Tonight is the 41st Anniversary of the Bhopal Disaster. What is the status of PSM in India? Have we learnt the lessons? My take:
GOVERNMENT AND LAWS:
Till today, there is no specific legislation in PSM in India. The oil and gas industry OISD-GDN- 206 specifies guidelines to be followed. There is talk about bringing in PSM legislation but I have not heard of anything released till now.
INVESTIGATION OF INCIDENTS AND PUBLIC SHARING OF REPORTS:
There is still a shroud of secrecy when any incident investigation is carried out by an expert committee. The results are still not shared publicly. The Sigachi industries blast investigation report is mentioned in an article in the Hindu newspaper "Though the report was submitted to the government in September, it has not been publicly shared nor has any action been initiated against the company management".
Read the article in this link:
Unless we share and learn for incidents, we will not be able to prevent another incidents. "There are no new incidents".
The number of incidents of gas/chemical leakage from Government data presented in parliament for 2018 to 2022 is given below (Source: https://www.data.gov.in/resource/state-wise-number-data-received-chief-inspector-factories-cifs-gas-chemical-leakage)
The LG Polymer gas leak incident in Visakhapatnam occurred in May 2020 in AP.
INDUSTRY:
A lot of progress has been made in the large chemical process industries regarding PSM. All the large players in the industry (Public limited) and major private sector players have implemented either the OSHA 14 element PSM system or the 20 element risk based PSM system of CCPS.
Industry bodies like ICC, FICCI, FAI, CCPS etc have raised awareness of PSM by seminars and workshops.
There is a lot of activity going on in AI and ML and other technologies but the leadership must realize that these are only tools that can act as enablers. Hard decisions need to be taken by management who are competent in process safety. There is a lack of Process Safety competency requirements for directors on the boards of chemical processing industries.
ACADEMIA:
Academia in India is now offering more courses in process safety. Recently IIT Madras has started a PG diploma in process safety. See the link https://code.iitm.ac.in/processsafety
WAY FORWARD:
Presently, the improvements in PSM in India are being carried out in Silos. The government must involve Industry, Academia, subject matter experts and public bodies to chart out an integrated approach towards improving process safety in India. Investigation and sharing of lessons learnt from fatal incidents should be made publicly and centrally available.