Corporate Corporations and Opportunism
They Have No Soul – The Opportunism of Corporates
September, 2026
When I was pursuing my Ph.D at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi, I originally planned to submit my dissertation on climate-related disasters and corporate crimes. In between, I had to deliver a research presentation on the Bhopal gas tragedy.
At my university center, when students delivered presentations, professors and attendees would pose difficult questions. Therefore, I went to give the presentation carrying a bag packed with notes and supporting evidence. Seeing the heavy weight of my cloth shoulder bag packed with books and documents, they laughed; I replied, “I know what happened to the other students. That is why I took these precautions.” In my talk, while discussing the disaster caused by Union Carbide Corporation, I referred to it as an “industrial genocide”. Objections were raised, advising me not to use loaded terms like "genocide." I remember responding to them by saying, "Those are the words of Prof. Upendra Baxi, not mine." In the course of my doctoral research work, I studied the origin of corporations, their history, the unsuccessful attempts to regulate them and the current initiatives for regulating transanational corporations and other business enterprises. Thus, I have an abundance of data to write on corporate opportunism.
Union Carbide's catastrophic footprint is not confined to Bhopal alone; it exists in the United States as well. Many years prior, the company employed African Americans for mining work there. Many of them died from silicosis. Every time a worker died, someone would immediately fetch a coffin from a warehouse. A journalist reporting on these deaths investigated these coffins and uncovered a shocking truth: the company had manufactured and kept dozens of coffins ready well before the workers had even died.
In 1970, Union Carbide applied to conduct operations in India. For five years, the central industrial development authority of that time did not permit it. They knew the company's technology was substandard. Approval was only granted in 1975, during the Emergency. "We never gave permission; we couldn’t do anything about what was granted during the Emergency," a former official once told me. Whose opportunism granted that approval?
In Bhopal in 1984, due to the company's negligence, poisonous methyl isocyanate gas leaked, killing thousands of people. It stands as one of the world’s worst industrial disasters. Seeking compensation for this, India filed a lawsuit in a U.S. court demanding $3.3 billion. However, in 1989, the Supreme Court of India settled it for just $470 million. Why did they agree to accept such a small sum?
In 2002, Dow Chemicals Company acquired Union Carbide. When one company buys another, the acquiring firm is responsible for all its assets, liabilities, and ongoing issues. Dow Chemical, however, claims that the Bhopal issue is not its responsibility. To back this up, they displayed legal opinions written on official letterheads by two prominent Indian lawyers-cum-politicians. None of these will hold up in court, and litigation related to this is still ongoing. Did Union Carbide genuinely manufacture only pesticides? Did it also operate another facility there to test chemical warfare agents? Was methyl isocyanate the only gas that leaked that day? There are no clear answers to any of these!
Meanwhile, Dow Chemical itself set aside $2.2 billion for a U.S. government agency as compensation solely for damages caused by Union Carbide's asbestos mines in that country. Isn’t having one approach for their home country and another for others the very definition of opportunism?
Speaking of asbestos, here are a few facts: In 1924, it was discovered in London that asbestos causes incurable lung cancer in humans, and a report was formally submitted. Even so, the corporations involved never stopped excavating it and distributing it across the globe. Today, asbestos is banned in 70 countries around the world. But not in India. It continues to arrive from Russia, Kazakhstan, and China. Corporations continue manufacturing its byproducts for their profits.
Consider how popular baby talcum powder from the American multinational Johnson & Johnson is. Lawsuits were filed across the United States alleging that asbestos contamination in their talcum powder caused cancer. Over here in India, the company advertised that its baby powder was safe. It was never banned here. Instead, their factory in Maharashtra was simply shut down, and that was the extent of the action taken.
Did the company not know that their powder was contaminated with asbestos? Even back in the 1970s,
According to an investigative report by Reuters, the company knew about it as early as the 1970s. Yet, what should we call the fact that it continued to conceal the issue? There are many names for it. One of them is opportunism.
This is the age of information technology. Earlier, the sole objective of corporations was to make profits. Today, it is to collect data—and convert that data into money. This is what is called surveillance capitalism.
Google once had the slogan “Do No Evil” as part of its philosophy. Today, as the company has become more “honest,” those words are no longer part of its stated philosophy. The company has shifted its stance.
You may remember the internal memo that Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg circulated among the company's directors. In it, he reportedly said, in essence, “Don't worry about good or evil; focus on what becomes popular.”
Remember how Mark Zuckerberg faced questioning before the US Congress over providing data about Meta users and their friends to another company (Cambridge Analytica) and earning advertising revenue from it.
WhatsApp recently ran an advertisement saying, “Nobody—not even WhatsApp—can see or hear your chats and conversations.” Do you still believe that?
The companies that operated the mines in the Kolar Gold Fields ran schools and hospitals there as long as mining operations continued. Once the mining industry ended, all of these were shut down.
Corporations have no soul. They are against nature; they are against humanity. Their only objective is profit.
During the 1970s, multinational corporations from USA were involved in overthrowing governments in South America. They interfered in domestic governance. Following this, Chile brought a resolution before the UN to establish regulations governing multinational corporations. The UN formed a committee headed by former Reserve Bank of India Governor L. K. Jha pursuant to his work another UN committee was asked to draft such code of conduct for corporation. The committee submitted the a draft code of conduct in 1983 and subsequently it was finalized.
Although the issue continued to be discussed in 1989 and the 1990s, it was adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 21, 1990 but it was not pursued and the text of the Code of Conduct of Transnational Corporations was never implemented. Do I even need to explain why?
In the meantime, on September 11, 1973, Chilean President Salvador Allende was killed in his presidential palace, admittedly as a result of the influence of a corporation.
In 2003, a UN Sub Commission on Human Rights headed by Prof. David Weissbrodt prepared a draft report for the UN Norms on the responsibilities of multinational corporations concerning human rights. However, it was dismissed by corporate associations on the ground that it was duplicate, a copy of existing provisions.
I asked David Weissbrodt about UN Norms being duplicate. He replied with a meaningful response: “Yes, it is duplicate. Therefore, that does not mean it is unnecessary.”
Prof. John Ruggie was made the UN Special Rapporteur on business and human rights. He developed a framework concerning the human-rights conduct of corporations. It called for voluntarily regulation by corporations. What particularly struck me in his report was his observation that "corporations are undemocratic economic organisations.”
The recent efforts for an enforceable binding international treaty have been underway since 2014 "to regulate, in international human rights law, the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises”. The draft text of the new treaty is ready, an outcome of over 50 years of effort by countries like Chile, Ecuador, India, China, South Africa and others. It can ensure that business enterprises are subservient to both peoples’ will and legislative will. It can establish the primacy of human rights and public interest over private economic interests.
In India, under the Companies Act, 1956 corporations could contribute 5% of their annual income to political parties. In 2011, during a discussion on Black Money, Congress leader Manish Tewari said in Parliament, “Funding given to political parties is the mother of black money.”
Within a few hours of his statement, the Companies Bill was introduced. It allowed corporations to contribute up to 7.5% of their average net profits over three years to political parties based on the recommendations of Yashwant Sinha headed Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance.
Do we need another example to explain the meaning of irony?
Not only that, when corporations are allowed to spend up to a total of 14.5% on parties, NGOs and corporate social responsibility, should Parliament serve at the pleasure of large corporations? Or should large corporations remain accountable to Parliament? I leave that to your surmise.
In 2017, another amendment was made to the same law. Corporations were no longer required to disclose which political party they had given money to. The 7.5% limit was also removed. This effectively meant that corporations could contribute any amount they wanted.
This was the foundation for the introduction of electoral bonds.
In 2024, the Supreme Court declared the amendments made to the law unconstitutional and struck down the electoral bonds scheme. However, I regret that nothing was done regarding the funds that had already been received through the scheme.
The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) had filed a case in the Delhi High Court against the Congress and BJP, alleging that they had received corporate funding from foreign sources in violation of the law. In 2014, the High Court delivered a historically significant judgment stating that the Election Commission should take action against these parties.
The affected parties appealed against the judgment in the Supreme Court and later withdrew their petitions. Parliament subsequently passed retrospective amendments introduced by the government to the Companies Act and related laws, making such funding received since 1975 legally valid.
The root of the functioning of corporations whose sole objective is profit is opportunism. It is from this opportunism that their criminal activities arise.
Adivasis of Singhbhum, Jharkhand aptly say, "companies do make us smile, they make us cry", "companies do not feed us, they feed on us."
In the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica and biometric identification database scandal, it is crystal clear that corporations want to establish apparent truth because real truth reveals their dehumanizing nature.
Dr. Gopal Krishna
Courtesy: September 26 issue of Andhimazhai's upcoming print version, https://www.andhimazhai.com/special-section/special-pages/avatrukku-aanmaa-illai
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