Page 2 of 2 Nuclear anachronism in Japan-India embrace
By P K Sundaram
Movements in every part of the country have risen in protest. Koodankulam on the southernmost tip, Mithivirdi on the West Coast, Kovvada on the East, Chutka in the middle of the country, Gorakhpur close to the capital, and Domiasiat in the far northeast (which is being eyed by the nuclear establishment for uranium mining). Protests in all of these places have been intense yet remarkably peaceful. People at the grassroots, including large numbers of women and children, have deployed non-violent forms of resistance over several years.
Mass hunger strikes lasting several days, the peaceful siege of construction sites, sea-borne protests by fishermen on their
boats, and thousands of people standing in the sea, are among the images that have been etched into our memory by the protests in Koodankulam.
Fishermen protest peacefully near the Koodankulum reactor in boats with black flags.
The Indian state, in stark contrast, has repeatedly resorted to brutal repression against the people. In response to protests, thousands of policemen surrounded the villages in Koodankulam for several days cutting off essential supplies including food and medicines, flying planes above protesting people to intimidate them, killing fishermen in Jaitapur and Koodankulam with indiscriminate firing and baton-charges, ransacking houses and destroying fishing boats.
Villagers marching in protest at reactors at Koodankulum.
These are among the televised instances of state violence against dissenting people. Going further, the Indian government slapped colonial-vintage police charges of "sedition" and "war against the Indian state" on tens of thousands of villagers in Koodankulam.
The passports of many youth in the region, who work as migrant labor in the Arabian Gulf, were impounded. The prime minister himself indulged in the demonization of the protests calling them "foreign funded". International activists and journalists, including three Japanese nationals trying to visit Koodankulam, have been deported. While international surveys have showing popular disapproval of nuclear energy the world over, the Indian government sent psychological therapists to "counsel" protesting villagers in complete contempt for people's intelligence. The government has also refused to make public basic documents related to safety and the site-selection of Koodankulam and other reactors.
Police enter Idinthikar, near Kudankulam, and beat peaceful anti-nuclear demonstrators.
The Supreme Court of India has recently given a go ahead to the Koodankulam reactors, overlooking the blatant violations of the regulator's own norms. The court's verdict rests on three hugely contested premises: the judges' belief in the necessity of nuclear energy for India's progress, their faith in the country's nuclear establishment to responsibly perform its role, and the judges' notion of the larger public interest amidst the apprehensions of small sections of people who they believe should make way for the country's progress.
Not only have the judges given judicial sanctity to these contestable propositions, they have also completely overlooked the Koodankulam-specific violations of safety norms raised by the petitioners. This is perhaps the world's only reactor being commissioned without an independent assessment of its environmental impact, without a natural source of fresh water, with thousands of people living a mere 700 meters from the reactor, and without accommodating the post-Fukushima lessons about the risk of housing the spent fuel pool in the main reactor building.
Proposed reactor projects in other places are being punished for violating such norms. The French EPR-design being implemented in Jaitapur is untested and has run into 100% cost over-runs in Finland, the only place where these new reactors are being built. It's cost in India is expected to triple. The Finnish regulator has taken Areva to court for safety violations and for undermining the terms of agreement. The four reactors being built in Gorakhpur near New Delhi have almost no water source. The small canal intended to provide water to cool these reactors ran completely dry earlier this year.
There are serious problems in the functioning of the Indian nuclear industry. India has a history of missing its nuclear power production targets miserably. Not only has it been inefficient, it has been marked with dangerous accidents, cover-ups and gross violations of best practice standards. This includes the hiring of casual workers for radiation-related work, employing them without adequate safety gear, training or health insurance, and getting away with impunity in cases of accident. Its nuclear regulator, the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, is a toothless body that is dependent on the same Department of Atomic Energy for funds and expertise that it is designed to regulate.
Japan's attempt to compensate for financial losses incurred from the Fukushima accident and to spur its own troubled nuclear power industry by selling technology to other countries is very unfortunate. Japan is seeking to enter new nuclear markets in Turkey, Vietnam, Jordan, India, Bangladesh, the United Arab Emirates, Brazil and Saudi Arabia. Japanese corporations like Mitsubishi, Hitachi and Toshiba are slated to gain huge profits through these deals.
However, these countries lack a nuclear safety culture and trained human resources, nor do they have significant experience in running nuclear facilities safely and accountably. Japan is also considering setting up a nuclear waste repository in Mongolia that has been fiercely opposed by local people. Japan's policy to rehabilitate its nuclear corporations by promoting nuclear exports has been criticized domestically. In a recent editorial the Japan Times wrote:
Mr Abe is trying to promote the export of nuclear technology at a time when the nuclear crisis at Tokyo Electric Power Co's Fukushima No 1 nuclear power plant remains ongoing and many Fukushima residents still live in fear of exposure to radioactive substances released by the plant. Some 150,000 of them still cannot return to their homes and communities due to radioactive contamination. In addition, important questions concerning the cause of the Fukushima nuclear crisis have yet to be resolved despite the studies by investigation committees set up by the government and the Diet [parliament].
4. Japan and the Indian elite's eco-destructive growth model
The current 2+2 architecture of India-Japan relations prioritizes defense ties and a completely misleading and irrational model of economic "growth" over all else.
In her letter to the Japanese and Indian prime ministers on the eve of the agreement, Lalita Ramdas, an eminent Indian anti-nuclear and women's rights activist, wrote:
We want you to use this opportunity to welcome the assistance and collaboration with our Japanese friends in finding practical solutions and making the investments so necessary in renewable energy - especially solar and wind. Recent press reports speak of the Green Phoenix rising from the Ashes. Their aim is to be totally self sufficient from renewable sources alone in Fukushima Prefecture by 2040. Imagine that India, China and Japan could together transform the global energy scenario into a safer, cleaner and certainly greener future. This could be a wonderful moment for Asia and one on which there is need for powerful, independent and collective leadership!
The Indian government is obsessed with achieving a 9-10% annual growth rate in coming years. However, the surge in the growth rate over the last few years has been entirely jobless. In fact a recent study concluded that India has had negative job growth. The major reason is that while growth is negative in the manufacturing sector, agriculture is facing its worst crisis in India's recorded history and is experiencing a sharp decline.
The suicides of Indian farmers is the only thing growing in its agriculture sector: the government's own data acknowledges that at least 270,940 Indian farmers have taken their lives since 1995 - after the neoliberal economic reforms picked up pace. Forty-six farmers daily committing suicide in India is a cruel joke in the face of its elite's claims of the country's rise.
The income gap in India is likely to become even worse in the coming years. This model of progress brings devastation and misery to the Indian poor, particularly to rural and tribal populations, from all directions - massive displacement and loss of livelihood threatens especially the millions of agrarian workers who do not own land and who work on others' fields and, hence, do not receive any compensation when the villages are acquired for "development" projects.
The current economic partnership between India and Japan would spur callous and nakedly lopsided "progress" in India. One such collaborative project that found prominent mention in the Singh-Abe joint statement is an instructive case. The Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) project is a highly eco-destructive project to develop a high-speed road of 1,700 kilometers from Delhi to Mumbai and build mega cities along this road.
Thousands of villages would be displaced, land owners would make huge profits, and the agriculture in six states would be ruined. The DMIC would require about 10,000 hectares for the road and 20,000 hectares for the industrial zone, tearing through densely populated states and farmland. This is the biggest urbanization plan in India's history and would also mean its largest displacement of people - far more even than the bloody transfer of population during the India-Pakistan partition.
To complete and sustain this project, newer power plants and new mines would be required that would mean more displacement and the further erosion of India's rapidly depleting green cover. These six states in north India produce most of its food grain, and the farmers are largely dependent on river and groundwater. Even beyond the project area, farmers would face acute water crises since this project would suck dry their ground water and
irrigation canals. A massive movement of farmers is already emerging against this project.
Conclusion
Japan pursued nuclear energy vigorously in the last half of the 20th century despite being the victim of nuclear weapons, and it embraced the neoliberal model of capitalism. Both the Fukushima accident and the Japanese economy's decline over the last two decades should make it re-think the twin goals of neoliberal growth and the ongoing development of nuclear energy.
India, as a developing country, is standing at a crucial threshold where it can learn from Japan and cooperate with it in the realization of a more humane economy. The two countries should cooperate in exploring a nuclear-free energy future by pooling talents, resources and technologies. India and Japan can become harbingers of comprehensive disarmament by jointly launching global initiatives rather than diluting the NPT and becoming the pawns of other's militarist interests in Asia.
People of Koodankulam praying for victims of Hiroshima
While the world is still grappling with the implications of the Fukushima meltdowns, completion of the Japan-India nuclear agreement would be anachronistic. It would strengthen the insanity of India's imposing nuclear reactors on its people against their will. It would further fuel the nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan and would provide the ultimate legitimacy for India's nuclear tests.
The agreement would also destabilize the Asian continent by promoting India-Japan's strategic role in encircling China. An online appeal signed by more than 2,000 international citizens has called for the termination of the nuclear agreement and a moratorium on Japan's nuclear export policy. It is time we listened to these voices of sanity.
P K Sundaram is Research Consultant with the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace, India. He can be contacted at pksundaram@gmail.com
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