No to Kingfi sher Bailout

C Rammanohar Reddy

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‘Foreign Hand’ and the Anti-Koodankulam Movement

A

Public protests against nuclear power stations have intensified all over the world after the disastrous accident at the Fukushima power plant. Several grave management errors have since then come to light in that power plant despite the fact that Japan is a rich developed country with a fine record of democratic social concerns. And we must not forget Three Mile Island accident in America, or the horrendous fallout of Chernobyl. All these accidents occurred in rich countries. Indians naturally fear that similar accidents may occur in India with its known history of poor management practices, and the inadequate training and motivation provided to lower staff. In people’s minds, it is more a question of when and where a nuclear accident will occur, rather than if, and that nuclear contamination lasting several thousands of years will wreak havoc in our densely populated land.

The Germans, once votaries of nuclear power, have now said that their nuclear

units will be phased out as quickly as possible, and power generated by renewable energy sources. After all, a turbine can be turned to generate electricity by using either coal, oil, wind or hydropower, far more safely than with nuclear energy. India has enormous potential in the solar energy it receives. Megawatt units of solar thermal and photovoltaic systems are being installed in the US, Spain, Greece and several other countries. The European Desertec project now on the drawing board envisages a future when all of Europe will be powered by solar systems set up in the Sahara. But solar energy has never had the powerful corporate or military backing of nuclear energy.

It is not enough that highly placed experts in an arrogant hierarchical society say that accidents will never happen. It is a fundamentalist statement not worth arguing about. Further, an open public discussion of the economic viability of nuclear energy, including all costs, has not been held anywhere. Its plant-load factor record in India is dismal, though technocrats keep assuring us that it must get better in the future. Many scholars are aware that the American public relations drive in the early 1950s of the concept of “Atoms for Peace” was really meant to mask its horrific military deve lopment. And hawks everywhere, including India’s Raja Ramanna, continued to exploit the same theme for military reasons. Even poor illiterate people are aware of the great political, economic, and personal pressure that is brought to bear on our politicians, bureaucrats and scientists by foreign corporate interests who must sell nuclear systems to third world countries to make a fast buck since their own people reject the danger. The “foreign hand” is not supporting the humble protesters at Koodankulam; we have to look higher up to spot its pressure.

Vithal Rajan

Hyderabad

on the verge of succumbing to the scare tactics of Vijay Mallya, owner of Kingfisher Airlines (KAIR). The government seems set to “persuade” banks to provide him yet another bailout to fund a company that has so far racked up almost Rs 7,000 crore in losses, entirely funded by loans. Since most of the money has been lent by nationalised and public sector banks, which are repeatedly capitalised by the government, it would ultimately mean that this profl igate private enterprise will be bailed out with public funds.

We express our strong objection to any further bailout of the fl amboyant billionaire, which will only allow him to continue to mismanage the airline. We wish to submit that:

Economic & Political Weekly

EPW

nationalised banks but also the national carrier – Air India. Even a foreign observer like Veritas calls the civil aviation ministry’s attitude to Air India “duplicitous” and observes, “it could be on the diktat of the regulatory authorities involving various ministries of the Government of India that an unviable airline, KAIR, which is competing against the incumbent state carrier and siphoning away its passengers on both the domestic and international routes, is being supported via taxpayer-funded fi nancial institutions”.

Aruna Roy, Nikhil Dey, Sucheta Dalal, Debashis Basu and others