Development for whom?

Nuclear power plants leave a trail of long term impact. There is need to balance development


Sankar Ray / Kolkata


India’s most well-known agricultural scientist M S Swaminathan has written a letter to Environment minister Jairam Ramesh suggesting growth of mangroves and similar species as ‘bio-shields’ along the coast adjoining the atomic energy installations to protect the nuclear reactors from the fury of tsunamis of the kind that hit Japan last month.

A Rajya Sabha member, Swaminathan is not against the risky alteration of land use pattern in coastal areas for setting up nuclear power plants. This was not unexpected from one, who in the interests of agri-business of MNCs, vigorously promoted green revolution which destroyed fertility of at least 600,000 acres of land that became saline and unfit for farming through excessive and inappropriate use of fertilizers and pesticides. This also polluted waterways, poisoned agricultural workers, and killed beneficial insects and other wildlife. Such irrigation practices naturally led to salt build-up and consequential abandonment of some of the best farming lands.

All the new nuclear power plants are in coastal or fertile areas – some seismic too, like Jaitapur in Maharashtra and Swaminathan’s limitations are obvious. It can’t be that he is not aware of the fallout and the movement of radio-nuclides through marine and terrestrial environments . Ultimately they enter the food chain and the human body.

“The toxicity of contaminants and radioactivity fallout represent significant health risks. Acute exposures are further complicated when followed by chronic exposure, as such assaults have a cumulative and synergistic effect on health and well-being. Chronic exposure to fallout does more than increase the risk of developing cancers, it threatens the immune system, can exacerbate pre-existing conditions, affects fertility, increases rates of birth defects, and can retard physical and mental development, among other things. And we know the effects of such exposures can last for generations”, wrote eminent American environmental sociologist Barbara Rose Johnston wrote immediately after the nuclear catastrophe, triggered by the tsunami in Sendai region of Japan in the second week of March.

Take Haripur in the coastal tracts of south Bengal. It’s a self-reliant micro-society where poverty is unknown. “The main reason for setting up nuclear power plants in coastal regions is the proximity to water source. Such areas will experience a deleterious hydro-geological imbalance. There is no point in setting up nuclear power plants in developing countries like India when the West undergoes extensive decommissioning of them and abandonment of plans for future programme of addition of new capacities in nuclear power generation”, said Prof Sujay Basu, ex- director of School of Energy Studies, Jadavpur University –in fact, the SES’s founder director.

Almost in a symbiotic way, Warren Buffett, one of the biggest plutocrats the world over has asked India’s super-wealthy people at a dinner in New Delhi to be philanthropic and give away their wealth to the poor. However, his flagship company Berkshire Hathaway (BH) bought shares in the South Korean MNC and steel giant POSCO in 2006, following the signing of Memorandum of Understanding between POSCO and the Government of Orissa in 2005.

BH’s holding is about 5 per cent of total share capital in POSCO and is the single largest share-holder of POSCO outside Korea. The hypocrisy lies precisely there, as the livelihood of over 50,000 villagers of Dhinkia, Patna, Gobindpur in 4000 acres of Jagatsinghpur district is threatened POSCO’s the Rs 52,000 crore steel plant project - 12 Million Tons Per Annum (MTPA) integrated steel plant, plus a captive port adjacently at Erasma Block.

“How can Buffett claim to care for the poor, if his investments lead to the creation of that poverty in the first place” questions Professor Sirisha Naidu, a US-based economist. Buffet isn’t concerned about the agony that awaits betel leaf cultivators who earn annually Rs. 40,000 per decimal of land (100 decimals = 1 acre) on an average and POSCO offers a paltry, one-time compensation of Rs. 11,500 per decimal – less than a hundredth of the compensation.

All this is directly or indirectly an exhibition of development of (human) underdevelopment. Under attack are the sub-alterns, mostly displaced persons from villages.

Farmers and fishermen rise against thermal power plant in AP

PROTEST

Movement against the power plant takes a violent turn

In the ongoing protest against a controversial thermal power plant in Srikakulam district of Andhra Pradesh, three people were killed and scores injured on February 28, a day when Budget was being presented in Parliament and roadmap being drawn for the next 12 months. Police claimed that it opened fire to quell violent protests against a proposed power plant.

The rampaging mobs, who have been protesting against the plant for quite some time, apparently set afire a police vehicle and fought pitched battle with the police in the village, about two km from Kakarapally, where East Coast Energy Pvt. Limited (ECEPL) is setting up a 2,640 MW coal-based thermal power plant at a cost of Rs 12,000 crore.

The situation in Vadditandra and surrounding villages is said to be highly tense. Earlier At least 25 protesters were injured in the clashes with police on February 25. Villagers, including fishermen, are trying to stop the work which resumed last week after a disruption of over six months, saying that the power plant would damage the ecology of the area and affect their livelihood.

Two persons were killed and several others were injured July 14 last year when police opened fire on people protesting against a similar power project by Nagarjuna Construction Company (NCC) at Sompeta in the same district.

Members of National Alliance of People's Movements, Andhra Pradesh chapter has sought the intervention of the State Human Rights Commission to stop mass arrests of people for staging peaceful protests against the construction the thermal power plant in Srikakulam.

The thermal power plant is an undertaking of East Coast Energy Private Limited in Naupada wetland at Kakrapalli village of Srikakulam district. The farmers have been demanding a halt to the construction of the power plant since August 2010 by using peaceful methods like relay hunger strike, as they fear that the project would deprive thousands of local fishermen and farmers of their livelihood.

After the firing, sitting on the debris of their houses, women and children were seen crying while some others tried to salvage whatever they could from their damaged houses. Villagers alleged that their houses caught fire when police hurled smoke bombs. Police claimed that they had to use force when the protesters attacked the power plant at Kakarapally village. The villagers resisted police attempts to disperse them and tried to chase them in the open ground.

East Coast Energy (ECEPL) is setting up a 2,640 MW coal-based thermal power plant at a cost of Rs 12,000 crore at Kakarapally, but the local community is opposing the project on the ground that it is coming up on a wetland and will endanger their livelihood. The villagers, including fishermen, are trying to stop the construction work which resumed last week after a disruption of over six months.

ECEPL said it was pained over the incidents. “We are deeply pained at the unfortunate incidents that happened today (Monday) in Srikakulam. The company is committed to the sustainable development and is working wholeheartedly with the state government to restore normalcy in the area,” said a statement from the company. According to the statement, the project received all mandatory and regulatory clearances. The use of super-critical technology results in reduced coal consumption and emission of green house gases besides giving higher net plant efficiency, it claimed. The first two units (2x660 MW) under Phase I are scheduled to be commissioned in mid-2013 and other units thereafter.

Again the question of development versus displacement is being played out in Srikakulam district. Local people again asking why their interests – economic, social, environmental and livelihood concerns were overlooked when the decision was taken to set up the plant.

Problems galore in Land Acquisition Bill

Acquisition of fertile land raises more questions than it answers

Sankar Ray / Kolkata

In the late 1940s, Bankim Mukherjee, a legendary peasant and trade union leader, was traveling in a boat in eastern Bengal (now Bangladesh). The boatman casually lamented that poverty forced him to sell his operational holding of a little more than an acre. Mukherjee, one of the first Leftist legislators of pre-independence era and an ace orator-parliamentarian asked why he wasn’t putting efforts to keep a wolf from the door. The boatman replied, “If I earn more and have some savings, I shall again buy land and begin cultivation.” Mukherjee told this in an interview to a well-known poet-cum-reporter Golam Quddus.

The umbilical relationship between a peasant and the land is an axiomatic reality. During the agitation of farmers in Uttar Pradesh in August 2010 over the 165 km land acquisition for the Yamuna Expressway, a direct road link between Noida and the Taj Mahal city Agra, I remembered the yearning of a boatman on the mighty river Padma, forced to sell his land. Chief minister Mayavati, wriggled out of the situation by increasing the rate of compensation. It was markedly higher than what the CPI(M)-led Left Front government paid for land acquisition at Singur for the abortive Nano car-project.

True, the colonial LA Act, 1894 is outmoded and not in sync with welfare objectives of Indian democratic polity and its replacement has become long overdue. But the sudden eagerness to recast the law was not out of penchant for the farmers. It happened to meet the requirements for nearly 200 projects under Special Economic Zone (SEZ). An SEZ is a `foreign territory’, apparently for the purpose of duties and taxes, but labour laws are not applicable there. The new bill therefore is suspect.

Former rural development secretary, D Bandyopadhyay who is also the architect of ‘Operation Barga’, the USP for the CPI(M) for over three decades, opposed the Land Acquisition (Amendment) Bill of 2009 tooth and nail in an article in Mainstream. The new act demolishes even the semblance of welfare.

He wrote that a law is amended generally to bring in improvement or to be in conformity with some important judicial decisions. The Land Acquisition (LA) Act of 1894 does require revision to conform to the current-day situation. So far, there could not be any objection. But the way the amendments have been made looks as if we are going back on time. “In the amendments suggested, all beneficial, pro-poor and pro-rural areas points have been omitted,” he noted.

There is another point, which Bandyopadhyay, thinks “sinister and dangerous.” He goes on to elaborate his resentment. “It relates to any project of general public use (not public purpose) undertaken by ‘a person’ for which he has purchased or negotiated to purchase 70 per cent of the land and the remaining 30 per cent would be acquired by the state. The definition of a ‘person’ is ironic. It says, a ‘person’ means a company, association of persons, a body of persons whether incorporated or not. It means basically the corporate sector has been given a free hand in acquiring whatever land they like, a part of which will be through negotiations but the more difficult part would be through state intervention.” Obviously, the amendment tramples the very spirit of the Directive Principles of State Policy of the Constitution.

Lastly, where is the exit route? What happens if the project is dropped? The Tatas are still in possession of nine hundred and ninety-seven acres were acquired for setting up a small car factory. They abandoned the project in October 2008. What happens to the land? “The law is silent. In the early 1950s, the West Bengal Government gave 750 acres of prime land between the GT Road and the main Eastern Railway line in the district of Hooghly for setting up an automobile factory by the Birlas. In 50 years, the company could not use more than 300 acres leaving 450 acres fallow. Is it not a national waste that a prime land amounting to 450 acres could neither be used for agriculture nor for any industrial purpose for half-a-century? The new law should provide for a simple exit policy for return of the acquired land to the original owners if the project is abandoned, or the scope of the project is changed,” Bandyopadhyay argues.