The government is responsible for making and implementing sound safety laws in the country for the protection of its citizens and upholding the Fundamental Right to Life. However, the Bhopal gas tragedy was a tragic proof of government's failure in fulfilling this responsibility. First, the safety laws were lax in India. Second, even these weak safety laws were not fully enforced.
The government officials refused to recognise the Bhopal plant as hazardous and allowed it to come up in a populated locality. Despite objections, the government insisted that clean technologies and safer procedures were notJUs an option because the state needed jobs and investment. The government thus failed in its responsibility to protect the interests of the people and seriously compromised on their safety.

Privately-owned companies are always aiming for profit maximization. Foreign companies also come to India with the same motive. Availability of cheap labour is the prime attraction. Wages that the companies have to pay to workers, say in the USA, are far higher than what they pay to workers in poorer countries like India. Companies can get longer hours of work for lower pay.
Additional expenses like housing for workers are also fewer. Cost cutting can also be done by other more dangerous means because of lax safety rules in India. Due to high population and rampant unemployment, employers exploit workers because of their vulnerable positions and there is always the option to replace one employee with another.

At its West Virginia plant in the USA, the Union Carbide had put in place computerised warning and monitoring systems. Whereas the UC plant in Bhopal relied on manual guages and the human senses to detect gas leaks. The company cut its costs by seriously compromising on safety in the Bhopal plant. Every safety device was either malfunctioning or in short supply.
Between 1980 and 1984, the work crew for the MIC plant was cut in half from 12 to 6 workers. The period of safety training for workers was brought down from 6 months to 15 days and the post of night-shift worker for the MIC plant was abolished.

According to the 2001 census, over 12 million children in India, aged between 5 and 14 years work in various occupations including hazardous ones. In October 2006, the government amended the Child Labour Protection Act, banning children under 14 years of age from working as domestic servants or as workers in dhabas, restaurants, tea shops etc. It made employing these children a punishable offence. Anyone found violating the ban must be penalised with a punishment ranging from a jail term of three months to two years and/or fine of Rs 10,000 to Rs 20,000. The central government has asked state governments to develop plans to rescue and rehabilitate children who are working as domestic servants.