Virendra's Blog

Dow is going to sponsor the coming Olympics. And in most probability many coming ones as well. The shouts of Bhopal Gas tragedy survivors and a number of world organisations fell into deaf ears. Well to be honest, when it comes to money, human life (especially if it belongs to a third world country) don’t stand any where.
In one way, Dow is correct. It is not to blame. They didn’t own the chemical plant when it leaked the deadly gas. It was Union Carbide now folded up and acquired later by Dow. The same reason is given by the International Olympic Commitee and the British Government. This raised few very interesting questions in my mind. One was – if BP had sold off itself to Shell soon after its oil well leaked in Mexican Gulf. That would have saved both BP and Shell from any kind of punishment. BP doesn’t exist and Shell didn’t own when tragedy happened. Kind of cool!
The other (and more interesting) was would British Government and IOC allow bin Laden group to sponsor Olympic. As we all know, this group is not owned by Osama bin Laden but his brother who had no links to Al Qaeda or any kind of terrorist activity. I can see happy New Yorkers enjoying Usain Bolt run while sitting in bin Laden pavilion.
I know Olympic needs money but I am certain there are a whole lot of companies (excluding Dow) waiting to sponsor mega events. Olympics are a platform to bring human together, not to put salts on wounds of still suffering people. I am certain, games will go ahead with Dow since India doesn’t have the kind of financial or political clout that requires to stop IOC or Britain. But I am also certain Dow and Olympics have just set up a very bad precedent. I don’t know what is more disturbing – the open eyes of that dead orphan kid or the fact that humanity just lost to money and ego in one of the biggest human festival.