In less than two decades, the rural landscape of Gurgaon has taken on an urban identity. Yet, without a shared vocabulary for spaces, zebra crossings are “peopled” by buffaloes and busy mall roads have “herds” of shoppers making suicidal attempts to criss-cross a sea of racing vehicles.

In Gurgaon’s patchy landscape of high-rise apartments, glass-and-steel office buildings, and glitzy malls on the one hand, and village clusters, slum sprawls, buffaloes and cows on the other, the old and the new are reinventing old spaces, and creating new spaces that often exclude more than they include. This audio-visual documentary explores the ongoing negotiation of space and meaning in a rapidly urbanizing semi-rural environment in India.

More info about the charity that careated this video. .

Abandoned dolls on a windowsill in the Solntsye kindergarten, Pripyat, Ukraine. Image via LOE (© Michael Forster Rothbart)

It is interesting that almost exactly to the day of the 25th anniversary of Chernobyl, India has decided to approve a new nuclear power plant in Jaitapur in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra. While experts have written tomes about it (and mass media has not given a jot of attention to them), here is my quick attempt to dislodge some friends who I know are sitting on-the-fence.

The safety features argument:

The oft repeated argument is that ‘we have learnt from others’ failures’, our plants are safe.

Let us start with the assumption that we are technologically superior to the three countries — USA, USSR, and Japan – where the major nuclear accidents have taken place till now. Let us also make an assumption that there is less graft and corruption in our systems of procurement, construction, day-to-day running and maintenance. No, seriously!

Did any of the countries think that their plants were susceptible to accidents, before the event? Of course not. That is a fundamental fact about accidents — ‘accidents’ by definition are not anticipated, and they mostly happen in spite of best precautions. There is no scientific way to say with 100% confidence that an accident will not happen. The fact that no insurance company is willing to insure a nuclear plant and that plant owners and suppliers want limited liabilities proves just this point. They know accidents can happen. For those looking for additional pointers consider the fact that no new nuclear plant has been commissioned in the USA since the 1970’s and in Europe since the late 80’s.

If you are not familiar with ‘the probability of the consequential rare events’ then I strongly recommend Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s ‘The Black Swan’. Shit happens! And when it happens the consequences are huge.

The cost argument:

People believe that nuclear is cheaper, as Dmitry Medvedev, President of the Russian Federation recently said on record.

The question is: what do we mean by cost? Is it just the cost of constructing and running the plant? Or does it include the cost of nuclear pollution? Does it include the cost of nuclear waste disposal? Does it also include the cost of the ‘unlikely’ accident?

To me it sounds ridiculous to not factor in the cost of an accident, however unlikely, especially if the likely impact is extraordinarily large. That is how business is done, right? If you run an airline you insure the unlikely event of the plane being blown up mid-air. If you run a thermal power plant you will insure the building, machinery, and the lives of people who are likely to be impacted in case of a rare accident, wouldn’t you? And the cost of insurance will be part of the cost of doing business.

It appears that there is no insurance company in the world that is willing to insure all the fall-outs of a nuclear meltdown. If you found one, my contention is that the cost of insurance will make the project unviable. It will be by far more expensive than any other form of energy. If you look at the cost associated with the Chernobyl disaster you might realize why insurance companies are not competing with each other to grab the business of insuring nuclear power plants.

It is difficult to get to the exact death-toll attributable to the Chernobyl accident. The numbers vary from 4,500 to 1 million (New York Academy of Sciences). Greenpeace and World Health Organization (WHO) have indicated that the official numbers are a gross underestimation. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t trust the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) numbers, simply because it is their mandate to encourage nuclear power. Incidentally, it appears that they have effectively prevented WHO from conducting independent research in this area.

What about the cost of ill health for the estimated 8.5 million people who were exposed to high level of radiations? The effect is expected to be borne even by the children born to parents exposed to radiation. What about the cost to the 800,000 or so liquidators who were recruited to deal with the site immediately after the accident. Apparently 90 per cent of them have bad health. How do you estimate the cost of contaminated lakes, rivers, and groundwater and the cost of contaminated food supply?  How do you estimate the cost of evacuating a city and villages?

According to a BBC report President Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine estimated the accident cost Ukraine around $120bn to $130bn. According to some estimates ‘in the first 25 years the direct economic damage to Belarus, Ukraine and Russia has exceeded $500 billion’.

And now 25 years after the event, they are building a ‘New Safe Confinement’ structure at Chernobyl that is likely to cost in the region of $1.6 billion. And this of course is not permanent because the half-life of plutonium is 24,000 years. People will keep paying for this disaster for thousands of years. And what if there is a major natural disaster in the mean time and the containment is partially or fully disturbed?

We can argue about the finer points about the delay by the Soviet government, or the rot in the communist world etc., but please do keep in mind that this was NOT the worst case scenario. There is no guarantee that a worst accident will not happen. Also it may be useful to remember that the density of population in most parts of India is much higher. And also, that we neither have the Soviet style resources nor the Japanese style efficiency. If you have any doubts about this, just go look at Bhopal, apparently the factory is still leaching toxins.

There is no other option argument:

Given global warming, pollution etc., there is no other option. This is the tricky one, because it seems reasonable and till recently I was unsure how to address this issue in my own mind.

Here is what I think now. Indulge me, please. World history is replete with examples of hanging on to a familiar bad thing because a ‘good’ alternative was not obvious, or clear. But eventually human ingenuity figures a way out. When people talked about abolishing slavery, apparently one ‘reasonable’ sounding argument against it was that the economy will come to a grinding halt, because there will be no cheap labour. Some Englishmen argued in favour of staying in India because they were ‘worried’ that India wouldn’t know how to govern itself. Some people still argue against abolishing all forms of child-labour in this country by citing terrible hardships that may befall the children and their families.

I don’t have an alternate solution. But that should not dissuade us from realizing the horrendous inhumanity of the current solution. Only once we reject a ‘bad’ solution will we invest our energy into finding a ‘good’ one.

Related links & sources:

• Chernobyl, 25 Years Later
• Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment
• Neighbours count cost of Chernobyl disaster
• Chernobyl Death Toll: 4,000 or 1 Million?
• After Chernobyl – Michael Forster Rothbart’s work
• Remembering Chernobyl

Source:Center for American Progress

For some strange reason the ‘topi’ sitting on the head of Anna Hazare reminded me of the real Gandhi and the story about the kid who eats too much sugar. For the benefit of those who may not be familiar, the story goes like this: A woman brings her son to Gandhi and asks him to talk to her child to stop eating too much sugar because it is not good for his health. Gandhi asks the lady to return in two weeks. When she comes back he just asks the child to stop eating sugar. Apparently he did not give this advice to the kid earlier because he himself was eating too much sugar.

It seems ‘Gandhigiri’ itself came in the way of my participating in a non-violent protest. I was forced to look inwards and ask some hard questions. Am I corrupt? Have I ever been corrupt? What does it mean to be ‘corrupt? Is the word reserved for the illegal, unethical, and unfair acts of ministers, babus, police and the like? Does accepting part of the salary as cash (and therefore non-taxable) qualify as corruption? Does claiming taxi fare from your company, when you actually took the Metro qualify? Does leasing a car through your company so that the company deducts the amount from your ‘unofficial salary’ and pays the leasing company directly, thereby helping you save substantial tax, qualify? Does exploiting a loophole to label a chemicals-laden product as ‘herbal’ qualify? When your company or RWA employs guards/cleaners through a contractor, of course, who pays less than the legal minimum salary, or makes them work 12-hour shifts, and you say nothing, does that qualify? Does buying products made by children (or even adults) in massively exploitative sweat-shops qualify?

These and many more such questions, all theoretical, of course, kept swirling though my head, and while I was sorting all of this in my mind, the ‘revolution’ was over. And I missed my chance to participate in it.

Now that the dust has settled, the question that is plaguing me is this: Given that corruption (illegal, as well as unethical and unfair acts) is pervasive, and permeates almost every aspect of our private and public life, how long will it be before the massively powerful office of the ‘Lok Pal’ itself is occupied by a corrupt person.

I look around my self the only deduction I am forced to make is that given sufficient inducement, most of us are corruptible. Creating a super-cop, I am sure will help, but will it bring lasting change?

I have no reason to doubt the intent of the leader or the followers and do not have any alternate solutions. I am no constitutional expert but I do know something about the media. Any time all major TV channels, newspapers agree on something, it is likely to be an issue that the media owners expect to resonate with majority of the advertisement-consuming middle-class, and therefore with the advertisers. It is time to examine the issue more carefully… like most complex issues in life, there may not be absolute blacks and whites, but if media defines it as pure as mother’s-milk, odds are very high that the contaminants are lurking just below the surface.

It is unfortunate that “serious” analysis in mainstream media has been limited to tweet-sized self-congratulatory messages along with large photos. And on the other end of the spectrum it has been limited to personal attacks on Anna Hazare and his politics.

A few links that attempt to, perhaps not entirely successfully, objectively analyse the content of the ‘revolution’. I found some of the comments to the post very insightful too.

At the Risk of Heresy: Why I am not Celebrating with Anna Hazare
‘Anna Hazare’, Democracy and Politics (A response to the previous item)
Of a few, By a few, For the few
Hysteria will not end corruption

1. When Irom Sharmila sits on a hunger strike in Manipur she gets arrested for ‘attempt to commit suicide’ and is force fed (nasogastric intubation) through a tube in her nose, it gets little media attention. She has been on hunger strike for years now but most people don’t know who she is or what she is protesting about.
2. A token ‘economic hunger strike’ conducted mainly through Facebook, where people pledge to not ‘eat/drink outside’ (can’t go to KFC, but it may be ok to deep-fry your chicken at home), makes it to the cover page of at least one major national newspaper.

Local fire and police officials believe that a stray rocket celebrating India’s historic win landed in the shanties and caused a fire. Three people were burnt alive, nine were grievously injured, of which five were battling for their life in the hospital, and at least forty homes were gutted.

The government was too busy giving away taxpayer’s money to the already rich cricket players to worry about the life in shanty towns, nicely hidden behind the billboards of swank new apartments that these people are building. Most newspapers were too busy covering the event (for about four or five days, all major newspapers dedicated all or most of their front pages to it) than to worry about some poor ‘bastards’ who were sleeping when the match was on.

Some might speculate that these Bangla speaking construction workers may have been Bangladeshi immigrants, that is why they were not up and watching the match. Had they been cheering for India, they may have coped with the fire better. Some might go to the extent of saying that any fool who sleeps through such a historic moment probably deserved it…

A friend who works in an NGO offered to help – those who did not loose family, lost everything they owned. After much searching this morning I finally found the place where the event took place. Not only did I want to point the NGO in that direction, I also I wanted to talk to the next-of-kin of the people who made the ultimate ‘patriotic’ sacrifice for their country and their cricket team. Turns out they were all gone. Vanished without a trace. All that is left at the place is cinders and barbed wire. People in another shanty close by either did not know or did not want to tell where I could find the survivors.

The Economist poster - Hosting the Olympics is a waste of money

Even more so in the Third World. Not so long ago there was some debate about the usefulness of the Commonwealth Games held in New Delhi, but it died a natural death. Much ink was spilled about corruption, but once again nothing came of it. Well, not yet, at least. Things are back to normal, and I am convinced that India will soon start bidding for another one of those mega events. While public memory is short, personal interests stand tall.

Are the Olympics a waste of money, asks Economist ad campaign | Guardian.co.uk.

Shimkus is on record for dismissing the existence of global warming by citing biblical scripture that says God would not allow the earth to be destroyed. Specifically: “And He will send His angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather His elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.” The earth will end only when God declares its time to be over. Man will not destroy this earth. This earth will not be destroyed by a flood.

There is overwhelming scientific consensus that in pursuit of relentless growth man is indeed destroying earth. Trouble is that it will become painfully obvious only when it way beyond repair. David Suzuki, an award-winning science broadcaster and environmental activist presents a simple but hard-hitting analogy to drive home the point.

“I give you a test tube full of food for bacteria- that’s an analogy with the planet- and I put one bacterial cell in and it is us. It’s going to go into exponential growth and divide every minute. So, at time zero, at the beginning, there is one bacterium. One minute, there are two. Two minutes, four. Three minutes, eight. Four minutes, 16. That’s exponential growth.

And at 60 minutes, the test tube is completely packed with bacteria, and there’s no food left. When is the test tube only half full? And the answer of course, is at 59 minutes. So, at 58 minutes it’s 25 percent full, 57 minutes, 12 and a half percent full. At 55 minutes of the 60-minute cycle, it’s three percent full. So, if at 55 minutes, one of the bacteria looks around and says, ‘Hey guys, I’ve been thinking, we’ve got a population problem.’ The other bacteria would say, ‘Jack, what the hell have you been drinking, man? 97 percent of the test tube is empty, and we’ve been around for 55 minutes!’ And, they’d be five minutes away from filling it.

So, the bacteria are no smarter than humans. At 59 minutes they go, ‘Oh my god! Jack was right! What the hell are we going to do, we’ve got one minute left! Well, don’t give any money to those economists, but why don’t you give it to those scientists?’ And, by God, somehow those bacterial scientists in less than a minute, they invent three tests tubes full of food for bacteria. Now, that would be like us discovering three more planet Earths that we could start using immediately. So, they’re saved, right, they’ve quadrupled the amount of food in space. So what happens? Well, at 60 minutes, the first test tube is full. At 61 minutes, the second is full, and at 62 minutes, all four are full. By quadrupling the amount of food in space, you buy two extra minutes. And, how do you add any more air, water, soil or biodiversity to the biosphere. You can’t, it’s fixed! And, every scientist I’ve talked to agrees with me. We’re already past the 59th minute.”

I am sure Shimkus and other climate-change deniers will one day, not so far off in the future, wake up.

Download and listen to the interview of David Suzuki

And he uses numbers to show that too. Take water for instance: ‘More than 90 percent of the water used by humans is used by agriculture and industry. The remaining 10 percent is split between municipalities and actual living breathing individual humans. Collectively, municipal golf courses use as much water as municipal human beings.’ He shows that the same is true for energy consumption and waste creation…

And a day latter I stumble upon Annie Leonard, the author of The Story of Stuff talking to Steve Paulson. In an interview aired on the program To the best of our knowledge, this what she had to say on the subject: “I am critical of these focuses on individual lifestyle changes… it is our fault that there is global warming because we did not ride our bike, or we did not recycle or we did not carry our bag to the store. Of course I think we should do all those things. We should definitely strive to live as low impact as possible. But we are operating within a system where the current is moving us towards greater ecological devastation so these individual actions… it is kind of like getting better and better at swimming upstream when the current is still going towards environmental destruction. We need to really focus our attention on changing the direction of the current. Rather than nagging our friends to take public transportation even if it takes four times as long and costs five times as much money, lets work together to get better public transportation so that the ecologically preferable option is the new default.”

Go to Orion magazine and read Forget Shorter Showers by Derrick Jensen
Hear the radio interview of  Annie Leonard at To the best of our knowledge
Go to Annie Leonard website The story of Stuff