As bad news from Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan continues to spill, protest against nuclear power plants in India is getting louder.
India is witnessing a sudden surge in the number of people opposing nuclear power, thanks to the terror of radiation sparked in Japan following the Tsunami on March 11.
The voices are especially loud in Jaitapur a village in western India and the site for a proposed nuclear plant. Jaitapur is known to be located in earthquake prone zone. In past 20 years, the village has felt nearly a hundred tremors. Most of these tremors went unreported. The protest of the villagers against the nuclear plan too remained largely unheard.
However, since the tsunami, the anti-nuclear voices have amplified. On March 25, Friday, Jaitapur residents are going to march on the streets of New Delhi, demanding scrapping of the nuclear power plant. Leading the protest is NGO Greenpeace. According to Greenpeace’s anti-nuclear power campaigner Karuna Raina, India needs to review all its nuclear projects, especially the one in Jaitapur, Maharashtra. “The reactor being used here is still under review in US and UK. In spite of all this, the government plans to go ahead with this plant.” said Raina in a statement today.
In another development, about a thousand farmers have declined to give land for a nuclear power plant in Gorakhpur village in Haryana. The government is trying to seize 1500 acres land for the proposed plant.
Says Satyawan Verma – a farmer, ‘Three years ago, without any prior consultation, the government suddenly sent a notice that a nuclear power plant will be built on this plot. We were surprised to know that in the government had decided to build the plant here because the land here is ‘infertile’. But farmers here are growing not one, but three crops in a year”.
Satyawan has shot a video that shows green field with growing paddy. In the video, he has interviewed farmers who are marginal farmers with barely 2-3 acre of land. ‘The land is all we have,’ says a farmer, ‘it’s our only source of livelihood. We can’t afford to give it up.’
The farmers in Gorakhpur have been offered Rs 2.8 million an acre by the government, while the market rate is known to be 7-8 million rupees per acre. However, even a revised rate is unlikely to yield any result as the farmers are not willing to sell their land. Their unwillingness has, post the tsunami in Japan, multiplied as now there is widespread fear about the health hazards of a nuclear plant. “For the past 6 months, people here have been staging a sit-in protest. But now after they have watched on TV the catastrophe in Japan, people are angry and determined to fight till death against the decision. Not only we won’t give the land, but also not allow the nuclear power plant come up anywhere near our village,” he declares.
Satyawan hopes, his video will also give the courage to the farmers to continue, and voice their issues outside Haryana.
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