The dust that kills

October 11, 2010 | Author: csjpgoa

By Jagdish Patel. Published on InfoChange News & Features, April 2009

The longest word in the English language is the full form of silicosis. No one knows it, just as no one knows that 10 million workers in India are at risk of silicosis, a fatal disease often mistaken for tuberculosis. Some industries, like the slate pencil industry in Mandsaur, report a 59% prevalence of silicosis. One village in Andhra Pradesh is even known as Widow’s Village because most of the men in the village were stonecrushers who died of silicosis Read more »

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The Scent Of A Betrayal

October 11, 2010 | Author: csjpgoa

By Smruti Koppikar with Debarshi Dasgupta, Sugata Srinivisaraju, Prarthana Gahilote, Madhavi Tata, John Mary, Saikat Datta, Snigdha Hasan, K.S. Shaini and Sharat Pradhan.

If normalcy is the mere absence of violence, then even the most volatile parts of the country can be said to have retained their normal demeanour in the days following the Allahabad High Court judgement on the Ramjanmabhoomi-Babri Masjid title suits. Read more »

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The Earth Is Rumbling

October 11, 2010 | Author: csjpgoa

By ANURADHA RAMAN

For the last one year, the Niyamgiri hills in Kalahandi district of southwestern Orissa have been reverberating with protests and demonstrations. The tribals of the area—the Khonds, Kutiyas and Jharaniyas, who worship the hills as living gods—are taking on Vedanta, a UK-based mining major that has acquired a licence from the government to exploit the abundant bauxite reserves in the pristine region.

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There’s nuclear gold in this sand. And it’s being sent out with impunity

October 11, 2010 | Author: csjpgoa

BY KUNAL MAJUMDER.  From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 7, Issue 41, Dated October 16, 2010

VV MINERAL, a two-decade-old company, has been mining beach sand that includes radioactive minerals on the Kanyakumari coast. The company says it doesn’t have the technology to separate thorium from monazite, a rare earth ore found in the area — a claim verified by the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB). Read more »

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The rules are in place. But they are broken all the time

October 11, 2010 | Author: csjpgoa

BY TEHELKA BUREAU. From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 7, Issue 39, Dated October 02, 2010

After the legwork, it’s time to fix accountability. What exactly are India’s existing safety guidelines relating to functioning of nuclear power plants and mining of radioactive material? If rules have been breached in the past, what hope is there that any regulations will be followed in the future? Especially as a number of plants will rapidly come up in the next decade. Read more »

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The nuclear park at Jaitapur will be huge. So will the human cost

October 11, 2010 | Author: csjpgoa

BY NIKHIL GHANEKAR. From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 7, Issue 37, Dated September 18, 2010

THE PROPOSED site for the Jaitapur nuclear park is a sight for weary eyes with blankets of lush grass covering the plateau 25 metres above sea level. The N-park will house six reactors, the biggest one having a capacity of 1,650 MW, eclipsing the largest units at Japan’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant with a capacity of 1,315 MW. Read more »

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Accident Sites – radiation, cancer, blindness, tardiness, cover-ups. The lessons from the Kalpakkam nuclear facility

October 11, 2010 | Author: csjpgoa

BY KUNAL MAJUMDER. From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 7, Issue 36, Dated September 11, 2010

In the end, loud voices were all that mattered. After three months of extended discussions, legislators in the Indian Parliament yelled their assent. The Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill, 2010 was a legislation. Read more »

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Nuclear energy. Ministries warn they are far from ready

October 11, 2010 | Author: csjpgoa

BY SANJANA From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 7, Issue 35, Dated September 04, 2010

WHEN CONGRESS president Sonia Gandhi, in her recent address to the Congress Parliamentary Party, acknowledged “inadequacies” in dealing with the Bhopal gas tragedy, it made headlines. The collective gasp as the country heard her proclaim — “We cannot remain prisoners of the past. We must look ahead and answer the question – what can we do now, rather than, what could we have done in the past,” — was a very audible one. Twenty-six years after the world’s worst industrial disaster, could her words mean that hope was round the corner for the Bhopalis? Would it mean that as a country we would work to ensure we have no more Bhopals? Read more »

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HIGH-GRADE ENERGY, LOW-GRADE SAFETY

October 11, 2010 | Author: csjpgoa

by G VISHNU From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 7, Issue 38, Dated September 25, 2010

It was in 1967 that Uranium Corporation of India Ltd (UCIL), a public-sector undertaking, opened its first mine in Jaduguda. This region in East Singhbhum district has rich deposits of copper, uranium and iron ore. For the past 20 years, activist group Jharkhand Organisation Against Radiation (JOAR) has been at the forefront of the struggle against the “radiation emitted from the uranium mining and the doom it has unleashed” in the region. “The British mined copper in this region, first disturbing the radiation-emitting minerals. UCIL just continued the legacy in a much more devastating manner,” says 47-year-old Ghanshyam Biruli, secretary, JOAR. Read more »

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