By DANNY PEARL
                    Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

                    BHOPAL, India -- If you could see the graffiti on the old Union Carbide
                    Corp. pesticide factory here, you'd think the disaster that made this city
                    famous is still in the air every day, stirring angry speeches and haunted
                    conversations.

                    "Take immediate steps to extradite Warren Anderson and the
                    authorized representatives of Union Carbide from USA," says one
                    freshly painted call to action on the wall of the plant, which has been left
                    to grow weeds since a gas leak in December 1984 killed more than
                    3,000 residents and injured at least 50,000 more. "Hang Anderson,"
                    says another, of the former Union Carbide chairman.

                    Actually, a tiny group of activists repaints the graffiti once a year, on
                    the anniversary of the catastrophe. In fact, the residents of Bhopal
                    rarely talk about the disaster anymore. People are more worried about
                    central India's drought.

                    The gas disaster? "We have got the money; everything is finished. It's
                    an old story," says kerosene salesman Tulsi Ram Sahu, 60 years old,
                    who used to live near the plant and says he has vision problems from
                    gas exposure. Mr. Sahu got the last installment of his 25,000 rupee
                    ($540) compensation two years ago. Now he's playing cards in his new
                    neighborhood, a slum surrounding Indian Oil Corp.'s gas storage tanks.
                    Isn't that as dangerous as living near a pesticide plant?

                    He shrugs. "We're poor people."

                    The leak of deadly methyl isocyanate, or MIC, gas took place on Dec. 3
                    1984, shortly after midnight, after water somehow entered a storage
                    tank and triggered a chemical chain reaction. Pressure soon rose so
                    high that the MIC gas rushed out of the tank's safety valve, a Union
                    Carbide report concluded; a pressure gauge wasn't operating at the
                    time. Wind carried the gas into residential areas of Bhopal, killing people
                    without warning. Those who left their homes and tried to flee on foot
                    only got exposed more.

                    In the Western mind, Bhopal, a city of 1.9 million people, is like
                    Chernobyl or Three Mile Island, a dateline that forever serves as a
                    warning to mankind. But in India, "there's always something or other
                    happening, unfortunately. People forget," says Vikas Rakheja, owner of
                    Bhopal's busy Lyall Book Depot. He's selling computer books,
                    quiz-preparation books, self-help books, but he doesn't stock any
                    English-language books on the tragedy and says no such book exists in
                    Hindi. "Nobody would buy it," he says, turning to help a customer
                    interested in a stress-management volume.

                    Union Carbide was acquired Tuesday by Dow Chemical Co., but the $7.3
                    billion deal didn't get so much as a mention the next day in the local
                    press. Government officials in Madhya Pradesh, of which Bhopal is the
                    capital, don't even like to talk about the disaster anymore. "I think it's
                    time people forget it and look ahead," says R. Gopalakrishnan, political
                    adviser to the state's chief minister, Digvijay Singh, who attended this
                    year's World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, two weeks
                    ago.

                    The state has even floated the idea of eliminating its department of
                    Bhopal Gas Tragedy Relief and Rehabilitation, set up to help victims.
                    People exposed to the gas have most commonly experienced eye
                    problems, such as cataracts, and respiratory ailments including
                    tuberculosis, though some Indian experts claim the gas caused a
                    breakdown of a range of other body functions, too.

                    Leading an uphill fight against closing the book on the disaster is a duo
                    of full-time activists. One is Satinath Sarangi, head of Bhopal Group for
                    Information and Action and director of the Sambhavna ["Possibility"]
                    Clinic for victims. His funding comes largely from an antipesticides group
                    in Britain, which publishes periodic solicitations in London's Guardian
                    newspaper with the now-famous photo of the half-buried face of a girl
                    killed by the gas leak.

                    Mr. Sarangi, who speaks flawless English, has been a frequent source
                    for foreign journalists' Bhopal coverage over the years. This week, he
                    showed off his new gynecological clinic to a French television team that
                    had a bit of extra time after covering the earthquake in Gujarat. "There
                    is some memory loss, but we're keeping it going," says Mr. Sarangi.

                    The other activist is Abdul Jabbar, a 42-year-old former laborer who
                    says he lost his father and brother to gas-related disease. His corridor
                    at the Bhopal Gas-Affected Women's Industry Association also features
                    a "Resist Globalization" poster. On a Sunday, Mr. Jabbar shows off rows
                    of sewing machines, where he says 40 female victims of the accident
                    would be working if it weren't the weekend.

                    But on a Wednesday visit, the place is still empty. Mr. Jabbar
                    acknowledges that the workshop, which was making clothes and jute
                    cushion covers, hasn't operated since 1999, when the compensation
                    money dried up and victims stopped donating 10 rupees a month as he
                    had requested. Attendance at weekly meetings of gas victims is 5% of
                    what it was in the late 1980s, he says. "The press takes the gas
                    disaster seriously on the anniversaries: 10 years, 15 years, next it will
                    be 20, 25 and then 50 years," he says.

                    Bhopal's nemesis, Union Carbide, faded from the picture long before
                    last week's merger. It paid $470 million in compensation to the state
                    and sold its Indian business to a Calcutta tea company. The state now
                    controls the factory site. A criminal case drags on in Bhopal district
                    court, with a few days of testimony each month, no longer making
                    headlines in the local Daily Bhasker newspaper. Eight officials of Union
                    Carbide stand accused of "culpable homicide not amounting to murder,"
                    a charge later downgraded to "rash and negligent act." The one
                    American among them, Mr. Anderson, has failed to appear in court, but
                    there is little chance India will seek his extradition from the U.S., Mr.
                    Sarangi acknowledges.

                    India set up a Disaster Management Institute in Bhopal to teach the
                    lessons of the Union Carbide disaster, but the institute ran out of
                    money by 1995 as the government's interest dwindled. Norway kicked
                    in $500,000 to keep the institute afloat.

                    There is no chemical industry in Bhopal anymore, other than a pesticide
                    bottling plant called Kilpest, but that's not because the industry
                    wouldn't be welcome. "We have got to fight in the international arena"
                    for jobs, says S.R. Mohanty, the state director of industrial
                    development. One way is with a one-stop office for granting permission
                    for new factories. "There won't be any inspector to check up and ask
                    things. You can say, 'I hereby certify I am all right.' "

                    Write to Daniel Pearl at danny.pearl@wsj.com