Major issues of grave moment desiderate public discussion beyond parliamentary debates and cabinet decisions. Executive signatures forfeit democratic credentials if participation by the people of India, the political sovereign, through weal and written scrutiny, not dumb acquiescence, is not manifest.
Agreement 123, being a treaty of paramount importance and strategic impact on our freedom and its future treatment will be an abdication of national obligation and Swaraj may suffer the illusions of mirage. In our unipolar world, the US dominates with scant regard for the sovereignty and comity of nations a la Hiroshima, Kabul, Baghdad, Vietnam plus plus.
But realism compels me to grasp the grim portents of any alliance with a big power which has a political record of bribing or terrorising into submission other independent nations, pressurising foreign leaderships through huge arms sales and investments by America Inc., using the World Bank and espionage agencies for advancing the political and economic interests of US power for converting free republics into satellites. Corruption is the driving force behind absolute power. It is on this eclectic canvas that I write my critique of the Indo–US civilian nuclear
co-operative deal.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh argues that neither our carbon resource, which is quantitatively limited and qualitatively poor, nor the vast hydro-electric potential, which is dangerous because of environmental terrors vis-à-vis high dams, will be useful and, therefore, nuclear power, borrowing uranium from the US, is the principal energy source so necessary for the development of our country. Are we not disturbed by the comment of US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, that people should not forget “in the twenty-first century the shift in the global situation”. The Hyde Act, whatever our interpretation, will ultimately bear Washington's semantic construction.
Why this somnolescence on our exploring and exploiting free wind energy? Tamil Nadu, in Tirunelveli district, has done a tiny bit but from the high mountains to the large plains and sea-coast stretches, the large power generation potential needs to be harnessed.
Why have we neglected the winds of India, the perennial tides blowing over the beaches along the long coast line, the gas resource convertible into electric power. So too the abundant solar power and unexplored bio-energy particularly suited for our remote rural areas and hilly regions.
While I was a minister for Irrigation and Electricity in Kerala, I had occasion to prepare a Master Plan of the State’s water resources and to present it to Prime Minister Nehru who told me how small projects in the Soviet collective farms served their needs considerably and economically and desired Kerala to produce energy from minor projects through rivers which are many.
These projects save on generation cost and transmission losses. Indeed, I had a well-grounded hunch that our creative engineers and political visionaries could explore this grand storehouse of power avoiding environmental pollution and serving distant places at lesser cost.
We have not made a national survey of our vast multiple hydro-electric resources and their imaginative utilisation through rural generation sans environmental injury. Research will discover uranium deposits and new energy generation methodology.
Now a few words on the nation’s dependence on nuclear power generation. It is costliest, relatively speaking. It is pathologically dangerous because nuclear radiation is a sure cause of cancer and other risks. More than all, any technical defect or accidental default will inflict national disaster as Chernobyl did in Russia and the narrowly averted Three Mile Island disaster would have done in the U S. The US has only 20 per cent nuclear power and perhaps the West, except France does not rely on this source.
Nuclear fission, as distinguished from Nuclear fusion is so grave a risk that I humbly submit you should not adopt a policy of reliance on nuclear power without deep scientific investigation. The disposal of nuclear waste, without a perennial reuse programme, is yet not a scientific or feasible process even in the US and is fraught with calamitous consequences.
The deleterious consequences on public health from our own nuclear plants and nuclear experiments are not revealed to the people because of statutory secrecy. Before borrowing uranium from the US for building up our energy estate remember your betrayal of Indian humanity's safety.
India has at least 50000 MW of untapped hydro-electric power. "It appears that as a consequence of this challenged deal under Agreement 123, huge commercial orders running into thousands of crores of rupees for the purchase of nuclear reactors would be placed on US and other advanced countries’ corporations.”
Big business run by America Inc. as well as Washington’s political pressure on its power clients will diminish our sovereignty unless we, as brave Bharat, battle against imperial might. American “inspectors” when they land in India in the name of Agreement 123 and US diplomats under various pretexts, will influence our independent foreign policy, as a sovereign nation.
