Bhopal Disaster: Ethical Implications And Role Of Engineers

The Tragedy of Bhopal Gas Leak

Discuss about the Bhopal Disaster Ethical implication of Disaster.

The Bhopal Gas Tragedy is considered as one of the biggest industrial tragedy happening to the mankind. The official death count of the tragedy was around 3000 but unofficially the death count exceeded over 10000. The aftermath of the Bhopal gas Tragedy continues to impact on the lives of the locals. The tragedy initially started with the ventilation of poisonous gas in the locality.  The density of the air thickened and the accumulation of the toxic gases affected the environment of the place which killed many people and affected numerous lives which would be there for a long period of time.  There are number of issues attached to this tragedy and ethical issues have been considered as one of the key issues attached with this tragedy. There have been ethical implications related to the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. It is important to understand the aspects of ethical behavior and unethical behavior and its consequences.

Ethical behavior is important and expected from each and every employee operating in an organisation. Ethical behavior could be defined as the process of acting in ways that is consistent with culture, understanding and operation of an organisation. Ethical behavior is important for the employees in an organisation. Ethical behavior tends to be good and important for the operation of every organisation and hence it is important for every organisation to focus on developing a strong culture and platform to exhibit ethical behavior within the organisation. Ethical behavior has been an increasing concern in the contemporary business organisations and there have been key ethical issues even with the Bhopal gas tragedy. Responsible workers are extremely important for every industry which helps the organisations to operate effectively as well as to make sure any possible incidents are reported. Taking responsibility of the actions is one of the key characters of an ethical employee. Review of existing literature showed that there is plethora of theories that defines ethical behavior in different ways. Ethical behavior is important to combat any possible dilemma that emerges in the business operations and hence if employees are not able to show ethical behavior there could be significant consequences which happened with the gas tragedy in Bhopal. In this case it was clear that the employees didn’t perform their duties properly which not only affected the organisation but also the surroundings and the environment which are all related to each other in the ecosystem.

Ethical Behavior in Organizations

Unethical behavior could be defined as just the opposite of ethical behavior. Unethical behavior could be defined as the actions of the employees which are against the best interest of the organisation or the society and is done mainly for the personal benefit. It is important to mention that unethical behavior is mainly showed for the personal benefit but the consequences or ramifications are not confined within the personal sphere but it would affect the organisation as well as the stakeholders of the organisation pretty similar to the case of Bhopal gas tragedy. There were number of issues that led to this perilous accident in Bhopal. The improper overseeing of the machines and equipments, improper ventilation and channelising of the gases contributed to this fatal accident which mainly caused due to the unethical behavior and nonchalant attitude led to these issues. Hence it could be said that with unethical behavior the possible consequences that could follow are significant loss of the business of an organisation, impact on the related stakeholders, legal implications which could be experienced through the sudden downfall of the Carbide factory in Bhopal.

From the Bhopal Gas Tragedy one thing is pretty clear that is the role of engineers. Engineers are essential part of employees in the organisation and hence it is important for the engineers to show ethical behavior. It is important for the engineers to be ethical in nature especially regarding the management of risk. They should be well informed about the possible risks attached to the organisational operations. They should also be ethical and practical with the understanding of the risks and as well as the important machineries and equipments. It has been visible in the Bhopal case that the engineers didn’t do proper analysis of the machineries and equipments, ventilation facilities which led to one of the biggest man made accidents in the history of the world. Hence it could be said that with ethical behaviors showed by the engineers industrial accidents could be predicted and accordingly prevented.

Some have implied that accidents are “act of god” and can happen but it could be said that accidents are never acceptable and we should be more stubborn on making systems much more flexible and effective so that the possibilities of accidents could be reduced. There are never acceptable accidents that we should live with and rather we should try to eliminate the possibilities of accidents. Even though after Bhopal there have been accidents but it is important to make sure there are systems to manage risks of accident and this is where the engineers play a huge role.

Definitely yes, the engineers could learn from mistakes. There is a long standing aphorism “you learn from your mistakes” and engineers are with no difference. They are human beings and it is natural they would learn from mistakes but it is important to make sure that the lesson learnt or the insights gathered should be implemented in the next work so that the mistakes are  not repeated. Just similar to the case of Bhopal there could have been more incidents but over the years after Bhopal there haven’t been significant industrial incidents which shows that engineers tend to learn from their mistakes.

Conclusion:

Engineers are meant to make world safer. Clean water, clean energy, safer transport, better communications and life saving tools all have been developed by engineers and hence there are no questions at all about the role that engineers play in the building up of a society and to make the world a better and safer place to live in. Through engineering world is made better place where each and every person could be connected to each other, and through the implementation of different tools engineers try to make the world a safer place and hence it could be stated that engineers could make the world a safer place to live in.