Narendra Modi, India’s newly-elected prime minister. Credit: Narendramodiofficial/CC-BY-SA-2.0

By Rajan Menon
NEW YORK, May 23 2014 (IPS)

The Congress Party took a beating in India’s recent parliamentary election and has been now been sidelined by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People’s Party, or BJP).

The spotlight is on Narendra Modi, the BJP’s leader who will be the next prime minister. A former tea vendor, Modi’s humble origins place him in a different world than the Nehru dynasty, which, via the Congress Party, has run India for all but a handful of its nearly seven decades of independence. Rahul Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru’s great-grandson, proved a dull campaigner — no match for the charismatic, silver-tongued Modi.

Modi knows that India can close the power gap with China only by achieving and sustaining high economic growth rates [...]. That means fixing what ails the Indian economy: corruption, red tape, and lousy infrastructure [...].
There appear to be two Narendra Modis. The first is the lifelong RSS (Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh, National Volunteer Society) acolyte. Its anodyne name notwithstanding, the RSS is a hyper-nationalist Hindu movement known for its martial drills, uniforms, and belief in the specialness, indeed superiority, of Hindu civilisation.

The movement is committed to “Hindutva,” which sees “Indian” and “Hindu” as interchangeable. Modi has been drinking deeply from the RSS well for years, which is why Indian secularists and non-Hindus, especially Muslims (India has 170 million), are anxious.

Then there’s Modi the competent administrator (of Gujarat state, which he ran as chief minister from 2001-2014) and business-friendly manager who produces positive results, talks the lingo of business, prizes foreign investment, cuts through red tape, and shakes up the bureaucracy – the mastermind of the “Gujarat Miracle.”

Courting what political scientists call the median voter, these were the attributes Modi stressed during the campaign, artfully dodging, in the process, the ghosts of Gujarat’s 2002 communal riots that left 1,000 (mostly Muslims) dead, and 100,000 homeless. His message was basically: “Allow me to take the helm and I’ll do for the country what I did for Gujarat.”

The voters, disenchanted with the Congress, have put him in charge. Now the question is whether we’ll see Modi the ideologue or Modi the pragmatist. I believe the latter will prevail, though the former will inevitably make its presence known, both because Modi will play periodically to his BJP base and because his rhetoric is not just for effect: it reflects his deeply held beliefs.

Since the BJP’s sweeping victory, there’s been much speculation in this country about what kind of foreign policy Modi will pursue. Don’t expect any drastic course correction.

Modi will maintain India’s strong ties with Russia. There’s a long history of cooperation between New Delhi and Moscow that dates back to the early years of the Cold War. While trade and investment with Russia are now far less important for India, Moscow remains India’s chief arms supplier by far. Modi has no reason to rock that boat.

China: Both the Congress and the BJP have long believed that China is India’s principal geo-strategic adversary. That outlook won’t change. Yet things have become more complicated over the last two decades: China is now India’s main trade partner, so the relationship is not all about security and conflict. The Cold War alignment with Russia as a hedge against China won’t be as effective a strategy. China has surpassed Russia in just about every measure of power.

More importantly, the old Sino-Soviet schism is a thing of the past. Moscow and Beijing are united – and have been since the early 1990s – by what each calls a “strategic partnership”; they’ve put their territorial dispute to bed, Russia is China’s main weapons supplier, and Russian energy flows to China, as this week’s mammoth 30-year, 400-billion-dollar gas deal concluded by President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping demonstrated rather dramatically.

Add to all this the economic and military weakness of India relative to China, and Modi, though he is a nationalist who’s attacked previous Indian leaders for not standing up to China, won’t be looking to pick fights with Beijing.

Modi knows that India can close the power gap with China only by achieving and sustaining high economic growth rates – that’s what made Beijing a global power after all. That means fixing what ails the Indian economy: corruption, red tape, and lousy infrastructure, for example. That’s going to take time, but expect Modi to shake thing up on that front.

But there’s another reason why the economy will top his agenda: he knows that’s what Indians care about most and largely why they elected him. Indian economic managers have failed the poor. As a populist and a man who himself arose from modest circumstances, Modi wants to lift up India’s least fortunate.

Pakistan will be Modi’s other foreign policy preoccupation but he’s likely to prove wrong those who think he’ll take a dramatically tougher line toward Islamabad. He has already surprised people by inviting Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to his swearing-in ceremony and doubtless understands that intermittent confrontations with Pakistan will divert him from focusing on the economy.

War with Pakistan has also become dicier given the risk of escalation to nuclear war. The wild card is a terrorist attack on India that’s traced back to Pakistan. Modi will find himself under tremendous pressure to act decisively, not least because the don’t-mess-with-India message is a key part of his appeal.

India under Modi will continue to strengthen its ties with Israel. The BJP generally and Modi in particular admire Israel and believe that India’s traditional pro-Palestinian policy has earned it little goodwill in the Arab world, which, when the chips are down, backs Pakistan. Modi has visited Israel twice, professing admiration for its economic and technological achievements. Look for more cooperation on economic issues and intelligence sharing on terrorism. Israel can’t supplant Russia as an arms supplier, but India, already a major importer of Israeli arms, will likely buy even more Israel weaponry, especially drones.

Talk of an alliance between India and the U.S. to balance China is hyperbole. New Delhi and Washington have been steadily upgrading their defense co-operation over the years and that will continue; but neither country wants to commit to an alliance.

One country with which Modi is eager to step up its security ties is Japan. The Congress laid the foundation for this, and the BJP will build on it. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was the chief guest at India’s Republic Day celebration in January, and Modi has invited also him to his inauguration. India is the one Asian power that’s not unnerved by Abe’s commitment to change Japan’s minimalist defense policy. New Delhi wants a strong partner on China’s eastern flank and sees Japan, with its economic and technological prowess, as well suited to that role. Both Tokyo and New Delhi see China as their biggest security problem. Likewise, India will strengthen its ties with Vietnam, another Asian country that is deeply concerned about China’s territorial claims and intentions, as demonstrated last week by clashes between them in South China Sea.

In all, those expecting big changes from Modi on the foreign policy front are apt to be disappointed. While he believes that India is destined to be a global power, he also understands that that goal will never be met unless India gets its economic act together. If Modi makes big changes, they’ll be on the home front.

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Rajan Menon is the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of Political Science at the Powell School, City College of New York/City University of New York and a Senior Fellow at the South Asian Center of the Atlantic Council. Among his publications are ‘Soviet Power and the Third World ‘(1986) and ‘The End of Alliances’ (2007).

Residents of Kudankulam, a village in Tamil Nadu, protest against the Indian Supreme Court verdict approving construction of a nuclear power plant. Credit: K. S. Harikrishnan/IPS

By K. S. Harikrishnan
KUDANKULAM, India, Jun 14 2013 (IPS)

The Tirunelveli district in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu may seem idyllic, dotted with lush green fields, but upon closer inspection one sees signs of a battle that does not appear to be abating.

Locals here have been waging an incessant campaign against a proposed nuclear power plant that was supposed to be operational in 2012 and which is currently sitting idle 24 kilometres from the tourist town of Kanyakumari, located on the southern tip of the Indian peninsula.

A recent report by a group of prominent Indian researches has now added another issue to a long list of grievances with the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP) that activists and residents have been compiling since August 2011: evidence of faulty material used in the construction of the plant itself.

Plans for the plant were first drawn up in 1988 under a bilateral agreement between Russia and India, but various political obstacles kept construction on hold for over a decade. It was not until 2001 that a fresh attempt was made to jump-start the 3.1-billion-dollar venture, which has an installed capacity of 1,000 megawatts (MW).

Fishermen and their families protesting against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant. Credit K. S. Harikrishnan/IPS

Things were moving smoothly until news of the meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor in Japan in March 2011 went viral. Fearing a repeat performance of the tragedy, locals here took to the streets, protesting lax safety standards and possible nuclear radiation in the event of an accident.

The government has refused to address protestors’ concerns, instead issuing blanket assurances that the plant has been constructed using state of the art instrumentation and contains a passive cooling system and other mechanisms that will enable it to withstand natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis.

Nalinish Nagaich, executive director of the National Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL), has repeatedly insisted that the equipment installed in the power station has undergone multi-stage quality checks.

Last month, in a 247-page ruling, a division bench of the Supreme Court of India consisting of Justices K.S. Radhakrishnan and Dipak Misra dismissed protestors’ concerns as “baseless”, adding: “The benefits we reap from KKNPP are enormous since nuclear energy remains an important element in India’s energy mix, which can replace a significant (quantity) of fossil fuels like coal, gas (and) oil.”

But new information brought to light in ‘Scandals in the Nuclear Business’, a report published by Dr. V. T. Padmanabhan, a member of the European Commission on Radiation Risk, exposes cracks in the government’s position and highlights the potential crises arising from the use of faulty parts.

According to the study, the Reactor Pressure Vessel (RPV), considered to be the “heart” of a nuclear station, has been built using an outdated, three-decade old model. In addition, various pieces of equipment supplied by Russia have been found to be faulty.

The report has only deepened a crisis of confidence that surfaced earlier this year when Russian Federal prosecutors booked Sergei Shutov, procurement director of the Russian company ZiO-Podolsk that supplied vital equipment to the KKNPP, on corruption charges.

Shutov was charged with “having sourced cheaper sub-standard steel for manufacturing components that were used in Russian nuclear installations in Bulgaria, Iran, China and India”, according to a joint letter sent by over 60 scientists to the chief ministers of Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

The New Delhi-based Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP) has expressed serious concern over the recent scam, calling it a direct violation of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB)’s safety norms.

Back in April, following a series of tests, the AERB itself acknowledged that four valves in the KKNPP were defective and ordered the NPCIL to replace the parts and surrender itself for review by the regulatory authority, before resuming construction.

World Nuclear News reported last month that “technical issues discovered during the commissioning of Unit One have necessitated the replacement of several valves in the passive core cooling system, leading to further delays” in the commissioning of the KKNPP.

Dr. A Gopalakrishnan, former chairman of AERB, has urged the government to put an immediate stop to the project until allegations of corruption and faulty equipment have been adequately addressed, and the safety and quality of the parts used to house the reactor have been determined.

Police crack down on women protesting against the Kudankulam nuclear plant in India. Credit: K. S. Harikrishnan/IPS.

“The fact that a high-cost, high-risk nuclear reactor is (thought to have) defects…in its components and equipment even before it (has started operating) is highly unusual, and indicates gross failures at several levels in the AERB-NPCIL-Atomstroyexport (triumvirate),” he said, referring to Russia’s national nuclear vendor that stands accused of supplying low-quality parts to India.

N. Sahadevan, environmentalist and prominent campaigner against nuclear arsenals, told IPS that the recent scandal necessitated a “thorough re-examination of the safety aspects of the plant.”

Furthermore, according to Supreme Court Lawyer Prashant Bhushan, the NPCIL, which operates the KKNPP, has failed to comply with the 17 post-Fukushima safety recommendations made by a special AERB committee.

Meanwhile, thousands of villagers in and around Kudankulam continue their daily, peaceful demonstrations.

S. P. Udayakumar, leader of the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy, told IPS that the Fukushima catastrophe categorically proved that nuclear power projects are not aligned with the welfare of the people, especially those living in the vicinity, and are incapable of providing any kind of “security”, energy or otherwise.

Activists have also exposed discrepancies in the government’s claim that nuclear power is crucial for the Indian economy, pointing out that the country currently has just 4,880 MW of existing capacity, “which contribute to only 2.7 percent of the total electricity generation in the country,” according to Dr. E. A. S. Sarma, former Union Power Secretary of India.

Fishermen and their families protesting against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant. Credit K. S. Harikrishnan/IPS

By K. S. Harikrishnan
KUDANKULAM, India, Jan 6 2013 (IPS)

Mahalakshmi, a housewife married to a farmer, is afraid for her family’s future. The fifty-two-year-old woman is also frustrated that Indian authorities have “betrayed” poor villagers.

A huge nuclear power plant under the control of the government-run Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) is the source of her woes.

The Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KKNPP), situated 24 kilometres from the world famous tourist town of Kanyakumari on the southern tip of the Indian peninsula, is likely to be commissioned this month.

Speaking to IPS, Mahalakshmi and dozens of women in Kudankulam, a village in the Tirunelveli district of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, charged that the energy project would ruin their futures, homes and livelihoods.

The plant is slated to produce an initial 1,000 megawatts of power, according to the NPCIL, no small contribution to a country saddled with a severe energy deficit.

But the proposed nuclear station has brought sleepless nights to scores of locals, who fear a disaster similar to the meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan in March 2011, and the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe.

Locals have risen up in widespread protest over the proposed plant, which they claim has not been equipped with the best possible safety measures.

One of these protestors, Arul Vasanth, told IPS that politicians, scientists, and bureaucrats have made every effort to crush agitation against the potentially lucrative KKNPP.

“We, the poor, are at the receiving end of all false promises given by the authorities,” he said. “The risk has been put on our shoulders so the people will aggressively fight till the end.”

Indeed, the vast majority of those participating in the protests live below the government-declared poverty line.

Opposition to the energy project first began when India inked the KKNPP deal with the erstwhile Soviet Union in 1988.

Agitation gained momentum in 1997 when the country signed another agreement with Russia to revive the deal.

The controversial Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant. Credit K. S. Harikrishnan/IPS

Now, in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, which drew the world’s attention to the horrific dangers of nuclear power, the people in Kudankulam have brought their fight into the open.

People from the Idinthakarai, Koottappalli, Perumanal, Koothankuli and Uoovri villages, located close to Kudankulam, fear health consequences arising from the plant.

Talking to IPS, well-known anti-nuclear activist K. Sahadevan questioned the efficacy of government measures to safeguard the health of local people living in the vicinity of the plant.

“Radioactivity-related health hazards are a major concern for the people residing near the plant,” he said, referring to a survey of houses very near to the Rajasthan Atomic Power Station, which revealed a high prevalence of cancer and tumors.

Dr. Binayak Sen, human rights activist and member of the Planning Commission’s Steering Committee on Health, said in a statement after visiting the site that the Kudankulam plant posed serious health consequences, not only for those residing in the immediate vicinity, but for inhabitants of the entire region.

Opposition to the plant has created deep cracks in the villagers’ daily lives. Frequent protests by farmers, fisherfolk, students and coastal dwellers have sent a strong message to the authorities but simultaneously interrupted income-generating activities.

Explaining the ground situation in the villages, Peter Milton, an agitation leader in Idinthakari, told IPS that people are worried and frustrated about their future.

Farmers say the government has failed to compensate them for large swaths of arable land that have now been declared part of the official “construction site”.

One small-scale farmer who has suffered many bureaucratic hurdles in claiming compensation for his land told IPS he favours other sources of energy – such as wind farms – over the proposed atomic power station.

A group of students at St. Annes Higher Secondary School in Kudankulam also expressed distress over a future lived in the shadow of nuclear catastrophe.

“A disaster in the plant will eliminate our dreams. That is why we are agitating,” the students, who wished to remain anonymous, told IPS.

Meanwhile, police and intelligence agencies are stepping up their suppression of protestors. “The threat of the police has put more strain on our lives. Even students and women are not exempted from the harassment,” said Milton.

According to media reports, 269 persons have been arrested in connection with the agitation. Agitation leaders claim the number is much higher, with pending cases running into the thousands.

T. Peter, secretary of the National Fish Workers Forum, told IPS that many people have been taken into custody under the charge of sedition. He alleged that the establishment is trying to “sabotage” the protest movement and crush it with an iron fist.

“The fisher folk residing in the coastal area of Kudankulam are (acutely) aware about the impacts of a nuclear (accident) at the KKNPP. People living in coastal areas between Thiruvananthapuram and Tuticorin will be (particularly) affected if a disaster occurs,” he added.

The Russian envoy to India, Alexander M. Kadakin, branded the anti-nuclear protests “gimmicks” and “games” while speaking to reporters in Chennai.

Regardless, India’s highest judicial bodies have expressed alarm about the lack of safety measures at the proposed plant, going so far as to halt the process altogether.

Litigations are now pending before the Supreme Court of India and the National Green Tribunal.

In November, the Supreme Court instructed the Union Government to deploy all necessary safety measures at Kudankulam.

“There must be no compromise on safety and rehabilitation. We are making it absolutely clear that all the guidelines and safety measures for handling disasters must be put in place before the plant is commissioned,” according to Justices K S Radhakrishanan and Deepak Misra.

Attempting to allay fears of a disaster, nuclear scientists have expressed satisfaction over the safety measures at the Kudankulam plant. Former Indian president and scientist Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam declared the plant to be safe, following extensive discussions with KKNPP officials and a thorough inspection of the plant’s safety features.

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