South Asia Citizens Web

We, the activists of the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy
(PMANE), would like to bring the following demands and issues to your
kind consideration with regards to the Koodankulam Nuclear Power
Project (KKNPP):

[1] We would like to request the Government of India and the
Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) to acknowledge and honor the Cabinet
Resolution of the Government of Tamil Nadu passed on October 22, 2011
and announce formally and categorically that all the works at the
KKNPP have been halted fully and completely.

[2] We would also request a White Paper on what prompted the
Secretary of the DAE, Dr. Srikumar Banerjee, to announce that the
KKNPP was in a dangerous situation and Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam’s
contradictory claim on November 6, 2011 that the KKNPP project was
completely safe.

Many people including members of Team Anna have expressed reservations about the way in which their campaign has been developing, and some have even resigned. This raises questions about the real aim of the leadership around Anna. Is it really what it is proclaimed to be?

I refer to your highly reassuring article in The Hindu today on the safety of nuclear power. I understand that you even went to the extent of assuring the people of Kudankulam that nuclear power is “100% safe”. Though my knowledge of statistics is rather rudimentary, I wonder how one can make such a resounding assertion, especially when anyone with some semblance of familiarity with the technology would hesitate to assert like that!

. . . economic growth is not constitutively the same thing as development, in the sense of a general improvement in living standards and enhancement of people’s well-being and freedom. Growth, of course, can be very helpful in achieving development, but this requires active public policies to ensure that the fruits of economic growth are widely shared, and also requires—and this is very important—making good use of the public revenue generated by fast economic growth for social services, especially for public healthcare and public education.

The censors of Delhi University obviously have no stomach for an epic whose main characters suffer from human frailties, characters who face tough moral choices and who, like ordinary mortals, sometimes choose expediency over principle and virtue. [. . .] The moral of the censorship story is this: you play safe when you teach your students a monochromatic, sanitised, morally smug and politically correct version of the great epic. In the bargain, you shrivel their imagination, imprison it in the narrow confines of parochialism and plant in their minds the seeds of bigotry. You tutor them to mock at modernity.