In one horrifying night and through the long misery of nearly eighteen years of injustice that have followed it, the city of Bhopal in India can be said to have experienced the head-on impact of world historical and political economic processes. In 1969, Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) set up a plant to manufacture the pesticide Sevin in Bhopal, with the permission and, indeed, the encouragement of the Indian government. This was the heyday of the Green Revolution, introduced in India in the mid-1960s and based on HYV (high-yielding variety) seeds, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and vastly increased irrigation. The disastrous social and environmental consequences of this technological choice (made by Indian planners,This was done at least partially in order to avoid the political vulnerability that dependence on imported foodgrains might bring. Marshal Windmiller, conversation with one of the authors. with backing from international agencies such as the World Bank and the Ford and Rockefeller foundations) are well documented,See, for example, Vandana Shiva, Violence of the Green Revolution (New York, 1991). but it is not always remembered that the Bhopal gas tragedy has its roots in the same narrative. The design of the Bhopal plant, as well as the policies relating to its maintenance and operation, were in keeping with the double-standard often applied by transnational corporations in their Third World outposts, where environmental, worker, and community safety issues may be seen as less pressing than at home.For detailed accounts of the corporation's disregard for safety standards at the Bhopal plant, see David Dembo, Ward Morehouse and Lucinda Wykle, Abuse of Power. Social Performance of Multinational Corporations: The Case of Union Carbide (New York, 1990), 87–91; Ward Morehouse and Arun Subramaniam, The Bhopal Tragedy: What Really Happened and What It Means for American Workers and Communities at Risk (New York, 1986), 2–8; Ruth Norris et al., Pills, Pesticides and Profits, (Croton, NY, 1982).