Nuclear Energy – Are You Clear?

When following some of the biggest news stories of our day, many times it so happens that the readers or the audience lose track of the real issues behind the stories. As the stories progress – or shall I say drag on – all they get to see on prime time television or read on front pages in the papers is a vicious string of denials, sound bytes, counter-charges, backtracking and other circuitous paths that lead them nowhere.

So it came as a welcome relief – though it increased my anxieties on other counts by highlighting certain things – when I read on rediff.com this well-argued piece by Kanchan Gupta about nuclear energy and its relevance to a country like India (Will nuclear power benefit the masses?).

Let me give you a glimpse into some of the startling data highlighted in the story: Contrary to Congress’s claims of nuclear energy having the potential to provide electricity to significant numbers of people, the share of nuclear energy in India’s total power output will be only 8% by 2020 if new reactors are set up. Compared to the cost of producing thermal power at Rs 2.50 per unit, that of nuclear energy will be Rs 5.50 per unit. No new reactor has been set up in the US in the past 35 years, and only one is coming up in Europe (Finland) after a gap of 17 years. Arguably, the ones to benefit the most from the 123 Agreement will be US and French firms dealing in nuclear reactors.

I’m not saying that one should switch over to the anti-nuclear agreement lobby merely on the basis of one article, but we need write-ups like this to make an informed opinion on matters concerning our country or the world in general – rather than be forced to confront mindless buck-passing by opposing parties through most of our media.

Tale of Two Cities: Bombay & Delhi - Part II

(This is the second in a series of posts on my experiences in Bombay and Delhi.)

During my initial days in Bombay, there was another wondrous thing that I noticed. Something that few places in the whole of India can boast of: twenty-four-by-seven electricity. For the first couple of days after I found a paying-guest accommodation – another Bombay novelty for India – at the Santa Cruz Railway Colony, I was uneasily at rest. And this unease was not from the creaking trains and howling airplanes that went by the house in disconcerting succession, but from the inconspicuous presence of on-tap electricity. Since I was used to sweating it out countless times a day in the sweltering heat of Delhi, the existence of this uninterrupted, unobtrusive supply of power dawned upon me only after I realized that I didn’t have to unduly exercise my forefinger on the switchboard even once in the past two days! This was something too good to be true. I mean, how could you have such a smooth-functioning utility in India! As the days – and nights – went by, my wonder grew into amazement and sheer appreciation at the bounteous fulfilment of this basic need of mine: continuous supply of electricity and the feeling that I live in a metropolitan city belonging to the Information Age and not some godforsaken remote village in the Dark Ages!

Although I took to Bombay as a fish takes to water, I never stopped wondering about how the city continued to survive. For survive it did despite enormous population pressure, including my own which - I can say with some saving grace - was not at all enormous. Despite organized crime and disorganized politicians. Despite huge swathes of jhuggi clusters and growing numbers of skyscrapers, the more recent ones being in residential areas. Despite several metric tonnes of human and industrial waste spilling out into the sea…

Ah, the sea! To me, nothing symbolizes Bombay more than the sea, lapping at its shores with renewed vigour in each successive wave. Never mind that the waft coming from the sea often carries a sharp sting of foul smell, I cannot but look admiringly at the Queen’s Necklace – the epithet given to the crescent-shaped Marine Drive along the sea. Especially as it sparkles with lights from the buildings dotting Mumbai’s famous skyline and the headlights of vehicles moving steadily along the road. The sea also makes an emphatic statement whether you are looking over the romantic ruins at Bandra Bandstand or crossing the bridge to New Bombay (a suburb created in the hope of decongesting the main city). In its vastness, tranquility or agitation; in its expansive beauty; in its calming or prodding effect upon the mind, the sea never fails to connect with you. The sea is there even in the non-coastal areas, through a recurring stench of fish or moist breeze. The first thing I remember when I think of Bombay is the sea – both of water and people.

There’s an old barb I remember about the stifling crowds of Bombay. It is said that space is at such a premium that even dogs in Bombay have to wag their tails up-down rather than sideways! While I failed to spot any canine calisthenics of that sort, the gibe is not without bite. The crowded bazaars from Borivli to Haji Ali bear visual testimony to a space-starved city. You know the real meaning of the idiom ‘rubbing shoulders with others’ in case you happen to be one of the gazillion people forming a part of that crowd! And you need a mix of correct posture, attitude and evasiveness to pass through the crushing mass of people unhurt or without getting interminably delayed to your destination.

Not that Bombay can’t offer you any breathing spaces, but such spaces are few and far between the crammed dwellings that mostly make up the city. Two such breathing spaces I recall are the famous Sanjay Gandhi National Park and Azad Maidan (sadly, the environment of the former is threatened by encroachments while one can’t enjoy the openness of the latter because there’s a large procession of commuters passing through it all times of the day). Another breathing space is the large paved area outside Vashi station, which is in extreme contrast to the packed-like-sardines scenarios in and around most other stations.

In fact, the geography of Bombay offers an interesting insight into why the city is cramped in most places. Bombay is more or less spread out linearly – from the southern thin tip, the downtown, to the gradually broadening northern parts, the suburbs. Put simply, it’s a triangular strip of land, with two coastal sides very long and the third, joining the other two, quite short. The net result: the closer you go downtown, the more difficult – or expensive – it is to find larger areas. So if you go northward into the suburbs, beyond Virar on the Western line and beyond Vashi on the harbour, you are more likely to see appreciable breathing spaces. As I was once told by a colleague: “Go that side if you feel claustrophobic here in the middle of the city.” I considered the idea many times, but the horrors of an increased commute time in locals held back my fetish for open spaces.

Bombay’s peculiar, strip-like geography once made a friend of mine remark: “Bombay is like a dirty drain, and there’s only one way to travel in it - by flowing in that drain from one end to the other!” His jibe, of course, didn’t flow too well with the staunch Bombay crowd but I, as a dispassionate observer (and as a flailing dirt speck in that drain!), could see a ring of truth to it. Later on, whenever I happened to travel in the locals for a rather longish duration, his remark would come rushing to my memory like the reeking smell of a drain. The analogy of the drain is even more apt if you take into account the filth that follows you all along the iron rails.

Railway tracks are perhaps the perfect place for squatters in Bombay. Which may be fine for you as a commuter if it’s not for the muck that this rampant squatting creates almost as sinuously as the tracks go. You can actually see people squatting on abandoned rails a few feet from the track your local is running on - and doing what they must do each morning (or most mornings if they do not have constipation). You pinch your nose with your fingers to stop the inflow of the stench but, pretty soon, realise that you’ve been holding it tight too long and need to take a breath in order to complete your commute alive! Because, it’s the same story everywhere – people defecating on a mass scale and jhuggis lined up along the tracks, their ‘backyards’ serving as convenient dumping grounds for all kinds of waste (I’m sure you wouldn’t want me to name them). I was even told by a ‘long-standing’ fellow commuter, who couldn’t help but notice that my one hand was employed in pinching my nose instead of supporting the other in holding on to the handgrips overhead, that there were accomplished commuters in the city who, blindfolded, could give out the name of each station as it passed by matching the place with its peculiar stink! I never knew the human brain could store, segregate and retrieve so many disgusting smells with such precise efficiency – until he told me, of course.

At this point, let me warn you against making a biased mental picture of the beautiful city called Bombay based on my positive or negative portrayals of its varied aspects. Bombay must be seen, lived and described with a multi-faceted prism capable of reflecting the innumerable hues concealed in its unified persona. The city is, in fact, a mesmerizing mix of glamour and grime, surplus and scarcity, calmness and cacophony…Nowhere else in India can one see the juxtaposition of the paradoxical vagaries of life brought out as starkly as in Bombay. So any attempt to singularize the city’s essence or see its way of life with a blinkered vision will not do justice to its motley character.

G Ate; Others, Please Wait!

As the G8 Summit of the world’s richest countries is on in Hokkaido, Japan, I’m thinking of the growing disparities and despairs of the world – the current so-called boom in India and other developing economies notwithstanding. Today, many point out that global warming and green initiatives have become bigger issues than terrorism. Leaders of the world are worrying less about third world war and more about the “devastating growth” in third-world countries (which are second-world, by the way?)

Recently there were some interesting articles in Economist and Newsweek on the future of energy and the greenness – or lack of it – on the only orb we got here. For all the hype and the hoopla, apparently less than 1% of the current energy is supplied by renewables. On the lines of GDP, thinkers are coming up with calculation of EPI (Environmental Performance Index) for various countries. The only ones who seem to fare well on the index, apparently, are sparsely populated nations of Europe.

Making all sorts of calculations and coming up with theoretical models keeps economists and scientists busy – but does it really help solve the problems? It may or it may not. But IMHO, it often certainly does create complications – like those we saw with the misplaced corn-ethanol frenzy and carbon-trading. Shifting resources or carbon emissions elsewhere is something like sweeping your house clean but depositing the pile of garbage on your neighbors’, or, sometimes, “distant relatives’”. Only, the fumes from the garbage now reach far and wide – causing weather nightmares everywhere.

While people at the top (those with the power to make policy decisions that can have country-, region-, or globe-specific impact) lunch and munch together – not to much avail – the consumers and citizens of the world are getting increasingly confused about “their tiny bit” in bringing down their carbon “footprint”. According to an essay ‘I’m So Tired of Being Green’ by Susan Greenberg (what a surname! – no offense) in Newsweek, there’s an entire branch of eco-psychology growing out of people’s eco-anxieties.

It’s OK for people of rich countries – who have been devouring resources and gallivanting around the world for several decades – to now feel a pinch of conscience at their profligate ways. But who will nudge the minds of hundreds of millions of developing-country consumers who have barely begun to guzzle gas, munch meat and throng ‘1,000 places to see before they die’?
All these tree-uprooting, carbon-sooting and vehicle-scooting years the rich have left a deadly trail of environmental destruction and economically-induced cult of consumerism – which the poor and upcoming are only too happy to emulate. Do the paunchy leaders of different countries have the stomach to ask these billions to wait? And even if they do, will they wait?