Govind Purushottam Deshpande, 1938-2013. Eminent Marathi playwright and intellectual Govind Purushottam Deshpande died at 8.15 p.m. on 16 October 2013, following a long illness.
Govind Purushottam Deshpande, 1938-2013. Eminent Marathi playwright and intellectual Govind Purushottam Deshpande died at 8.15 p.m. on 16 October 2013, following a long illness.
As a feminist, I’ve always assumed that by fighting to emancipate women I was building a better world – more egalitarian, just and free. But lately I’ve begun to worry that ideals pioneered by feminists are serving quite different ends. I worry, specifically, that our critique of sexism is now supplying the justification for new forms of inequality and exploitation.
India and the United States have been engaged in intense discussions on civilian nuclear power for more than seven years. In 2008, in return for Washington’s help in persuading the Nuclear Suppliers Group to create a special exemption for India, the Manmohan Singh government promised the United States that it would buy reactors with a minimum generating capacity of 10,000 megawatts from American companies. This commitment was made without any economic studies, or even a comparison of reactors available in the world market. Going by the current capital costs of nuclear reactors, this would have translated into $50 billion or more in reactor sales.
It is telling that Wall Street, which rarely considers the consequences of gambling on a risk, will not finance the construction of a nuclear plant without a full loan guarantee from the U.S. government. Nuclear power is also uninsurable in the private insurance market. The Price-Anderson Act of 1957 requires taxpayers to cover almost all the cost if a meltdown should occur. No other industry that produces electricity poses such a great national security risk should sabotage or malfunction occur. No other means of generating power can produce such long-lasting catastrophic damage and mayhem from one unpredictable accident. No other form of energy is so loaded with the silent violence of radioactivity.
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