Bhopal - 2. The Smell of Grass
Seriously...
BBC
4.1 • 885 Ratings
🗓️ 9 September 2022
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Bhopal gas tragedy was the worlds worst industrial accident. Tens of thousands of people died and many more suffered long term illnesses when lethal methyl isocyanate gas leaked from the Union Carbide plant in the city in central India on 2nd December 1984.
For the previous two years one man had been predicting that Bhopal was an accident waiting to happen. Forty years ago this month the Bhopali journalist Rajkumar Keswani wrote his first article warning of the dangers posed by safety lapses at the plant. During a dogged investigation pitting him against political power, corporate money and the indifference of the media and public opinion, he never gave up. This cinematic documentary series tells his story for the first time.
Episode 2. The Smell of Grass
Keswani digs deeper and discovers that a town planning order to relocate the chemical plant to an industrial zone, away from densely populated areas, was ignored. Union leaders smuggle him into the factory where he sees first hand the lack of safety controls and general disrepair. He learns more about the chemicals being manufactured as pesticides inside Union Carbide and understands the danger if they were to leak.
He sits down to write his first 'Rapat' newspaper article under the headline 'Save, Please Save this City', and waits for a response.
Narrator Narinder Samra Written and researched by Anubha Yadav and Radhika Kapur Music and Sound Design by Shreyan Chatterjee Studio Mix by Donald McDonald Producer Neil McCarthy
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This was an impregnable fortress. The only way you get out was in a wooden box. |
| 0:05.0 | The controversial maximum security prison impossible to escape from. |
| 0:09.0 | And one of the duties of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.0 | The IRA inmates who found a way. of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.5 | The IRA inmates who found a way. |
| 0:14.5 | I'm Carlo Gableer and I'll be navigating a path |
| 0:19.5 | through the disturbing inside story of the biggest jailbreak in British and Irish history. |
| 0:25.0 | The narrative that they want is that this is a big achievement by them. |
| 0:28.5 | Escape from the maze, listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:35.0 | BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, Music Radio Podcasts. |
| 0:39.0 | Hi, I'm Neil McCarthy and welcome to Seriously from BBC Radio 4. This is Bo Powell, the story of the world's worst industrial accident. |
| 0:48.0 | In this edition, the journalist Rajkumar Kossani is smuggled into the fortified Union Carbide Plant to see firsthand how bad things are. |
| 0:57.0 | Episode 2 The Smell of Grass |
| 1:00.0 | Nureted by Naryinda Samra. Bopah. This is the story of a man who could have changed the course of history. |
| 1:19.0 | Rajkuma Kostwani, a young fearless journalist, predicted the world's largest industrial disaster, |
| 1:26.8 | the Bopal gas tragedy, which left over 20,000 dead. |
| 1:32.2 | Unfortunately, no one believed him. |
| 1:38.0 | Episode 2, the smell of grass |
| 1:41.0 | set against the blue sky. the smell of grass. |
| 1:45.0 | Said against the blue sky, beside a small pond on land leased by the Madhya Pradesh government, |
| 1:50.0 | the Union Carbide plant spreads across an impressive 85 acres. |
| 1:54.8 | If you'd have stood outside the plant a few weeks before the night of the 2nd of December |
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