The mother of all corporate lobbies, Niira Radia now cries foul, evading the hard evidences against her in the 2G spectrum scam. The most interesting fact is that she even doesn't care to call her a “small fry” while she was the queen bee in webbing the most complex nexus in the biggest ever scam in India. Everyone from politicians to bureaucrats, businessmen to journalists were the sober listener of her music, and the miles of tapes capturing her conversation with various big shots at different points are a reminder of her lobby power in the power circle, which she claims now a concoction. But the contrast here is that when her big boss Ratan Tata starts becoming candid about his relations with Raja and implicitly explains the “chemistry problem”, she still thinks to bamboozle the Public Account Committee (PAC), not a bad try at all. She is again spelling the abracadabra and thinks she could start playing her generic PR tricks.
Well, there is something beyond the Radia's lobbying magic. Radia as a PR strategist has played her perfect bit everywhere, whenever she sensed the corruption quotient in an official is at threshold to her lobby trap. She used her PR skills with extreme dexterity, like any other advocate protects a criminal client in the court of law, by swearing his or her professional ethics. Sounds irony, but the democracy has a room for everyone, that's the alluring angle of this system. But the contrast here is that Radia just now tries to disown her profession and even she doesn't bother to claim her a bumpkin who is too small an influential person in this world of networking.
Now I have a piece of advice for Radia: Why doesn't she close all her PR shops and start venturing into politics? I am sure she can be a better contender in this ball game, and certainly she can easily get a ticket from the Congress too. She has done a lot for the party and every citizen of this country knows it well. Never mind, she can even take the role of Pranav Da for managing the numbers for UPA. After all, it's all lobby. Huh!
Showing posts with label Civil Nuclear Program. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Civil Nuclear Program. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
Learning from Japan's nuclear crisis
The recent devastation in Japan, caused by earthquake and tsunami, raises some pertinent questions about the disaster preparedness of countries across the globe. Though there many susceptible areas which need attention for immediate action for rehabilitation, the major one is the nuclear power plant safety because of its wide range impact on the environment. Being in an energy-hungry world, thanks to the rapid industrialization and urbanization that are catching up emerging economies, most developed and developing countries are opting for clean-energy technology such as nuclear power plants, without even considering the potential risks attached to them.
For records sake, the last 50 years in human progress have witnessed to the huge nuclear disasters that have emerged from critical accidents such as Chernobyl and Tokaimura; by natural calamities such as Fukushima and Three Mile Island; or by human errors such as Canadian Manhattan Project. It's now the time for the pro-nuclear communities to learn the lessons from Japan's nuclear crisis that attracted the huge criticisms from the environmental activists and ecologists across the globe. As most nuclear scientists claim that nuclear power is the most environment-friendly energy source, it's now a serious proposition for them to ensure how they can build a safety mechanism for plants to withstand the world's worst natural calamities, be it a magnitude-10 earthquake or a high-powered tsunami with epicenter as close to the location of the plant, or a man-made disaster like missile attack or dropping a nuclear bomb during war.
Let's look at the helplessness of Japan while fighting relentlessly to avoid the nuclear disaster due to power backup failure in the plant. This triggered a huge radioactive radiation upto 5 on a maximum severity scale of 7. The unscientific methods used there like pouring sea water from the top to cool the reactors display the extreme exigencies that a economically developed country even doesn't mind to follow not only to block the simmering situation, but also to ensure larger environment safety, which might trespass to bordering countries. So here arises a series of questions that Japan had never attempted to address before deploying these nuclear plants. First, the reactors used in Fukushima Daiichi were 40 years old and were Generation II types, which carry more risks than the Generation III and III+ reactors. Second, the power backup diesel generators were housed in an underground building close to the coast, so once a 7-metre tsunami flooded the room, the power generators failed to work. Third, there was no tertiary power supply to the reactors to trigger cooling process. And there are many other serious questions on the designing of the entire structure of the nuclear complex so close to a series of fault lines around Fukushima.
Now this is a strong message for the countries which are opting for large-scale deployment of nuclear plants for power generation. Before moving ahead, they shouldn't ignore the mistakes of Japan's recent nuclear crisis. Maybe, they can then avoid some potentials risks stored in for them along the life cycle of those plants.
For records sake, the last 50 years in human progress have witnessed to the huge nuclear disasters that have emerged from critical accidents such as Chernobyl and Tokaimura; by natural calamities such as Fukushima and Three Mile Island; or by human errors such as Canadian Manhattan Project. It's now the time for the pro-nuclear communities to learn the lessons from Japan's nuclear crisis that attracted the huge criticisms from the environmental activists and ecologists across the globe. As most nuclear scientists claim that nuclear power is the most environment-friendly energy source, it's now a serious proposition for them to ensure how they can build a safety mechanism for plants to withstand the world's worst natural calamities, be it a magnitude-10 earthquake or a high-powered tsunami with epicenter as close to the location of the plant, or a man-made disaster like missile attack or dropping a nuclear bomb during war.
Let's look at the helplessness of Japan while fighting relentlessly to avoid the nuclear disaster due to power backup failure in the plant. This triggered a huge radioactive radiation upto 5 on a maximum severity scale of 7. The unscientific methods used there like pouring sea water from the top to cool the reactors display the extreme exigencies that a economically developed country even doesn't mind to follow not only to block the simmering situation, but also to ensure larger environment safety, which might trespass to bordering countries. So here arises a series of questions that Japan had never attempted to address before deploying these nuclear plants. First, the reactors used in Fukushima Daiichi were 40 years old and were Generation II types, which carry more risks than the Generation III and III+ reactors. Second, the power backup diesel generators were housed in an underground building close to the coast, so once a 7-metre tsunami flooded the room, the power generators failed to work. Third, there was no tertiary power supply to the reactors to trigger cooling process. And there are many other serious questions on the designing of the entire structure of the nuclear complex so close to a series of fault lines around Fukushima.
Now this is a strong message for the countries which are opting for large-scale deployment of nuclear plants for power generation. Before moving ahead, they shouldn't ignore the mistakes of Japan's recent nuclear crisis. Maybe, they can then avoid some potentials risks stored in for them along the life cycle of those plants.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
India should rethink about the civil nuclear programs
I don't understand as to why our learned prime minister is in a complete denial mode to accept the growing concerns worldwide, about the safety of nuclear power plants, following the catastrophic consequences in Sendai, Japan. It seems that either our prime minister pretends to overlook the criticisms of anti-nuclear communities for engaging himself in a pro-nuclear lobby and throwing assurances that our nuclear plants have already passed through earthquakes and tsunami successfully in 2002 and 2004, and nothing has proved wrong to the safety measures we have in place, or he is under tremendous pressure from the foreign countries, especially from the US and France, to keep the promises or maybe a barter deal he made during Obama's visit to India. Our prime minister and his team are in a hurry to venture into multiple nuclear plants in different regions of our country, and Jaitapur is also one of the sites that has still been lingering over a decade. The alacrity in decisions is an indicative of the fact that something is going on behind the scenes. And the bigger truth will only emerge when a hot political debate with storm the parliament in the next few months.
Though everyone knows that nuclear power generation is the next big step for all nations to control the global climatic change, but one specific aspect of this radical drive is not clear here that why the lobby for global climatic change is often driven by western communities where they deliberately increase the carbon footprints and put disproportionate pressures on the developing countries to bear the brunt of their mistakes. Or it could be far different from the common public knowledge that there lies a sinister design of western business lobby in global political pond to realize their business mandates from the developing countries when the first world market is fast becoming saturate or they face resistance from various environmental activist groups in their homeland. Either way the facts remain that on the backdrop of global climate change lies a more dangerous vested interest of western multinational companies to pop up various pressure groups in different power circles to marginalize the larger truth, and the proposition could be such that a nuclear holocaust which is more imminent in the coming times due to the various natural calamities or human error is less important to the growing climate change that has already engulfed our atmosphere.
But again there are a number of ways to negate the ill effects of global climate change other than leveraging the nuclear power generation programs. The alternative renewable sources of energy such as wind mill, solar plants, tidal power plants, mini to small hydroelectric power generations setups are widely used for long by various nations and most of them are in the first world countries. In stead, the same countries vouch for a technology which is predominantly anti-environment and anti-nature and frequently has proved disastrous to the entire ecosystem of this planet. The last century's history is just a silent reminder of the magnitude of loss borne by mankind due to a number of nuclear disasters that has particularly occurred in those developed countries. And the recent disaster in Japan is no new one.
As most developed countries including US, Germany, France, China, and Japan are seriously thinking about the freezing their current program of expansions in nuclear power plants, it is a sad part for Indian leadership to blindly ignoring not only the lethal consequences of a nuclear crisis, but also the most evocative critiques of western communities. It seems the underlying objectives behind this motion are more hush-hush than it seems otherwise. The citizens of India should be cognizant of the hidden agenda that this government is trying to consummate.
Though everyone knows that nuclear power generation is the next big step for all nations to control the global climatic change, but one specific aspect of this radical drive is not clear here that why the lobby for global climatic change is often driven by western communities where they deliberately increase the carbon footprints and put disproportionate pressures on the developing countries to bear the brunt of their mistakes. Or it could be far different from the common public knowledge that there lies a sinister design of western business lobby in global political pond to realize their business mandates from the developing countries when the first world market is fast becoming saturate or they face resistance from various environmental activist groups in their homeland. Either way the facts remain that on the backdrop of global climate change lies a more dangerous vested interest of western multinational companies to pop up various pressure groups in different power circles to marginalize the larger truth, and the proposition could be such that a nuclear holocaust which is more imminent in the coming times due to the various natural calamities or human error is less important to the growing climate change that has already engulfed our atmosphere.
But again there are a number of ways to negate the ill effects of global climate change other than leveraging the nuclear power generation programs. The alternative renewable sources of energy such as wind mill, solar plants, tidal power plants, mini to small hydroelectric power generations setups are widely used for long by various nations and most of them are in the first world countries. In stead, the same countries vouch for a technology which is predominantly anti-environment and anti-nature and frequently has proved disastrous to the entire ecosystem of this planet. The last century's history is just a silent reminder of the magnitude of loss borne by mankind due to a number of nuclear disasters that has particularly occurred in those developed countries. And the recent disaster in Japan is no new one.
As most developed countries including US, Germany, France, China, and Japan are seriously thinking about the freezing their current program of expansions in nuclear power plants, it is a sad part for Indian leadership to blindly ignoring not only the lethal consequences of a nuclear crisis, but also the most evocative critiques of western communities. It seems the underlying objectives behind this motion are more hush-hush than it seems otherwise. The citizens of India should be cognizant of the hidden agenda that this government is trying to consummate.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
America's Double Standards
Why US is keen in supporting India pursuing civil nuclear program even after the recent natural and nuclear disasters that have already struck Japan, is certainly not in the interest of India, rather it keeps vested business interests in the deals that are to be inked in next many decades. Given the stern reactions from the various environmental activist groups around Japan's current nuclear disaster, the US now clearly understands that the coming time will be really tough for its nuclear business with India, and if tactical steps are not considered now, though many brokers have started vouching for India's civil nuclear interests, Obama's administration will receive huge criticisms from various business groups in their homeland.
This is a typical US diplomatic build to pursue its global politicking agenda in a very opportunistic manner. America's tainted history in engaging in various geo-political issues across the globe is just a reminder of the fact as how benevolent their intention in driving their point to the world table. Now that Japan's nuclear disaster has caught the attention of world leaders, the US administration thinks that if a sustainable, controlled media hype is not created now, it will be a difficult proposition for US to transfer the unused, warehouse-rested nuclear technologies to India in the coming time.
This is a typical US diplomatic build to pursue its global politicking agenda in a very opportunistic manner. America's tainted history in engaging in various geo-political issues across the globe is just a reminder of the fact as how benevolent their intention in driving their point to the world table. Now that Japan's nuclear disaster has caught the attention of world leaders, the US administration thinks that if a sustainable, controlled media hype is not created now, it will be a difficult proposition for US to transfer the unused, warehouse-rested nuclear technologies to India in the coming time.
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