The agitation by villagers near the Kaiga atomic power project could not be more different from the one being staged against the Kudankulam nuclear power plant in Tamil Nadu.
As their protest outside the Deputy Commissioner's office here entered the 60th day on Thursday, members of the ‘Struggle Committee of Villagers Within Five Kilometres of the Kaiga Plant' are as frustrated with the government as they are with public ignorance of their struggle and demands.
“We are not against nuclear energy or the plant,” said Vimala Gaonkar of the committee. It was the media that started referring to them as the anti-Kaiga committee.
Committee president Shyamnath Naik said, “All we want is the government acquire the villages in the radius of five km from the plant and rehabilitate the residents.” This zone has six villages — Hartuga, Balemane, Kachegar, Belse, Harur and Sulageri — with at least 500 households.
The width of the safety ring or ‘exclusion zone' is the central point of disagreement in the tug-of-war between the nuclear plant authorities and the agitators. While the committee's demands are based on a plan submitted by the Nuclear Power Board in July 1986 and it recommended a five-km buffer, plant director J.P. Gupta quotes more recent studies that recommend a 1.6-km-wide no-habitation zone. In fact, he favours reducing the exclusion zone to 1 km.
Radiation debate?
Prakash Ganapati Naik (37), a resident of Sulageri, lined up several people afflicted with skin and other diseases, besides cancer patients, when this correspondent visited the village. “Almost every household here has a member with some strange disease,” he claimed.
The plant management counters this claim with health studies conducted by it. These studies show that the prevalence of diseases in the area is no more than in other regions.
“If these diseases are a result of radiation as alleged by the activists, then I and my staff, who work inside the plant, should have been the first to contract illness,” Mr. Gupta argued.
Abdul Ravoof Sheikh Mohammed (45) of Balemani, whose sister recently died of cancer said, “If there is no threat from radiation and a possible nuclear disaster, why did they [the plant authorities] build their residential colony 20 km from here?”
Mr. Gupta replied that the Forest Department did not give clearance for locating a colony nearer the plant, as it would affect the ecology of the region. “If they are so scared of radiation, why do they want one job in the plant a family as part of the rehabilitation package?”
Gokul Narain Pagi, whose son is suffering from an undiagnosed mental illness for the last one year, says: “We want jobs so that our families may survive. By working there a few of us might die. But by staying here, all of us might die.”
Both sides eagerly await the outcome of the study on the impact of radiation on the local population. It is conducted by the Manipal University and the Tata Memorial Cancer Research Institute. The Karnataka government commissioned the study in response to the protests.
While activists and the plant authorities counter each other point by point, the district administration has kept itself out of the issue.
Deputy Commissioner Imkongla Jamir said the district administration and the State government have no role to play in rehabilitation as this was a Central project.
