Whose power is it anyway?

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has put an end to ambiguity over the government’s policy on how it plans to implement the controversial nuclear power projects by saying the Kudankulam plant will start operations in the next couple of months.

The four reactors, built with Russian technology, are slated to provide 4,000MW to the national power grid and cater to both the domestic and industrial consumers.

One can’t help but wonder if the newfound panacea for our power woes will go the same way as the mega dams, which Jawaharlal Nehru had touted as “temples of development”. These projects provided electricity and irrigated millions of hectares but also displaced millions of people and drowned vast stretches of pristine forests.

Till Fukushima, Japan was the poster boy for champions of “safe, fail-proof” nuclear power and the tsunami nailed all the well-crafted and well-publicised lies. It has come to a point where even breast milk in the nearby precincts have been found contaminated by radiation.

If somebody wants to establish a firecracker factory next to your house won’t you want it shifted to some uninhabited area? Won’t you be worried for the safety of your family and that of the neighbourhood even if the top rocket scientist comes and tells you about its safeguards?

In a country where operations and safety features of all nuclear facilities are ‘classified’ and details opaque due to ‘national security’ concerns, it is only natural that the threatened population is up in arms.

Visuals of tribal folk near the Jaduguda uranium mines suffering from unknown diseases, congenital defects in newborns, sterility in young adults, and lung disease in mine workers, from Anand Patwardhan’s War and Peace (the filmmaker had to go all the way to the Supreme Court to get the censors’ cuts quashed) are enough to make anyone have second thoughts about ‘safe’ nuclear power production.

The prime minister’s soft voiced yet razor sharp concluding observation that Kudankulam protests were “overdone” smacks of arrogance and makes a mockery of the idea of democracy. Not surprising for a head of the government who is used to being dictated by a higher power.

When the whole world is phasing out nuclear power and replacing it with greener and sustainable technologies, it’s sad that our government is going for it — a policy with single-minded focus of burgeoning the wallets of private players at the cost of health and safety of public.