A Time Bomb We Await - Hillary Clinton was here to urge a dangerous deal — that the US never has to clean up another Bhopal mess!

THE FALLOUT of Hillary Clinton’s recent visit to India could be dangerously nuclear, literally. Clinton’s India visit had an important agenda – to urge India to pass a law to ensure that a Bhopallike disaster does not trouble its victims for as long as the 25-year-old tragedy has. There is one twist, though. Bhopalis are not the subject of this proposed legislation. Rather, the ‘victims’ that the two Governments are committed to helping are US multinationals like GE that are champing at the bit to supply nuclear equipment and lure India’s $175 billion nuclear market. India expects to set up 40,000 MW of nuclear power plants over the next 20 years.

The poor little rich American corporations are petulant. State-owned companies like France’s Areva SA and Russia’s Rusatom are already in the race to supply equipment to India. But private sector players like GE and Toshiba Westinghouse say they will not invest until India ratifies the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage (CSCNL) and installs a domestic civilian nuclear liability regime. They want no part of the liabilities arising out of a Bhopal-like disaster. Rather, they say, the entire liability in the event of a catastrophe should be borne solely by the Indian operator of the facility. Like his predecessor, President Obama is pushing India to guarantee that the Union Carbides of the nuclear world suffer no losses regardless of the role that may have been played by their equipment or technology in causing the disaster.

Exclusive liability for operators of facilities and supplier immunity may have been the norm in earlier nuclear liability conventions adopted by some nations. “But then, no other nation has suffered a Bhopal like disaser,” states Kanyakumari-based anti-nuke activist S.P. Udayakumar. Indeed, Union Carbide’s decision to deploy flawed design and untested technology contributed substantially to the magnitude of the disaster.

An unnamed minister quoted in a June 27 Business Standard article says the Government has a draft nuclear liability bill ready. “What this will do is indemnify American companies so that they don’t have to go through another Union Carbide in Bhopal,” he said. Local operators, on the other hand, will have to raise $450 million up-front to cover post-disaster compensation costs. Additional costs will have to be borne by Indian taxpayers. The Price-Andersen Act in the US also imposes a similar burden on the American taxpayer. According to Cato Institute, the free market think-tank, this could translate into a subsidy of 2 to 3 US cents for every unit of electricity generated. Another estimate places the annual subsidy extended by the Price Andersen Act to the industry at about $3 billion.

Ironically, the liability cap — $450 million — is exactly what Union Carbide paid for the Bhopal disaster. Whittled down from the original $3 billion that the Government estimated as the cost of compensation, the final settlement when spread across 6 lakh victims amounted to a paltry $500 per victim – insufficient even to cover a year’s medical bills, leave alone pay for treating sick children born after the disaster.

BHOPAL ACTIVISTS are “disgusted” by the attitudes of the Indian and US Governments. “A nuclear disaster will have far greater impact than Bhopal had. Environmental contamination will spread farther. Bhopal has taught us that $450 million is woefully inadequate to deal with a disaster’s fallouts,” said Rachna Dhingra of The Bhopal Group for Information and Action. In 2006 and 2008, Bhopal survivors, including children, walked 800 km to Delhi to demand for economic, medical and environmental rehabilitation, provision of clean drinking water, and punishment of the guilty corporations from the Prime Minister. On both occassions, the PM conceded the demands, albeit after making them wait for months on the streets of Jantar Mantar, and suffer police torture. Till date, he has not delivered on his promises.

Contrast this with the speed at which the UPA and the US Governments are moving to appease corporate interests. During his visit to Washington in March 2009, India’s special envoy Shyam Saran told the Americans that progress was being made on the liability law. In April, he said the internal processes for India’s accession to the CSCNL were complete and promised that the law would be enacted after the national elections. During Clinton’s visit, this was a significant point on the agenda.

A panel discussion organised on the eve of Clinton’s visit to New Delhi was openly critical of the proposed liability regime. But the organisers – the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace and the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal – clearly stated that they were not opposed to the concept of a liability regime. “But such a law should be informed by the experiences of disaster victims, rather than be influenced by the interests of corporate perpetrators of such disasters,” a statement by the two organisations clarified.

Such progressive legislation is not without precedent. Post-Chernobyl, the trend in civilian nuclear liability law began tilting towards unlimited liability, and non-exclusive liability. Non-exclusive liability would allow victims to recover compensation from operators under dedicated nuclear liability laws, even while keeping their options open to asserting claims from other defendants under other statutes such as product liability laws. Countries like Japan, Austria, Germany and Switzerland have already done away with the cap on liability.

Austria, through a 1999 law, additionally opened up liability to suppliers and service providers. None of these countries have ratified any of the international conventions relating to liability because these laws do not adequately address victims’ needs.

India’s liability bill is likely to be modeled after a draft prepared by FICCI’s nuclear task force, comprising key beneficiaries namely NPCIL, Tata, Reliance, Larsen & Toubro and Gammon India. Strangely, all this talk about disaster liability, and the normal tone in which these discussions are being held hides a sinister possibility: That despite all assurances given by India’s nuclear proponents that a nuclear disaster will not happen, the fact is that the nuclear industry is already negotiating to cut its losses in the event of a such a calamity. Private industries want the business, but don’t want to bear the risks. The Indian nuclear establishment wants the technology, even if it means exposing Indians to the risk of being hurt by a nuclear disaster. Even worse, it is asking future victims to make do with what little compensation may be on offer from their own tax money in order to ensure that private equipment suppliers are not inconvenienced. If these are the costs, is nuclear power even worth it?

-NITYANAND JAYARAMAN

(The Author is a journalist and

activist volunteering with the

International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal)

From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 6, Issue 30, Dated August 01, 2009

Older than the Vedas, the very Indian brinjal doesn’t need a GM variety!

How They Ate It...

4th century BC brinjal recipe from Ettuthogai, an ancient Tamil text: Smear green brinjal with gingelly oil. Roast it on charcoal and then peel it. Mash it when cold. Heat some more gingelly oil. Add mustard seeds, curry leaves, crushed pepper corns, ginger powder and chopped fresh ginger. Finally, add the mashed brinjal and cook briefly till well-blended. (Courtesy: Jacob Aruni)

***

There is an enchanting Tamil folk tale about brinjal. One day a king, delighted with his brinjal fry, praised it lavishly. “It is the king of all vegetables,” his minister agreed loyally. “That is why god has given it a crown on top of its head.” The king then had it cooked every day for each meal, till he grew sick of it. “I can’t eat it any more,” he thundered. The minister didn’t miss a step. “Yes sir, it is the worst vegetable! That is why god has driven a nail into its head,” he put in promptly.

It is not just folk tales that document our love for brinjal. Across the country, brinjal is an intrinsic part of our traditions. For instance, the history of the popular Sode Matha temple, in Karnataka’s Udupi district, is inseparable from the vegetable. Poisoned, Lord Hayavadana asked for a naivedyam prepared from a special type of brinjal called gulla. That variety is now widely known as ‘mattu gulla’, the former being the name of the village where it was first cultivated. For Bengalis who relish their begun bhaja, brinjal is also a must for gota sheddho (a boiled dish of vegetables) that’s eaten a day after Saraswati Puja. And Ayurveda recommends it for its anti-rheumatic and anti-tussive properties. Brinjal is even older than Sanskrit, which had to borrow the word ‘vartaka’ and ‘vrntaka’ from the Munda language.

And now this vegetable, with its illustrious history, faces a period of upheaval as the government prepares to release a genetically modified (GM) variety into the market. And in the tussle between pro-GM and anti-GM lobbies, new details about brinjal are coming to light through an ongoing series of “brinjal festivals” in different cities, and new research on its origins and properties.

Urban consumers, their acquaintance with this vegetable largely restricted to the high-yielding purple varieties, are discovering for the first time the immense range of brinjals available in India—over 2,000 varieties, from the large yellow ‘kotti tale badane’ (literally, cat’s head brinjal) from Karnataka with a texture “soft as butter” to the finger-thin ‘salte begun’ from Bengal, and a host of others—striped and prickly, minute and bulbous. Some varieties are uniquely suited for local dishes, like ‘lamudhadha badane’ used for vangi bhath in the south. Then there is the whitish egg-shaped variety that explains the name (eggplant) Americans gave it when they first cultivated it in the 17th century.

India was familiar with the brinjal for very many centuries before that. The brinjal finds mention in many ancient Indian texts, like Ettuthogai in Tamil, that chronicles the lifestyle of people living two millenia back. Jacob Aruni, a Chennai-based chef, says, “In the text, brinjal comes across as a vegetable for the mediocre, not fit enough for kings who liked to feast on yam, drumstick and banana flowers. Nonetheless, there are detailed accounts of the vegetable being cooked with dal and also fish.”

By raising awareness about the vegetable’s diversity, proponents of sustainable agriculture hope to increase pressure on the government to stop it from releasing genetically modified brinjal—commonly referred to as Bt brinjal—for public consumption. They emphasise the fact that brinjal originated in India. Some countries that have been identified as centres of origin for certain species have moratoriums on genetic modification of those crops. For example, Peru, where potato originated, and Mexico, original home of corn, have a ban on genetic testing of these two. This comes from the fear that the alien gene, mostly sourced from other species, could escape (in some instances it indeed has) from the modified varieties, and contaminate the crop’s entire natural genetic diversity.

“If that happens here with brinjal, all our conservation work would be laid waste,” says Krishna Prasad of the Bangalore-based Sahaja Samrudha, a grouping of organic farmers from Karnataka. The organisation has a seed bank of 52 species found in Karnataka. “Brinjal cross-pollinates openly. There is every chance that all its natural varieties could be polluted.”

With efforts to protect it and celebrate its many varieties, the humble brinjal has become a hot potato for many. To the outrage of brinjal enthusiasts, a government expert committee on GM recently refuted brinjal’s indigenous status, and said it originated in Africa. “Certainly, that is a way of bypassing provisions of the Cartagena Protocol, which demands an extra-cautious approach for testing GM varieties in regions where the crop originated,” says Kavitha Kuruganthi of the Coalition for a GM-Free India.

I.S. Bisht, a principal scientist at the Delhi-based National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, asserts that Solanum melongena L (the botanical name for brinjal) originated in the wild in India and adjoining areas—a view seconded by noted food historian K.T. Achaya, who also states that brinjal is an indigenous vegetable that originated from a wild ancestor. The bureau has acquired and conserved as many as 2,500 varieties of brinjal, 95 per cent of them from India.

So why aren’t more brinjal varieties cultivated widely? Anshuman Das, secretary of Development Research Communication & Services Centre in Calcutta, blames low awareness among urban consumers of the many varieties, which results in poor demand for all except the common ones. “We have to break that cycle to revive these varieties,” he adds. Hopefully, with this newfound attention, a time will soon come when urban consumers will be knowledgeable enough to ask for brinjals by their name. Much like the way we do with mangoes now.

-DEBARSHI DASGUPTA

Courtesy: Outlook, Aug 03, 2009