THE INTERNATIONAL - International Indian

[ COVER STORY ]
The Bhopal Crisis Team: (Sanjiv, 2nd from right) This was a company run mainly by Indians with
high values and integrity
talks about the highlights and challenges,
on the business and personal front.
“I’m a Bombayite, and home starts when
the car reaches Colaba,” that’s where his
childhood memories predominate. His
parents are Punjabis who left Lahore during
the partition and made their way first to
Kanpur. “When my dad came to Kanpur,
he used to study and work, since we lost
everything during the partition. He began
his career with the Reserve Bank of India,
and we moved to Bombay, with short stints in
Nagpur and Delhi,” Sanjiv starts his story.
When Mehta passed his Chartered
Accountancy exams at 22, ranking at the top of
his batch in the country, he was flooded with
job offers. The one that caught his interest was
from Delhi Cloth Mills (DCM), one of India’s
top conglomerates, run by the late Dr Bharat
Ram, a doyen of Indian industry. “Though I
actually wanted to join a multinational, I really
wanted to meet him,” recalls Mehta, “and
what better way to meet Dr Bharat Ram than
to be interviewed by him.” Though Mehta
was offered a job immediately as Executive
Assistant to Dr Ram, he declined because his
heart was set on working for a multinational.
“Why multinationals? I was very clear
that I wanted training in business in an
international set up. In MNCs you learn a
structured way of thinking, the rigour and
analysis, power of communication, how
to take your team along. They represent
capitalism that works. I had zeroed in on
two corporations – Hindustan Lever and
Union Carbide. Both these companies were
of equal size and stature. I was offered a
job with Lipton in Calcutta and Carbide
in Bombay. Being a Bombayite decided it.
I had eight years with Carbide. I started in
Corporate Audit, and then the Bhopal gas
disaster happened and I was pulled out, and
at 24 years old, I was made a member of the
Bhopal Crisis Team. I believe that was the
time when a young boy became a young man.
When you see reality at such close quarters:
people in a tragedy of huge proportions, with
the kind of responsibilities assigned to me
at ground zero level, traveling under police
protection at all times, litigations happening,
American lawyers all over the place, shutting
down of factories, separating workers…
then you are forced to grow up and look at
everything differently,” Mehta remembers.
Just the words ‘Bhopal gas disaster’ and
‘Carbide’ are enough to make one want to
disassociate with anybody even remotely
connected with the company, and Mehta
is probably used to the skepticism that
accompanies this revelation. His take on the
issue that made Carbide infamous and his
views on the horrors of the event were candid.
“It was tough, having been brought up
under idealist values at home and then
working with a company that was being
‘accused’,” he pointed out, “by others of
causing this tragedy. What is very interesting
is that because I was part of the crisis team,
I was privy to a lot of information and got
to understand Union Carbide at very close
quarters. I got to understand what caused the
‘accident’, and how this company lived by its
values. I came to know the true character
of many people… truth you know is very
complex,” says Mehta quite calmly.
Is it? Or is truth the simplest thing to reveal?
“You know the matter is still under litigation
and there are many cases going on, so I would
not like to talk about it… one day when I write
a book, I will have a chapter on Bhopal. I’ve read
many books that have come out on this issue, but
they only show you some pieces of the puzzle.
Nobody has shown the full picture. I had
visibility to much more information, much more
science than many others; they may talk with
authority but they have very few facts right…”
Mehta only gave clues and was unwilling
to share the whole “complex truth” about an
event in the history of Industrial India, the
repercussions of which are still felt by the many
destroyed lives. Listening to the reasons for his
silence and not his first hand account of what
may have happened called for some restraint.
“I know it must be difficult for you to
believe but Carbide was a company with
values. What was portrayed was that it was a
killer company, that it had thrown all safety
norms to the wind… that it was all about
profit before people. That is simply not true.
It was no surprise that after the ‘accident’
that most of the senior management stood
by the company. I worked on the Bhopal
crisis for two years. Remember that we are
Indians first and very proud Indians…if at
any stage we had come to know that this was a
company that was not working in the interest
of the country, then people would have left.
Getting another job for us wasn’t a problem
at all. It wasn’t even an accident. Yes there
is blame, but like I said the cases are still in
the criminal courts so I wouldn’t like to say
anything to jeopardize anyone. Morally, I’m
obliged not to speak at the moment. What I
can say is that the company wasn’t the kind
of company that was portrayed in many
sections of the media. This was a company
that was run by a great set of people, mainly
Indians, with high values and integrity.
They did an amazing job at the way they
managed the crisis, the people… It was a
tragedy of huge proportions, but a great
learning curve for me personally,” Mehta
concludes the topic, at least for now.
But what kind of values and integrity is he
THE INTERNATIONAL INDIAN 49