In 1989, more than a hundred women set off on foot from Bhopal towards New Delhi, a journey of 755 kilometres. Some had sold their jewellery to take part. At the head of the column walked two illiterate stationery workers, Rashida Bee and Champa Devi Shukla, carrying a petition for the prime minister.
\n\nFive years earlier, on the night of 2-3 December 1984, methyl isocyanate gas had leaked from Union Carbide’s pesticide plant on the edge of Bhopal and drifted over the sleeping slums beside it. About 4,000 people died within days. Government estimates later put the toll at around 15,000 over the following years, and local activists believe the true figure is almost twice that. Warren Anderson, Union Carbide’s chairman, left India soon after the disaster and never returned to face trial, while the two women from the stationery unit spent the next four decades pressing the survivors’ case.
\n\nRashida Bee and Champa Devi Shukla met in 1986 at a government stationery unit in Bhopal. Rashida is Muslim and Champa is Hindu, and both had grown up poor. Their pay was meagre, and the male-dominated unions had no interest in representing women binders, so the two founded an independent…
Original source: https://www.timesnownews.com/lifestyle
