The Bhopal gas tragedy in 1984 in India shocked the entire world, invoking memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki but the world refused to learn any lesson as Chernobyl and Fukushima followed later, among other big and small industrial disasters of similar nature and scale.

It has been 37 years since the worst industrial disaster in the history of the world occurred in the central Indian city of Bhopal, killing thousands of people, and then slowly claiming many lives over a long period of time.

The intervening night of December 2 and 3 proved to be fatal for the people around Union Carbide's pesticide plant. Claiming the lives of more than 3,000 people and hurting 1.02 lakh others at that time as the poisonous gas, methyl isocyanate, spread from the factory, now owned by US-based Dow Chemical Company.

The Bhopal gas victims have been holding a 37-day vigil with 37 crucial questions since November this year with one question every day as they still await justice from the criminal suit against Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) and its new owner.

The killer gas affected economically weak sections that stayed put in congested and unhygienic conditions in tiny rooms as small as 100 sq ft.

Now the pandemic and the lockdown have hit the survivors hardly, pushing them to the edge of abject poverty with low immunity, multiple health issues, and co-morbidity as tonnes of toxic gas has passed onto generations leading to toddlers still being born with physical disabilities.

"Justice for the victims of Bhopal gas disaster is awaited even after 37 years, and many survivors are yet to receive adequate compensation. But none of the main culprits have been sent to jail," Rashida, head of the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationery Karmchari Sangh, an NGO fight for the victims, told Indian news agency IANS in an interview.

In February 1989, the apex court in India awarded $470 million compensation based on the 'assumption that only around 3,000 victims had died and another 102,000 had suffered injuries in varying degree.'

According to ND Jayaprakash, Bhopal Gas Peedith Sangharsh Sahayog Samiti co-convener, compensation was a "complete sham with each gas victim being finally awarded less than one-fifth of the sum allotted even as per the terms of that settlement."

The number of the victims "swelled to 5.73 lakh (573,000) and victims got one-fifth of the compensation," he added.

The federal government filed a curative petition in 2011, seeking an additional sum of at least $ 1 Billion which is still pending with the Supreme Court of India.

The victims are seeking compensation from Dow Chemical Company, which purchased Union Carbide Corporation in 2001, for the environmental damage caused due to the contamination of the soil and groundwater.

Dow Chemical is named a respondent in a number of ongoing cases and the company maintains a dedicated website to the disaster and claims that the incident was the result of sabotage.

On June 7, 2010, a local court named the then company chairman, Warren Anderson, as the prime accused and on Feb 1, 1992, a Bhopal court declared him an absconder. He breathed his last in 2014 in the US.

Anderson died unpunished because of the protection extended by the US government and negligence on the part of the Indian government in bringing him to justice.

In the early 1930s, Union Carbide., the same company that caused the Bhopal gas tragedy, was at the center of the Hawk's Nest disaster that killed more than 750 workers in West Virginia -- the worst industrial accident in U.S. history.

According to disaster management experts, tragedy could have been averted in Bhopal if safety systems were designed in relation to the amount of highly toxic material (MIC) stored in the plant.

And the same thing goes for West Virginia 54 years before, Chernobyl two years later, and Fukushima 17 years after the infamous Bhopal tragedy.