The city attracted international attention after the Bhopal disaster, when a Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) pesticide manufacturing plant leaked a mixture of deadly gases including methyl isocyanate on the night of 2/3 December 1984, leading to the worst industrial disaster in history and a loss of thousands of lives. Many more were rendered sick and have been facing chronic health problems such as psychological and neurological disabilities, blindness, skin, vision and breathing disorders and the children, whose parents or even grandparents (i.e. second generation) were exposed to the gas, still suffer of serious birth defects. The soil and ground water near the factory site, has been contaminated by the toxic wastes and other chemicals still leaking from the factory. The Indian government, however, maintains that no such pollution has taken place or that any such toxins are even present at the site. Since then, Bhopal has been a center of protests and campaigns which have been joined by millions from across the globe.

A B-1 class city, Bhopal is an important economic, industrial, educational and political center of the State as well as Central India and houses various institutions and installations of state as well as some of national importance. Some of them include ISRO's Master Control Facility which is the second installation of its kind in the country (the first being at Hassan), an youngest Laboratory of CSIR i.e. the Advanced Materials and Processes Research Institute (AMPRI), MANIT (Regional Engineering College), Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER Bhopal), School of Planning and Architecture, Indian Institute of Forest Management and All India Institute of Medical Sciences, which is expected to get completed soon.