In late 1984, the Bhopal Gas Disaster led to the deaths of more than 22,000 people and the poisoning of more than half of the City of Bhopal in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India. Just six years earlier, rural Warren County, NC, put itself on the map when community members rose up through multiyear protests against the discriminatory disposal of cancerous polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which led to the start of the environmental justice movement in the United States.
After six weeks of consistent marches, protests and arrests, America’s first protest in the modern environmental movement made national headlines.
But remediation action has been delayed in Warren County. Initial clean up there did not begin until 2002—nearly two decades after the protests. Similarly, in Bhopal, ongoing contamination still impacts the health of nearby residents today. The Indian government reached a compensation settlement in 1989 with the Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) for $470 million, but this was far less than the estimated costs of the damage the multinational corporation caused in Bhopal.
In the intervening decades, there have been attempts to further hold UCC accountable. And just 155 miles away, residents of the Pithampur Industrial Area are dealing with issue all over again. Viral protests erupted at the start of 2025 after the state government ordered toxic waste from the Bhopal disaster to be disposed of in the area. The cause of the protests are clear: The environmental and health implications of this relocated hazardous waste are dire for nearby communities.
Pulling from the people-powered movements in both India and the United States, climate justice advocates look to the strategies and lessons that can be found in environmental justice protests.
What Do Warren County and Pithampur Have in Common?
Often referred to as the “Detroit of India,” Pithampur’s environment was already deteriorating long before the state government ordered the relocation of Bhopal’s toxic waste. In the 1980s, Pithampur became a special economic zone (SEZ), and was Asia’s largest industrial area. This provided better economic opportunities in the landlocked state of Madhya Pradesh. Automobiles, pharmaceuticals, textiles, and many other industries were set up here. That’s when “everything changed,” according to Hemant Hirole, convenor and activist of Pithampur Bachao Samiti (Save Pithampur Committee).
As a lifelong Pithampur resident, Hirole recalled that the village was once a fertile place with lush greenery with plentiful crops years ago. “We had fresh air and clean water to drink,” he said.
Save Pithampur Committee is one of the few citizen-led organizations leading the movement to protect the local ecosystem and the people who live there. Since 2013, it has regularly organized people against the ordered waste disposal.
The police had anticipated protests and confrontations with the locals as word got around about the Bhopal’s toxic waste coming to the area. Locals like Hirole were worried that the added waste would further contaminate the area as Pithampur is a low-income rural community often disregarded because of its little political power. But residents stood up against the injustice.
Hirole recalls that the village was a fertile place with lush greenery with plentiful crops years ago.
“The waste was supposed to go to Germany, then Gujarat…Why is it coming here?” Balram Kamdar, a farmer and resident of Pithampur told NPQ.
On January 3, 2025, a video went viral. During a protest gathering, two men, Raj Patel and Rajkumar Raghuvanshi, were seen pouring petrol on themselves. The disruption in the crowd toppled the phone camera, and within seconds, the two men were on fire. They were rushed to the nearby hospitals and survived the injuries.
This form of protest called self-immolation, is both a sacrifice and a political act triggered by extreme helplessness, despair and fear. The video immediately drew attention to the protests of the factory waste disposal, and soon it became national and international news.
Since then, this small town has been a hot spot for protests such as torch rallies and sit-in demonstrations. On February 12, the town’s usually busy bus stand had a dozen bodies, fully covered in white cloths, lying on the street. While a man announced demands through a microphone, a nearby banner read, in Hindi, “Against the toxic waste disposal in Pithampur.”
Residents are well aware of the environmental risk and needless death that this waste disposal would bring. The protestors lying in Savasana, or “corpse pose,” symbolized that threat. Since then, the protests have grown in number and many protestors have been charged with lathi (baton) charges and stone pelting.
In a similar story, Warren County, NC, a predominantly Black and very rural area in the United States, became the site of illegal dumping of toxic waste in 1978, despite three lawsuits and a slew of public hearings—and the fact that there were other sites the waste could have safely been disposed of. At the time, North Carolina Governor James Hunt moved forward with building a landfill to store 60,000-tons of cancer-causing waste that had been illegally dumped across 240 miles of the state’s roadways.
Local residents created a barrier with their bodies to stop the trucks from bringing the contaminated waste, leading to hundreds of arrests. After six weeks of consistent marches, protests and arrests, America’s first protest in the modern environmental movement made national headlines.
Resistance for the Long Run
The Save Pithampur Committee’s fight dates back to 2013, when there were reports of initial trial runs for waste disposal. The group, then a more informal organization fighting against industrial pollution in the region, submitted written petitions to the local authorities to protest what was to come.
The committee’s mobilization now includes pamphlet distribution, door-to-door campaigns, activations in marketplaces and bus stands, petitions, and visiting nearby villages. The goal is to inform people about the dangers of the proposed waste disposal and get signatures on the petition against the disposal to ensure that what happened in Bhopal 40 years ago would not happen in Pithampur.
The Madhya Pradesh state has shown inadequacies in managing industrial waste.
“Every day a new chemical name pops up in the discussion—it is difficult to keep up,” said Aditya Singh, editor at Deshgaon Media Foundation in an interview with NPQ.
“When they first tried to dispose of toxic waste here, our mango trees started drying up. Even insects and fish can’t survive in the water anymore,” Kamdar, the Pithampur farmer told NPQ.
Science may explain most of their concerns and observations. For instance, a 2010 NEERI (National Environmental Engineering Research Institute) report found soil around the UCC plant in Bhopal was contaminated with a variety of pesticide byproducts like carbaryl, along with α-naphthol and mercury—all linked to neurological damage, lung toxicity, memory loss, and motor dysfunction. Even with these concerns, the state high court approved the incineration after initial trial-run results from 2015.
“Our fight is not just against one waste issue but against the entire industrial pollution system.”
Re Sustainability Limited (formerly known as Ramky Enviro Engineers Ltd) has been contracted to dispose of the waste. The factory is just five kilometers (roughly 3 miles) away from Pithampur’s biggest supermarket and one km (just over a half mile) away from the nearest residential village.
Despite the protest, the waste incineration eventually started in late February 2025 in three phases. While the almost decade-long fight by local resistance groups against the disposal can feel like an uphill battle, activists like Hirole are not deterred.
In Warren County, too, the initial gatherings didn’t result in any substantial change. The disposal continued as planned. But people stuck together and formed a small group called Warren County Citizens Concerned (WCCC) which mobilized local and national leaders.
At its height, WCCC swelled to 400 members who each worked to bring attention to Warren County through litigation court cases, organized public hearings, protests, and rallying politicians against the landfill site.
Through their persistence, the landfill site was eventually detoxified in 2004, almost two decades later. That’s what Hirole plans to do as well—many decades later, several continents away.
“Our fight is not just against one waste issue but against the entire industrial pollution system,” he said.
