In a democracy the Government has to make available information in local language on the proposed project before asking people to decide on extending support to it, convener, People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE), S.P. Udaykumar, has said.
He along with G. Sunder Rajan of Friends of the Earth and independent photographer Amritraj Stephen visited the site of the proposed nuclear power plant at Kovvada in Srikakulam district and interacted with residents of the villages which would be directly displaced by the project.
Mr. Udaykumar told The Hindu here on Thursday that the Government should make public all documents related to the project like Site Valuation Report, Safety Assessment Report, Environmental Impact Assessment Report, Social Impact Assessment Report, Reactor Performance Report and Disaster Management Plan.
Bhopal example
“We don’t have a disaster management plan in the country. Even after three decades of Bhopal Gas tragedy we have not been able to do anything to reclaim the land there. There are no contingency plans. We only react to mishaps,” the convener of PMANE, who led the movement against Kudankulam nuclear power reactor, said. The residents should be provided access to all this information and for that these reports should be available even in the local language. It is not just Kovvada, information should be in the public domain for all nuclear power plants. In a democracy people should be allowed to take an informed decision, he said.
“After accessing the information if the residents of the villages affected by the proposed nuclear power plant at Kovvada decide to allow the plant, we are willing to call off the struggle. We are not opposing generation of electricity and we are not against development. We are only demanding that the proper democratic process be followed,” Mr. Udaykumar said.
What is important is that the decision has to be made by the people and not pushed down their throat. Any decision that is pushed in a non-transparent manner creates a feeling of distrust, there are apprehensions that it may not be fair and it must be serving some vested interests, he explained.
The decision to install the Toshiba-Westinghouse reactor in Kovvada and Kavali has been taken by a small group. Worse still, the liability laws are being diluted to favour the corporates, he said.
