Will India’s athletes boycott the Olympics?

By J.A.

THE front page of today’s Independent newspaper in Britain has a rather alarming banner headline: “London Olympics in crisis as India threatens boycott”. Alarming, that is, to Lord Sebastian Coe and his colleagues on Locog (the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games). The last thing they need in the build-up to next July’s Olympics is bad publicity.

But is the headline more alarmist than alarming? I suspect so. The genesis of the threat is India’s appalling Bhopal disaster of 1984, when a Union Carbide chemical plant blew up, killing many thousands and impairing—often severely—the health of perhaps half a million. Union Carbide was subsequently bought in 2001 by another American company, Dow Chemical, which has just signed a £7m ($10.8m) sponsorship deal with Locog to emblazon the company name on the “wrapping” around the Olympic stadium.

Frankly, the compensation of $470m paid by Union Carbide in 1991 to the victims of the disaster was derisory (as was, in the opinion of many, the reaction of the Indian authorities). So, it is perhaps not surprising that India’s athletes are petitioning for a boycott (the Indian Olympic Association will apparently vote on the issue on December 5^th).Nor is it surprising that Bhopal’s politicians have jumped on the bandwagon: the idea is that adequate compensation was not paid; legal wrangles are continuing in both India and America; Dow has inherited the wrangles; and now would be a good time to embarrass Dow.

Lord Coe, whom sports fans remember as a supreme middle-distance runner (two Olympics gold medals and two silver medals), is mounting a strong defence:

Dow have been a global partner of the IOC since 2010. They came through a rigorous procurement process, one that was geared to creating the most sustainable solution to the wrap around the stadium. Dow were not the owners, the operators or involved in the management of that plant at the time of either the disaster or the settlement in 1989 that has been upheld twice by the Indian Supreme Court. There are issues around this issue, but I am satisfied they are not issues that directly involve Dow.

Maybe, but Tessa Jowell, who was the minister in charge of the Olympics in Britain’s last Labour government, says the call for a boycott is a “significant step”, and one Labour MP is calling on Locog to scrap the deal with Dow.

I suspect that the boycott will not happen, and that if it does, few will notice (India won only one gold and two bronze medals at the Beijing Olympics). Meanwhile, Lord Coe should know as well as anyone that politics inevitably intrude into the Olympics: he won his first gold medal at the 1980 Moscow games, which were boycotted by America, and his second at the 1984 Los Angeles games, which were boycotted by the Soviet Union.