Bhopal gas tragedy activist Jabbar gets Padma Shri posthumously

The activist succumbed to multiple health complications in Nov 2019

Abdul Jabbar Abdul Jabbar

Bhopal gas tragedy activist Abdul Jabbar has been conferred with the Padma Shri award of 2020 posthumously. Jabbar Bhai, as he was fondly called, kept up the struggle for gas tragedy survivors for 35 years without worrying for personal health. He was a tragedy survivor himself.

Jabbar was the most prominent face of the three-and-a-half-decade long struggle of lakhs of survivors and affected next generations. The survivors and their descendants, who are born with health complications, continue to wait for proper compensation, rehabilitation, health care and punishment to the accused of the man-made disaster that wiped off thousands from the face of the earth on the intervening night of December 2 and 3, 1984.

As the convener of the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Udyog Samiti (BGPMUS) and co-convener of Bhopal Gas Peedit Sangharsh Sahayog Samiti (BGPSSS), Jabbar ensured that the struggle and the issue would not die over years, despite gross apathy from successive state and central governments.

He worked for empowerment of women survivors, helped them earn livelihood through training in stitching and handicraft and always emphasized that the survivors did not require alms but employment, his slogan being ‘khairat nahi rozgar chahiye’. 

He was also behind a host of legal cases that brought compensation, relief and health services in the form of hospitals to the survivors. His petition for five times compensation to the survivors is still pending in Supreme Court.

Jabbar did this without bothering about his rapidly failing health and severe personal economic constraints. He had suffered 50 per cent loss of vision and lung fibrosis after inhaling the poisonous methyl iso-cyanate gas on the fateful night.

But on November 14 last year, he succumbed finally, having not got any substantial help from the gas relief hospitals of the state government or the 'state-of-the-art' multi-specialty Bhopal Memorial Hospital and Research Centre (BMHRC)—all of which he was instrumental in getting set up through medical petitions to the Supreme Court.

The Kamal Nath government in the state helped for his treatment in the very last stage. He was also given the Indira Gandhi social service award posthumously by the MP government.