ABSTRACT
The Bhopal disaster, as it unfolded in legal contexts in India and the United States, illustrates that the liability regime extant in the world was inadequate to provide redress to the victims of the world’s greatest industrial disaster. The physical pain, the emotional damage, and the inability to live a normal life, has meant that Bhopal has remained a noxious day-to-day presence, restraining, constraining, and defining their very being. In December 2005, the Government of India enacted the Disaster Management Act, which established a National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA). The NDMA operates the National Institute of Disaster Management and collaborates with a wide range of state entities, including the police, army, and civil administrations. In December 1984, color television transmission was barely two years old and the only broadcaster was Doordarshan, a subsidiary of the state. During the ensuing three decades, television morphed and grew—feeding off the insatiable appetite brought on by the new consumerist economy.
