Barack Obama should be left in no doubt that India expects the yardstick of accountability he is applying to BP for Union Carbide too. But the root causes of the Bhopal disaster lie at home, and despite Thursday’s promise of generous funding, nothing has been done to tackle them. There’s possibly little that a coalition government can do in the short term, which means that repetitions of the nightmare, not necessarily in the same form, cannot be ruled out as India, sloppy, corrupt but on a roll, actively encourages big industry.

Few events so severely indict a society and its values and operations. BP’s oil spill was caused by an explosion, Exxon’s by a grounded tanker. Both could be called acts of god. The Turkish Airlines DC-10 that crashed just after taking off from Paris, killing all 346 people on board, more closely resembled Bhopal, for the checkers had overlooked a flaw in the aircraft. Distillers’ notorious thalidomide pill for pregnant mothers, which resulted in some 10,000 deformed babies, comes nearest for the pharmaceutical testing was grievously at fault. But whereas individuals were to blame in these last two instances, the guilt in India is collective and more indigenous than foreign. The power that multinational corporations undoubtedly wield is so effective here because of our combination of self-seeking politicians, slothful bureaucrats, an instinctive subservience to Americans and a criminally inefficient legal system.

It seems clear now that corners were cut and rules waived to grant Union Carbide’s manufacturing licence. Early warnings of danger were ignored though it was known that waste was being dumped and contamination spreading. The likely effects of cost-cutting measures and poor maintenance (like soldering instead of replacing broken pipes) were overlooked. Everything can be arranged in India. Even local champions to argue lustily that companies like Enron must be lily-white since bribery is a federal offence in the United States of America.

A senior New Delhi bureaucrat sought me out after the tragedy because the paper I worked for had published a strong editorial demanding firm action against Union Carbide. He urged me to soften our line since American law and Union Carbide would never concede what the paper was demanding. One might excuse Nani Palkhivala opposing the Union of India in New York or Fali Nariman appearing for Union Carbide since lawyers claim not to prejudge an issue, but this readiness among highly-placed officials to plead the American case recalls Natwar Singh’s comment that South Block is pro-American because eight out of 10 diplomatists want green cards for their children.

I came across another instance of that syndrome though in a different context when researching Waiting for America: India and the US in the New Millennium. Indians had reason in 1948 to accuse Josef Korbel, the Jewish Czech head of the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan (also Madeleine Albright’s father), of toeing the American-Pakistani line. Adapting Wilde, middle-class Indians might go to New York (New Jersey more likely) before they die, but Korbel, who was then waiting for American naturalization, might have died if he was refused citizenship. He would have been deported to Czechoslovakia which had become communist since the previous regime sent him to the UN.

My adventures with the book, which emphatically asserted that while countries are never “natural allies”, India needs the US for economic and strategic reasons, stressed that the connection must be consonant with national self-respect. India cannot be the new Pakistan, as Sitaram Yechury scathingly puts it. Her size, population, resources, strategic potential and civilizational heritage demand American recognition of a more equal partnership. Hence the title Waiting for America.

I was living abroad when the book appeared and received good reviews all round. Then I learnt to my surprise that the publisher had asked the American ambassador to release it and that, having asked for a copy, His Excellency had declined the honour. Anyone who was aware of the book’s contents and knew anything of how American politicos think would have expected nothing else. This ambassador, moreover, was a close friend of the president who famously justified Operation Enduring Freedom with the if-you-are-not-with-us-you-are-against-us mantra.

There was no launch and no publicity after that mark of ambassadorial disapproval. Waiting for America disappeared from bookshops. It was not visible at the Calcutta Book Fair. Shopkeepers told me they presumed it was out of print since requests for fresh stock were ignored. Direct approaches to the publisher were rebuffed. Eventually, the publisher emailed me to say the book had “not sold well” and would be pulped. A minor incident but revealing, perhaps, of attitudes.

Subservience goes beyond calculations of self-interest. The excitement when Obama attended a reception for S.M. Krishna or an ethnic Indian won the Spelling Bee competition has no logic beyond the complex of a colonized people. As The New York Times reported of George W. Bush’s “accidental” encounter with Jaswant Singh in the White House in May 2001, “No one in the American press took any notice, but in India the photo of Mr Singh grinning next to Mr Bush was front-page news.”

It was like the flurry in a Dhaka hotel lobby with flower pots carted in, carpets unrolled and people rushing about. The man I stopped to ask the cause breathed “Ambassador!” and sprinted away. Which ambassador? It was Saudi Arabia’s envoy. America’s ambassador may not occasion quite the same excitement in New Delhi but the joint secretary I had just sat down to interview in his South Block office (after two abortive appointments) when I was researching Waiting for America jumped up with alacrity when a burly white man strode in.

“Hope I’m not disturbing anything,” said the acting US ambassador breezily. “I’d come to see So-and-so and thought I’d drop in!” Overwhelmed by the intrusion, my host didn’t even bother to acknowledge my goodbye as I slipped out, questions unasked. He is now one of India’s senior ambassadors. Why blame a Bihar Lok Sabha member for vowing not to wash for three months the hand that Bill Clinton had shaken? Or Bhopal’s police for taking Warren Anderson to the comfort of his company guest house when he was supposedly under arrest? Grovelling is the norm.

Anderson’s flit isn’t the only unsolved mystery. Why have we heard nothing about the saboteur that American papers hinted at? Are some of Bhopal’s social activists on the make like American ambulance chasers? A Delhi High Court judge, S. Muralidhar, called the settlement the Supreme Court approved in February 1989 “severely flawed”. The Supreme Court decision in 1996 to dilute the charge against Union Carbide prompts more questions. Arun Jaitley and Abhishek Singhvi, legal luminaries at two ends of the political spectrum, argue that Dow Chemicals, which took over Union Carbide in 2001, has no liability for the tragedy. But common sense suggests liabilities go with assets. Guinness, which absorbed Distillers, thinks so, too, since it gave £37.5 million for thalidomide victims. As Britain’s Sunday Times, which fought relentlessly for compensation, observed, “The law is not always the same as justice.”

Common sense also suggests that the top man is responsible for everything that happens in his company. If there is “no concept of vicarious liability” (citing Nariman), how could Keshub Mahindra, Union Carbide India’s non-executive chairman, be convicted, no matter how frivolous the sentence? I was only following established practice when as editor I appeared before the West Bengal assembly’s privileges committee and took the rap for a junior colleague’s indiscretion.

Obama will be an honoured guest in November. But there is little reason to go overboard, and none to forget that no enduring strategic alliance can be based on injustice and inequality. India is still waiting for America.