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Rajkumar Keswani, a journalist working with a small weekly magazine called Rapat, wrote a prescient article two years before the tragedy titled ‘Bhopal Jwalamukhi Kagar Pe’ (Bhopal on the edge of a volcano) warning the nation that the Carbide plant was in poor shape and there was likely to be a horrible disaster very soon. He wrote that the management knew about it, but was in no mood to make further investments on repairing the plant because the business was making huge losses. The management’s mood almost seemed to be one of waiting and welcoming the disaster. Despite these warnings, Arjun Singh, then chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, said on the floor of the legislature that everything was all right and there was no cause for any concern. If a journalist representing a small paper predicted the disaster, it is extremely disquieting that the state government and the union government armed with their enormous powers of inspection and control did not anticipate or take any steps to prevent it. It is not an unreasonable inference that all key functionaries including the Chief Minister Arjun Singh, had a very comfortable relationship with the management of Union Carbide, and it was unimportant and irrelevant in their priorities to make any ostensible effort to protect the life and health of thousands of their citizens.
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