Fighting Nuclear Energy, Fighting for India's Democracy

Contested credibility economies of nuclear power in India

“…As political scientist Achin Vanaik notes, these efforts were received as a ‘mild irritant, nothing more’. Anti-nuclear energy mobilization began anew after the US-India nuclear deal of 2008 and the Fukushima nuclear disaster (Bhadra, 2013). Activists began shifting the registers of accountability with the state from lodging claims of scientific expertise to claims anchored in procedural rationalities of accounting.…”

“…Germans worried about the collusion of science, secrecy and a centralizing state, and used nuclear energy to launch a larger critique of modernity and capitalism (Flam, 1994; Nelkin and Pollak, 1981). One can observe the same kinds of discourses moving through the Indian nuclear landscape (Bhadra, 2013).…”

“…When asked about what he hoped to accomplish with his fasting, he said that he and other anti-activists aspired to propagate the kind of populist fervor against government corruption that began two years earlier in Jantar Mantar by another hunger-striker, Anna Hazare, whose opposition propelled the creation of the Aam Aadmi Party and the passage of the Lokpal Act that promised to curb government corruption. Indeed, anti-nuclear activists have deployed numerous strategies, from staging public protests to interrogating state nuclear science and lodging court cases to pierce the carapace of the state (Bhadra, 2013). Following Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s unprecedented signing of the US-India nuclear deal in 2008, current Prime Minister Narendra Modi has continued Singh’s nuclear policy by signing a series of bilateral agreements with Russia, Japan and Australia, among other nations, to import nuclear reactors and fuels in the pursuit of energy, economic security and geopolitical status.…”

International Perspectives on Engineering Education

“…While traditional measures of energy justice, rooted in differential access and availability of energy among and across groups, remain important, they are inadequate. We must also consider the degree to which specifi c energy systems contribute to or detract from human thriving; the just and unjust distributions of benefi ts, costs, and risks associated with energy systems; and the role of diverse individuals, groups, and organizations in making decisions about energy futures (Bhadra 2013 ;Moore 2013 ).…”

An exploration of public risk perception and governmental engagement of nuclear energy in India

“…The charter of protests changed from local to national when teachers, doctors, lawyers, journalists, church, and various nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) voiced their support and joined the movement (Chandhoke, 2012;Srikant, 2009). The protest movement was further empowered by the support of the larger groups of people and from some political parties (Bhadra, 2013;Choudhury 2012). Finally, a hierarchy of the Indian courts was drawn into adjudicating the dispute in which Supreme Court of India, by giving supplementary directions to authorities, concluded that the KNPP was safe and can go ahead (see Ram Mohan & Shandilya, 2015).…”