into a lead in many minds over John McCain during the financial crisis in 2008. However you feel about his personal handling of the response, what cannot be debated is that from the outset he has held British Petroleum fully accountable for the entire disaster and for all the ensuing damage, stretching even the most generous legal definitions of liability for foreign companies operating on US soil. He has made them liable, not only for all costs incurred by the Federal government for the cleanup operation, but also for lost wages of fisherman, riggers and small business owners in affected town. Somehow he even got BP to pony up $25 million for the State of Florida to invest in advertising to re-assure tourists that Florida beaches remain unaffected, open and safe. All this in addition to coaxing BP into putting a down payment of $20 billion into an account administered by a government-appointed third party, which will enable them to process and pay claims in a more expedient manner. And during all of this he managed to help the BP board see the wisdom in not issuing any further dividends to shareholders for the remainder of 2010. Whether you are satisfied with his administration’s sense of urgency and speed of response or not, I think it is fair to say that he has been single-mindedly focused on protecting his citizen’s well-being and livelihoods by ensuring that the blame and liability rests firmly with this foreign company and that taxpayers will not be the ones to bear the burden of this catastrophe.

Now contrast this with the Indian government’s response to the greatest industrial disaster the world has ever seen by an American company called Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) which operated a majority owned chemical plant in the city of Bhopal, India. One fateful night in December 1984 the plant leaked toxic gas engulfing the city of Bhopal and its environs, exposing some 500,000 people to lethal and poisonous gas. Government estimates indicate that 8,000 people died within the first week. Another 8,000 people died since from gas related causes. Some 5,000 women were widowed. The gas exposure is also blamed for birth defects ranging from minor to very severe disabilities for the next two generations and is still causing unusually high clusters of cancer and other diseases in the families of the exposed. Today, 390 tons of toxic chemicals abandoned at the plant, never cleaned up by UCIL or the Indian government is said to continue to leak and pollute the groundwater in the region and affect thousands of Bhopal residents who depend on it. In 1985 the Indian government filed a suit in US court for damages worth $3.3 billion. In February 1989 the Indian government, led by then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, agreed to an out of court settlement with Union Carbide for a paltry $470 million - approximately 14% of their original claim. To add insult to injury, the then Chief Executive of Union Carbide, Warren Anderson, was arrested in 1985 and released on bail on a visit to India. He fled the country, and while still considered an absconder, has since retired and lives a lavish life in the exclusive Hamptons community on New York’s Long Island. “Greenpeace asserts that as the Union Carbide CEO, Anderson knew about a 1982 safety audit of the Bhopal plant, which identified 30 major hazards and that they were not fixed in Bhopal but were fixed at the company's identical plant in the US” (Wikipedia).

Twenty-six years after the tragedy India’s Supreme Court delivered its ruling in the world’s greatest industrial disaster. The Supreme Court is punishing the 7 of the 8 living Union Carbide board members with a 2 year prison sentence, which can be appealed. The culpable homicide charge was effectively reduced to a charge usually used for reckless driving cases. After a wait of a quarter century this is the justice the tens of thousands of victims of Bhopal received. This is the only justice the President, Prime Minister and government has been able to deliver to their citizens. And it seems the perpetrators will continue to go unpunished even as the people of Bhopal continue to suffer the consequences of their negligence. Dow Chemicals, the company which acquired UCIL, has repeatedly stated it accepts no responsibility for this “tragic accident” and recently also retracted a 2002 statement by DOW’s PR Head saying the US$500 compensation per victim was "plenty good for an Indian.” Curiously though, Times of India found Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings from February 2010, where DOW has disclosed that it has taken on all liability for Carbide lawsuits in the US dating back to 1977 (Bhopal happened in 1984), and expects to pay a further $839 million in the coming years to settle these. Carbide became a subsidiary of Dow through a merger in 2001 (‘Bhopal gas tragedy: Dow's double standards exposed’ – Times of India).

Based on a unanimous public outcry the Indian government is now pushing through new measures that include increased compensation for victims, and a renewed effort to extradite the 90 year old Warren Anderson  (an extradition request by India in 2003 was turned down by the US government) along with a pledge to clean up the abandoned UCIL factory. While Dow’s poorly worded statement above says it all, there is another and bigger issue at stake here that goes beyond corporate responsibility and companies doing the right thing in such extreme and tragic situations. It has to do with the weak response and seeming lack of muscle of the Indian government. As India continues to pride its steady advance onto the global stage as an economic and military powerhouse, the government continues to show its impotence when it comes to protecting its own citizens. Victims groups claim that the Indian government did not want to create a hostile climate for foreign companies and foreign direct investment and thus cushioned much of its actions against Union Carbide and DOW Chemicals. I hope this is not true because a government, who does not use every means possible to first and foremost protect its own people, has no business playing on the global stage or calling itself a Superpower.

British Airways: Part Deux

NOTE: One month after I sent my letter to British Airways CEO, Willie Walsh, (Open Letter to Willie Walsh, CEO of British Airways), I got a response from their Head of Refunds for North America. They offered me two options. Option 1: a refund “in accordance with standard industry procedures and British Airways policy” for reimbursement to the original form of payment used to purchase the tickets (of course both of the credit cards I used are no longer valid). Option 2: a voucher for the same value to be used for future travel on British Airways.

Below is my response dated 10th May. I have received no refund from BA at the time of posting this blog.

Dear Mr. X,

Thank you for your correspondence.

Please note that the credit card you refer to, ending XXX, for Passenger: ONE. & Ticket number: xxx-xxxx is incorrect. The ticket was purchased on card ending XXX.

As there is no legal requirement for a company to only provide credit back to a customer via the original form of payment used to make the purchase, I fail to see why it is a problem to simply issue me a 100% refund by cheque, and especially since it is now more than five years late. And I am sure you will understand when I say that I am not in a hurry to fly BA again, so a BA travel voucher is not really acceptable. However, given my arduous journey to seek closure on this matter, I am sure you will make an adjustment to your policy in this matter and fulfill my request for full reimbursement/refund for both tickets: xxxx-xxx/xxxx-xxx to my above credit card ending XXX, where one of the two tickets was originally purchased. This seems to me a good and fair compromise given my request for a cheque and your airline’s seemingly inflexible policy.

I look forward to your confirmation of the above, and please don’t hesitate to contact me if you require any further details in order to provide this refund ASAP.

I appreciate your help in this matter.

Sincerely,
Mr. Vaish


BA RESPONSE:

Dear Mr. Vaish,

We are in receipt of your refund request in our refunds department regarding the above mentioned tickets.

Option 1: In accordance with standard industry procedures and British Airways policy, reimbursement can be made only to the original form of payment used to purchase the tickets; hence a refund would be processed to your credit credit card ending in XXX for ticket xxx-xxxx and to Visa card ending in XXX for ticket xxx-xxxx.

Option 2: The value of this ticket can be applied towards future travel on British Airways. Subject to the rules and conditions of the fare, additional charges may apply. A voucher would be issued which could be used as a partial payment towards future travel on British Airways only.

Please forward a written confirmation of the option you would like to utilize at the address mentioned below. Upon receipt we will reopen our case and take further action.

British Airways assures you of our best attention at all times.

Sincerely yours,
Mr. X

The Enemy in Our Midst

“Fighting terrorism is like being a goalkeeper. You can make a hundred brilliant saves but the only shot that people remember is the one that gets past you.”
Paul Wilkinson

While the Republicans and Democrats continue to expend time and energy fighting and arguing about what to call terrorists. And Conservatives blame misguided left wing political correctness for using soft terminology and for lack of profiling, the world and the profile of the Extremist is being totally re-defined with every new homegrown terrorist being caught in America and abroad. It is becoming increasingly and frighteningly clear that our old rules, profiles and profiling definitions no longer apply. The terrorists are now recruiting and succeeding in creating a totally new breed of monster: people who are virtually impossible to sniff out or detect, most times until they actually commit an act of terror.

In the last year alone, all the men (and a few women) who have been arrested in the act of committing an act of terror, planning one or are already trained and hardened members of Al-Qaeda - not one of them fits the old profile of disenfranchised, poor, uneducated, Muslim and non-American. Omar Hammami, was born to a white Southern Baptist woman from Alabama and a Syrian immigrant father. He had the most normal middle class childhood and upbringing in Daphne, Alabama until he showed up in a Somalia Al-Qaeda terrorist propaganda video one day with his nom de guerre, Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki, “the American” (The Jihadist Next Door - New York Times). Bryant Neal Vinas was an altar boy who grew up in a middle class suburb on Long Island, New York, with a passion for baseball and the Mets. His father is from Peru and his mother Argentinean. Vinas was arrested last year in Afghanistan and confessed to being trained and assisting Al-Qaeda in a plan to bomb the Long Island Rail Road. Friends describe Vinas as a sweet, charming, young boy with a kind heart, who was perhaps a little gullible. David Coleman Headley has a wealthy former Pakistani diplomat for a father and a white American Pittsburgh socialite mother. By all accounts he had a very privileged childhood. He lived with his father in Pakistan until the age of 17, when he arrived in the United States to live with his mother. In 1998 he was convicted of smuggling heroin into the US. As part of a deal for a lighter sentence, he agreed to work undercover for the Drug Enforcement Agency, which gave him unfettered access to Pakistan, India and the United States. It is now clear he was training with Lashkar, raising the possibility that he had made contact with militants while still working for the DEA. He has admitted to helping plot the 26/11 terrorist attacks in Bombay, in 2008. Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, better known as the underwear bomber, is the son of a former minister and chairman of First Bank of Nigeria. He lived in a four million dollar apartment in Central London, and was an Engineering student at a prestigious London University. His teacher and friends remember him as model pupil and “very personable boy". Faisal Shahzad, the terrorist who tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square is the son of a former Air Force vice marshal and Deputy Director of Civil Aviation in Pakistan. Shazad graduated from the University of Bridgeport, came back to earn a Master’s in the same school, and was working with a marketing and consulting firm as a junior financial analyst. He became a US citizen in 2009 and married a Colorado-born girl with Pakistani parents. They have two children. He is the epitome of the “average student, employee, and neighbour” that litters the suburban American landscape today.

The list goes on, but what is most alarming to me about all of these men is that they have only one thing in common. Not one of them fits into any of our pre-defined categories or profiles that have been established and used by law enforcement for more than two decades for the hard core Jihadist. Yet to consider them anything less would be a foolish mistake. After 9/11 we were all painted a picture of the poverty-stricken, opportunity-less, uneducated Muslim male as the person we should fear most to be a likely terrorist. We were told that these men could be found in poorer cities and villages in Muslim countries. And we were led to believe that the focus was on preventing these men from penetrating our borders, not that they already reside within them. Or the fact they are from upper or upper middle class backgrounds, clean cut, born and bred American and some even non-Muslim. So what the hell happened and how did our governments get it so totally wrong? “There's clearly been an acceleration in radicalization in the United States," said Mitch Silber, the director of intelligence analysis at the New York Police Department. He says that Bryant Neal Vinas and many of these men are “poster children for the process, the unremarkable nature of the people who might go through this process and the potential to link up with al Qaeda and the danger that it presents" (‘The radicalization of an all-American kid’ - CNN). Clearly, the internet has made it much easier for people to access and find Al-Qaeda or radicals around the world and more frighteningly the reverse is also true. There was a long held belief that integration and assimilation of the population was not an issue in the United States as it has been in Europe, but that myth, too, has been shattered by among others the Fort Hood shooter and the Times Square bomber. What is clear is that we are witnessing a totally new phenomenon and one that has caught International law enforcement by surprise. But what is far more frightening to me is that it is seemingly impossible to find a common thread between all of these men or a common motivation to profile them in any meaningful way. Without an understanding of their motivations or the turning or tipping point as it may be, we are totally defenseless to identify these men or track them down until after they have shown the demon within them, which most often is too late.

I leave you to ponder the words of author Michael Marshall from his book, Blood of Angels: “Terrorism isn't James Bond or Tom Clancy. Even Al-Qaeda is looking old school these days---now it's just some guy with a bomb. He walks the same roads as us. He thinks the same thoughts. But he's got a bomb.”

Open Letter to Willie Walsh, CEO of British Airways

“A customer is the most important visitor on our premises, he is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.”
Mahatma Gandhi

Dear Mr. Walsh,

I felt compelled to write to you one last time as I believe there is a dire need to remind you of your words from British Airways 2009 Annual Report, as your airline’s customer service continues to sink to new and hitherto unimaginable lows. “We will not let this crisis compromise our long-term goal – to create a world-leading global premium airline with a reputation for being the very best at meeting its customers’ needs.” Everybody makes mistakes but your staff’s attitude and lack of care, concern and pure arrogance after the poor experience we had is abhorrent and led me to make the decision never to fly BA again. However, BA again started courting me for my business a few months ago through numerous emails, letters and offers promising a new and vastly improved customer service and experience. It was this promise to woo back the countless customers’ it has no doubt lost over the last few years that prompted me to make one last effort to resolve the matter.

Once again I have had no joy from your Customer Service department. I corresponded via your website’s customer complaint mechanism, and initially Mr. B, from BA Customer Relations (as in 2006) sent me a response and then again there was complete silence when it came to actually resolving my issues. And this upon my supplying both clarification of the facts, and the supporting documents he requested; boarding cards and credit card statement, with e-ticket#, as proof of purchase (Fax dated: 2/2/2010).

In short, I never received what Mr. B himself promised me by way of apology in 2006, mileage credit to my wife’s account, nor did I get the refund/partial credit owed me from travel completed in 2005.

In summary our experience in 2005 is as follows: my wife and I were travelling New York-London-Dubai-London-New York with one full fare Business Class and one Premium Economy ticket. BA messed up our reservations causing us to miss our flight out of NY, then promised to upgrade my wife from London to Dubai, as there was no extra seat available in Business on the next flight, nor was my pre-booked aisle seat that I had on the original flight; so I too downgraded to economy from NY-London (and was promised a refund of the fare difference, which I was told would be automatically credited to my credit card within 60-90 days). Then your staff in London refused to honour the upgrade promise made to us by your staff in New York. Upon my seeking assistance from your London staff and getting the run around, frustrated, I finally asked who I needed to speak with in BA to help me, I was told, and I quote: “there is nobody in this airline that can help you.”

Sadly and truthfully, my expectation for resolution at this stage is virtually zero from both you and your airline, but I feel that in the end it is unhappy customers like me remaining silent that allow companies like British Airways to continue charging high premiums, while delivering subpar quality and service. Most importantly, our silence allows you to continue to treat your customers like cattle and take our business for granted. So consider this my way to stop turning my head and looking the other way, allowing companies like yours to continue the pursuit of profits at the expense of customers and everything else that matters. With this open letter, I am going to make every effort to ensure that the world is made aware of our less than poor experience and encouraged to do the same, through my personal blogs, Facebook, Twitter and all the various public and travel forums and discussions I actively participate in.

In my opinion British Airways, over the last decade has squandered its well earned reputation as “The World’s Favourite Airline” and become the “World’s Worst Airline,” and this from a customer who for years remained steadfastly loyal to your airline in the face of increased and better competitive options becoming available.

Sincerely,
Mr. Vaish

NOTE posted on 4th December 2010: I got a response from BA one month after sending this letter, and responded (http://bit.ly/cUp7HA) and of course have heard nothing back.

Up In Smoke

“Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.”
Winston Churchill

There are things that are really and truly hard to give up, and then there is quitting smoking. Without a doubt the hardest thing I have done in my life. This post chronicles my journey and offers to serve as a pat on my back. I feel I deserve one, for kicking a habit that experts say is harder to kick than heroin addiction. That, in my book, deserves a self-congratulatory blog post. That said, this post is also dedicated to all those people who are trying, have tried or want to try to quit smoking. And before you get any ideas, I want to be clear at the outset that my intention is not to encourage anyone to quit smoking. I am not one of those irritating born again ex-smoker zealots who goes around preaching the health benefits of being smoke free. Or, worse yet, someone who feels compelled to shove down your throat the ills of smoking, at every opportunity they get. For those people who have absolutely no desire to kick the habit, I say, “smoke on, and let the nicotine flow!” However, to those who have not yet tried it, I will say don’t ever – the early joys are not worth the price you pay later in life, and I have witnessed this first hand.

I started smoking when I was fifteen years old for two simple reasons. First, it made my Bacardi and coke taste better and second, all the girls in school that I wanted to hang out with liked to hang out with boys who smoked. Of course, it helped that in those days you could smoke on the London Underground platform (no joke), buses, movie theaters and pretty much anywhere you could find a light. And more than anything else I actually enjoyed every drag of my cigarette, to the point that after the first month I no longer cared about looking cool anymore. I guess I was hooked to the physical addiction and this went far beyond the social ritual that came along with the cigarettes. For the next twenty-one years I enjoyed every moment of it, so much so, that people routinely told me that I looked like I was born to smoke because I appeared so happy and natural doing it. I realise this should not make me feel proud, but I did. I was never one of those people who ever wanted to or tried to quit smoking. Actually, I read somewhere in my teens that if you quit around the age of thirty-five, you can stop, and sometimes even reverse, the damage to your lungs. Whether it was true or not did not really matter, it was good enough for me. Besides at the age of sixteen, the word thirty not only felt like a distant planet in a galaxy far, far away, but also a few lifetimes away. So my decision was made; I would live life to the fullest, smoking, drinking and doing everything else my heart desired until my mid-thirties.

There was one time in college that I did quit smoking. It was based on a challenge issued by someone who did not believe my little theory, and more importantly found totally incredulous the fact that I believed I would simply be able to drop such a powerful addiction at a time of my choosing. Now, you should also know that I was no longer a causal smoker by this stage (Mom, please don’t read the rest of this paragraph.). I was smoking more than one pack a day at the time. Crazy, I know, but easy to do when you are partying 24 hours a day, and living on 1-2 hours sleep a night. Not being one to back down from a good challenge, especially one that entailed testing my will power; I not only offered to quit smoking for two months but also threw in the added difficulty of doing it during the most stressful time known to a student – end of semester exams. That same day I finished my open pack and started my two-month long tribulation against all the odds. I will not say it was easy but luckily for me I had a few things working in my favour. I am a Leo, love winning, and had been smoking for a short five years. I even carried my trusty Zippo around with me for the entire time, lighting everyone else’s cigarette and anything else I could find. The two months passed and I had won with relative ease, much to the chagrin of my challenger and the delight of my friends. As I celebrated my victory by getting ready to sample the pleasures of my first post challenge cigarette, my girlfriend at the time asked me the most ludicrous question – “Since you quit for two months, and at a time you most needed your addiction, why not just stop smoking altogether?” Women.

Fast forward to August 2006, I had been smoking for a grand total of twenty-one years (with only that two month break), and found myself suddenly staring my thirty-sixth birthday in the face, and showing little sign of being able to quit. My wife was one of the people who was in on my little plan of quitting ‘around the age of thirty-five’ and was also beginning to doubt I ever would be able to kick this habit. Turns out she was not the only one; my Doctor, my mother and my entire trusty friend circle seemed to have serious doubts, I realised, when they all began to suggest taking a new miracle drug called Chantix to fulfill my self professed promise. As much as I hate getting help from anyone, I am even more skeptical of brain altering drugs. I believe that if you want to do something, you have to make up your mind and just do it. For me this is the only real and lasting way and failure is also not an option for a Leo. So I decided to move to plan B. I knew I wanted to and had even made up my mind to do it, so the only thing that remained was finding a way to wean my body off the physical nicotine addiction, without the aid of drugs or patches. So I turned it into a challenge to myself and decided to find out what the most basic amount of nicotine my body needed to survive was. I started by cutting down the number of daily cigarettes, from 20 to 10 over a period of three months. At 10 I was doing perfectly fine with no crazy cravings. So I moved it to the next level and decided to smoke only when I was really, really dying to have one. As it turns out, my cravings that I could not live without were satisfied by 4 cigarettes a day; two in the morning, one after lunch and one after dinner. That was it. Just 4 measly cigarettes a day; I knew I could beat my addiction and have been completely (not even a drag) smoke free since 7th June 2007.