Pictures

General Singh speaking at the press conference at Fatehabad

General V K Singh addressing the farmers in Gorakhpur village

Prof. Achin vanaik, Gen V K Singh and others speaking to the community leaders

The Bhakhra Canal which is supposed to provide water to the nuke plant

Women joined the protest event in large numbers

Women have been guarding their land for last several weeks

Delegation addressing the bar association meeting in Fatehabad

Press statement issued by Gen V K Singh, Mr. M G Devasahayam, Prof Achin Vanaik and Kumar Sundaram who visited the Gorakhpur village in Haryana where farmers are protesting the installation of nuclear power plant.

Dear Friends,

We the undersigned undertook a visit to Fatehabad in Haryana where farmers and villagers have been protesting against the proposed Gorakhpur Nuclear Power Plant for last more than 2 years.

We got an opportunity to talk to the farmers in Gorakhpur and their supporters. We also saw the fertile green fields and the Bhakra canal over which the proposed reactors are supposed to spring up.

It would take an imagination entirely alien to the needs and soul of this country to displace these land-holders, the thousands of agrarian labourers whose livelihood depends on these lands and thousand more in the nearby villages and towns who make their living by providing agriculture-related equipments, services and transport etc to the farmers – all in the name of some ‘development’ that has little relevance to these farmers and agrarian labour!

The people of the area are understandably aggrieved by the undemocratic manner in which the NPCIL and the state government are pushing this project. There has been no consultation with the project affected people. The recently held ‘public hearing’, as also reported in the media, was a complete farce as people were simply not given the EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) report on which they were supposed to raise objections. Local people in large numbers then opposed the EIA hearing and the officers had to literally flee from the venue. But the district administration still declared the EIA hearing a success and has raised the amount of land compensation. The farmers in Gorakhpur, Badopal and Kajal Heri have refused to accept the compensation and have started a sit-in protest near the Bhakra Canal. Local people also informed us that some of the farmers have been pressurized by the administration recently to accept land compensation.

This Canal, which is lifeline of agriculture in the area, is supposed to provide the large quantity of water to the project, which is critical for any reactor. The independent experts and researchers have concluded that the water from the Canal would be inadequate for running a reactor, dangerously so in case of any accident as huge quantity of water would be needed to cool the reactor-core in an accident like Fukushima. Needless to say, it would also deprive the farmers of their essential irrigation supply.

The area has a very fertile multi-crop farming land which will be lost to the project. No amount of money can really sustain the farmers in the long run who have no skill other than farming and have been living happily and sustainably.
Apart from land-acquisition and displacement, the project is also being opposed locally for the radiation hazards of nuclear energy. After Fukushima, nuclear energy globally is on decline and several countries have decided to phase it out. Besides accidents, nuclear reactors spew radiation even in normal operation and its health impacts on the nearby community and worker have been documented in credible medical surveys internationally.

Nuclear energy is costlier than all other forms of energy if all the hidden costs – huge subsidies, the environmental and societal costs, cost of decommissioning and storing nuclear waste in the long-term, the expenses on security etc – are taken into consideration. Including the US, nowhere in the world has nuclear energy been successful on free-market principles without subsidies and bailouts. The head of the General Electricals, one of the world’s biggest nuclear promoters, has himself stated recently that nuclear energy is ‘hard to justify’ on financial grounds.

Jameen (Land), Jal (Water) and Jungal (Jungles) are the core and basic natural resources on which the nation and the people live and sustain. No kind of ‘development’ is worth it if it destroys these fundamental and critical gifts of Mother Nature. We urge the governments and the policy makers not to indulge in such ‘destructive development’.

We would also urge them to immediately put a moratorium on Gorakhpur and other nuclear power projects and go in for a wide, transparent and democratic public consultation on nuclear policy involving independent experts and concerned citizens. It would be fatal to overlook these concerns in the myopic race for growth-rate.

Gen. (Retd.) V K Singh – Former Chief of Army Staff, India
M G Devasahayam, Retired IAS,
Prof. Achin Vanaik, (Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace)
P K Sundaram (Independent Researcher)