South Asia Citizens Web

The events of 18 July in the Manesar plant of Maruti Suzuki which ended with the murder of a manager were not a sudden conflagration. Anger at the plant had been building up for months over the management’s refusal to recognise an elected union; workers were increasingly frustrated over their inability to exercise their constitutional rights and the demand of equal pay for equal work was falling on deaf years. Rather than portray the workers as villains, managements in this industrial belt of Haryana have to ask themselves why they have not been able to develop a democratic industrial relations framework that can address the concerns of workers.

To any old-timer, the earliest image of the Bihar caste wars is from 1977. Belchhi in Patna had seen 14 Scheduled Caste workers killed, and the enduring image is of a visit by Indira Gandhi, otherwise lying low since the post-Emergency defeat. She had to ride an elephant to the small hamlet of Dalits, the monsoon having waterlogged the approach road.

It seems that the IAEA had known about the meltdown in late March but government agencies had sat on this information until TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Co) had admitted meltdown at No 1 reactor on May 15, 2011. But its not surprising, adds the author of the piece, since governments have covered up nuclear meltdowns for the last fifty years. The coverup has been described by the well known American physicist Dr Michio Kaku, We were told not to worry, there had been only three partial meltdowns. Now we know it was a hundred percent meltdown in all three reactors. Radiation? Minimal, that’s what we were told. Now we know it was comparable to the radiation at Chernobyl.

English Translation of the book "Kalpakkam Nuclear Reactors and the Submarine Volcano" written in Tamil by Dr. V. Pugalenthi and Dr. R. Ramesh and published in March 2012. This translation is by Indira Gandhi Center for Atomic Research (IGCAR), Kalpakkam.

A three-member team, consisting of J.P. Rao, Kopa Kunjam and Prof Nandini Sundar of Delhi University, visited Kottaguda, Sarkeguda and Lingagiri villages of Bastar on July 3 and 4, 2012. The following are excerpts from their findings as well as a statement by villagers.