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On October 2nd - which is Gandhi’s birthday and India’s most famous national holiday - activists held a rally in Delhi against nuclear power. The situation was pretty bizarre for the government as on September 29th the Prime Minister decided to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Homi J. Bhabha, the father of India's nuclear program. Three days later the government went into selective amnesia and forgot Gandhi’s ideas on the nuclear issue.
Nuclear energy is presented as the foremost solution for the nation’s lack of energy security, military security and overall national security. All this in a country where hundreds of millions of people do not have food security, water security, sanitation security, and other basic needs for life and human dignity.
The Indian government has signed nuclear agreements with a number of countries such as the United States, France, Russia, Kazakhstan, Namibia, Mongolia and so forth. India is now projected to generate an additional 25,000 MW of nuclear power by 2020 with American plants in Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, Areva plants in Maharashtra, and Russian reactors in Tamil Nadu. But it’s not for the first time that India has come out with such projections. Let’s put this in perspective. In 1984, the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) had a dream of generating 10,000 MW of electricity by the year 2000. Never mind that Homi J. Bhabha had dreamt of 20,000 MW by 1987.
It’s 2009 and India still produces only somewhat more than 4000MW.
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Gandhi Jayanti was a perfect day for organizing this rally and reminding the government about the incoherence of its policies and targets. Unfortunately, government acknowledgment is hard to come by. As Gandhi himself said: ‘They are ready to garland my photos, but never ready to follow my advice.’
(This is a guest post by Orsi Kralik, nuclear campaign blogger for Greenpeace India)
