Nuclear Power India's Salvation?

In the short history of our nuclear age another page was recently scrawled when Manmohan Singh and President Sarkozy sealed a pact of atomic collaboration. The genesis of this optimism was 65 years ago when the father of the nuclear bomb, Robert Oppenheimer, awed by the blinding power he unleashed, recalled the Bhagavad-Gita “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one.”

Oppenheimer, fluent in Sanskrit and proud to admit the Bhagavad-Gita was strongly influential in forming his character, was intrigued by the epics of salvation and damnation in the holy Hindu scriptures. His initial euphoria at seeing a manifestation of the Lord was because he believed, with conviction, that this was their vehicle to salvation, a deliverance from the horror and sins of the Second World War. Should India see this fire of the Gods as an enlightenment to solve her famine of electricity? Or another damnation?

It is astounding how many strong religious references have been made in the nuclear scramble. 28 years after Oppenheimer’s blast at the New Mexico desert site, that he named Trinity, after a central Christian belief, the 8 kiloton ‘Smiling Buddha’ was denoted at Pokaran on Buddha Jayanti. Were these placating gestures? Remorse for letting infant politicians steal from God’s gun safe?

For no one with an IQ higher than the room temperature would argue that nuclear power sits comfortably in the hands of mere mortals. Ajit Pawar the Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra is resigned to proving this beyond ambiguity by forcefully arguing for the construction of the two French nuclear plants in Jaitapur, with blatant lies.

The real fresh one from Mr. Pawar was “There has not been even a single case of an accident in India’s 18 nuclear reactors.”

India’s atomic energy program is highly classified however the Atomic Energy Department is obliged to report shutdowns of plants to the International Atomic Energy Agency where they are made a matter of public record. Here we depressingly find the first of two accidents that stand out amongst a crowd of others.

In 1993, the Narora nuclear plant in Uttar Pradesh was saved from a cataclysmic event only by a forgiving God. Ignoring warnings of catastrophic turbine failure by the manufacturers, the plant management pushed the system sufficiently enough for the turbine blades to explode. These cut a hydrogen carrying pipe that exploded on cue, in turn igniting a sizeable oil leak that had been neglected. The oil fire incinerated the power cables rendering all systems, including safety systems off-line. There was of course a reserve set of power cables but they were bewilderingly placed within close proximity to the primary cables and were not in anyway fireproofed. Without electricity to power the pumps to circulate coolant around the fast overheating core, staff were lotto lucky to manage to manually shut down the plant.

The second accident bares naked the undeniable fact that antiquated bureaucratic organizations like the AED cannot be within a mushroom cloud of a nuclear plant of any size. Kalpakkam Atomic Processing Plant, 2003. A valve failure allows highly radioactive material to enter a tank of lower radioactive material. No sensors to detect either the valve failure or the now lethal amounts of radiation that the plant’s workers unknowingly bathe in. The leak was only discovered, after a criminally long time, when a fuel sample is examined in another section of the plant.

This incident, little known as it is, would have not have seen any light had the worker’s union at the plant not become proactive. They presented a letter to the plants governing body, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, after this organistion had disregarded a committee’s strong recommendation that the plant be immediately shut down after evidence of continued wildly excessive radiation leakage. The letter amongst other safety recommendations demanded a full time safety officer. BARC’s constructive critique was to blame the workers for not wearing their thermal badges (That are designed to detect long term exposure not sudden catastrophic exposure) and for entering the room (that was part of the duties demanded of them). The workers went on strike until their leaders fell victim to the time honoured babu weapon of choice; they were transferred. BARC got the last scientific word in “If the place was not safe they would not have joined back.”

The only consolation for trailing behind the West in development is the precious opportunity to not repeat it’s foolhardiness. India must stop equating wealth with intelligence and blindly duplicating the West’s sometimes mad as a March hare technological experiments. But if it must, then these all powerful nuclear reactors, with the radiation of a thousand Hiroshimas, must be administrated by India’s world beating managerial talent not bitter old men.

On that day of the world’s first nuclear blast, even before the gates of hell had fully closed, many of the greatest minds of the age openly wept and Oppenheimer recalled another verse from the Bhavagad Gita. ‘I am become death, the destroyer of worlds’.

Where Is The Knowledge We have Lost In Information?

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?


Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? -Eliot

The ‘Radia Tapes’ and Wikileaks aggressively ask these questions. 5,000 taped conversations of Radia administrating the country and untold lakh cables of diplomats sending their reports Stateside, many of which seem to be after a bloody good bottle of red. Does this unprecedented access to sensitive information make us wiser political citizens than generations before us?

Eliot wrote those immortal words in 1934 when the information revolution was barely at the smelly student, getting grumpy at the coffee house stage. During this era, Pandit Nehru was writing considerably more than 140 characters, but only when his fellow convicts would return his stolen Parker pen. His receipt of information was through smuggled newspapers and Chinese whispers. A drop, of a drop of the bottomless oceans of zeros and ones that now entomb us. Did this make him less effective?

Gandhiji would have ruled Twitter. He would have made Stephen Fry’s disciple count look like a rent a crowd after the cheque had bounced. His immortal sayings are well below 140 characters -What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea. #Swaraj #Mountbatton #Quitindia. Devastatingly effective, even whilst largely starved of formal information dissemination, we can only speculate how all encompassing his power would have been with a Facebook account.

But was that the quality of the man? Was he a lesser political activist for not having high speed broadband? Would Jinnah have backed down on his demands if he could have read the New York Times on-line? No! Because their subjective wisdom, with varying degrees of quality, was founded on knowledge. Not information.

In this information age we are so terribly under tooled to mine for this erstwhile wisdom in a swamp of information posing as Wikipedia knowledge. Mountain ranges of gravel, with every man and his dog with a shovel, but no pans to sift the elusive shining nugget. No all wise, Google equivalent, search engine that instantly churns out a one page philosophical analysis of a billion results.

The explosive Twitter reaction to the Radia Tapes is typical. The Twitterati became a million strong posse before Vir Sanghvi could even reach and draw for his Blackberry. He was shot dead standing. His slow and clumsy defence, made in the traditional media, was just too glacial and unfashionable for Twitter, and demanded some linear concentration without any toilet breaks. Because of his attempt to take time and put wisdom in the information, even if he didn’t suffer from miraculous co-coincidences of opinion with Radia, (After asking her what he should write) he would have been strung up.

If you are older than thirty and spend five minutes analyzing Barkha Dutt's involvement in the scandal you can only conclude she is considerably less tainted by the corporate, media nexus. Tell that to a pimply citizen journalist, sitting on the throne blogging, who has only known information.

Would Eliot pen another line if he were still alive? ‘Where is the information we have lost in time?’. Time is the penultimate consideration for the new citizen journalist. Even more so for the matrix of Indian news channels. To get the information out before you can say “Tweet” is so much more important than any considerations of accuracy (knowledge) never mind a thoughtful analysis.

This surging compulsion to set free the flimsiest of information in the internet zoo, in a Mumbai minute, can be electrifying. Like the ‘Radia Tapes’ Wikileak’s Cablegate again set Twitter well ablaze. Julian Assange was the best thing since the MacBook. But like the machine he can miraculously store information not process it into abstract thought. A living illustration of the information, wisdom paradox. Commendably setting loose information that he believed citizens should enjoy but very unwisely further upsetting the relationship between the nuclear powers of Iran and the US, not to mention her Gulf neighbours.

In ancient times, ships leaving the Port of Alexandria would be searched to see if any of the precious scrolls from her legendary library were being smuggled to the outside world. The Greeks jealously guarded their written knowledge. Well meaning, half-wits like Assange threaten the introduction of a contemporary equivalent. It may be necessary. Our unprecedented access to a web of information has not made us wise and better citizens. It has made it drive thru easy to scream our stupidity. ‘Power to the People’ cannot be power to the twits.

Tweet:- Radia picked up the phone. God! Oh God! It wasn't her imagination. She looked at the van outside and the phone clicked again.

State And Business Class Show The Way

Very recently, at the Indira Gandhi 10th Annual Conference, Sonia Gandhi pleaded for “the state, business and labour onto a common platform in pursuit of a shared vision — the vision of a more equal, more caring society”. Is this sincere plea possible?

What divisions of society are they working with? Who are these State, business and labour people? Rahul’s very effective catch phrase of “two Indias” attempts to paraphrase the new Indian paradigm of the Esteem drivers and the Atlas bicycle riders. But to claim that India is only divided in two is calling a half filled glass of water a 12 year old bottle of scotch.

In fact, a single division would be an earth shattering achievement. Anyone reading this will know that Indian politics is fractured into a wildly complicated matrix of splinters that belong to caste, class and regional loyalties. Which is a head spinner. In fact, in this dumbing down age, I’m fast warming to this new idea of only three divisions.

Though it has to be said that Mrs. Gandhi’s usage of the term “platform” is unfortunate because these new castes would not be seen dead sharing a common platform, never mind a waiting room. It conjures up images, for me at least, of hordes of laborer’s waiting, with increasing impatience, for the Indian Economic Miracle Rajdhani Express, clutching tickets given to them by the Congress.

But they are increasingly resigned to the realisation that those tickets, to what is rightfully their passage, are worthless 60 year old I.O.U. notes. In return for no water, no education, no health and no electricity whilst the agents of the State made ends meet by slumming it out in Lutyen bungalows and London private hospitals.

The new business caste’s stoic social commitment? Will they answer Madam’s call for a much greater sense of social responsibility? If you asked them to share a platform with the labour classes they would kill themselves by laughing their guts out. Why in hell would they do that when you can bloody fly? You don’t get frequent flyer points for mixing with those types.

However, if there is a airline strike, which is known to happen, I can very clearly, with no degree at all of opacity, the State and the Business classes cozily sharing a common railway platform. This relationship is alive and kicking furiously. Jesus, get a room!

This unperturbed display of intimate relations between the State class and the business class has not escaped our leader’s attention. Mrs. Gandhi ominously said, “Graft and greed are on the rise.”

The wildly lucrative 2G spectrum and Commonwealth Games construction graft was a glaring example of how well the business and State classes work together. Kalmadi, reportedly, help bribe an unprecedented 72 States to secure the Games, displaying a legendary, God given talent for cementing the business, State relationship. Yes, finally a common indivisible vision! Yes, even the labour class was involved in the construction! A glorious victory march towards a more equal, more caring society.

Well, it’s undeniable Kalmadi and Raja, the former Telecommunications minister, are now equally filthy rich and equally caring about their country. In fact they’re probably so concerned about India that they will likely team up, buy a small Pacific country, with small change, and settle there.

But Mrs. Gandhi’s belief that the cancer is growing is wrong. The corrupt have never left the corridors of power and don’t increase in number. It is the sheer scale of easy pickings that has grown in every dimension, to a size that is sublime. ‘Commissions’ that have been made possible by the new economic powerhouse in amounts that can only be marveled at.

Ironically, Mrs. Gandhi’s proposed antidote to this divisive poison is to have “greater probity, more transparency”. A cleaned window to the gears of government and business practice. This may be counterproductive. The less the public know about the workings of this Government, the better the chance of re-election.

The hard to find positive side of the Orwellian nature of the Indian press coverage is that corruption scandals are far more likely to be reported than in the old days of Doordhashan rule. Importantly the audience reach of these televised corruption exposes’ increases exponentially every year. Deep into the remote heartland of backward States like Chattisgarh that are experiencing intense ‘insurgency’.

For Mrs. Gandhi’s plea for a more caring, equal society has been, in no small way, prompted by this view of increased corruption. She knows that a unified country, with one vision, can never happen with the business, State nexus unapologetically piddling in the village tank.

Obama's Visit To India

Obama’s visit to India is a renewal of marriage vows between two countries that have historically neglected one another. His tour has rekindled a passion that was never there. For India is at last getting some love, because the U.S. knows this union is good for business.

For Obama’s visit to India is as much of a tribute to an emerging power as it is an admission that the United States is a submerging power. The global financial crisis has laid bare the fragility of the West’s institutions. It’s Achilles heel grows in step with it’s increasing financial complexity.

Like an Ambassador car being hit by a bus, India has not only survived but has flourished. This robustness is something that is not easily ridiculed. Obama went as far as to say India was not emerging but had “risen”. He knows with this new wealth comes military power.

That military power is something the U.S. wants on their side, pointed well away from them. The badly kept dirty little secret is that India is perceived as being rather more serious at killing Muslims militants than Pakistan. Obama has consistently stated in his Mumbai trip that India has the greatest investment in Pakistan’s stability. Diplomatic speak for it is deeply in India’s interest to do more to suppress Muslim militancy in the region. The Americans are very fond of domino analogies and it would not have escaped their imagination that if the Afghan domino continues to fall too heavily on Pakistan’s it will topple. That would make India, in the American’s eyes, decidedly more essential in containing the ‘onslaught’. But of course under their enlightened leadership.

But the U.S. are comically out of their depth. With every passing day Pakistan looks increasingly like the multi-headed beast Kalyan. A multitude of Stately heads from the Army chief to the actual President, who is quite unintentionally ceremonial, and the madly swaying intelligence heads in between. Conflicting orders with conflicting policies. Fighting Talibanis on her western borders and then training and financing militants to infiltrate Kashmir to her East. This must be deeply confusing to U.S. State Department officials who habitually stop at red lights and like country music.

The U.S. are screaming for an ally who can be more easily understood and less shifty. But does India want to increase it’s co-operation with a nation that is has an occupying force in two countries in the region? Can India suppress it’s gag reflex when lectured by Obama on how to fight militancy when the U.S. have fertilized the fundamentalist’s ideology almost single handed?

Of course they can because it’s business yaar! India wants to be able to continue it’s startling rise as the U.S.’s call centre. Obama had made strong promises on his election campaign to slow the outsourcing of American jobs to India. This would be bad for India and simply catastrophic for Gurgaon. The days of the Non Alignment Movement are now dead and cremated. India can now be seen to be big buddy’s with the evil imperialist power and sell credit cards to people who have nearly killed themselves jumping out of the bath to answer the phone.

I have a fantasy that one day Americans working in a Texas call centre will have to learn Punjabi accents to take calls from India. This will take some time I fear but in this spirit Manmohan Singh placed an astronomical order for 10 C-17 cargo planes that will create 22,000 jobs in the U.S.! Was this a bribe to stop Obama cracking down on U.S. outsourcing to India?

What has not been reported is India’s huge medical tourism industry that must be bitterly anti Obama. Had his brave attempt at universal health coverage been a larger success India would have lost billions of dollars from uninsurable Americans staying at home to have a bypass. They must have breathed a huge sigh of relief when the Democrats were hammered in the polls.

However dysfunctional the marriage, the relationship will survive out of mutual necessity. India needs business. America needs allies in their war against an emotion. But above all none can afford to have a unified Pakistan under a militant leader with an undeveloped love for multi-faith democracies with a well developed nuclear arsenal.

Boat People And Plane People

Pic:Australia's first boat people.

The recent ‘information evenings’ on the opening of a new South Australian centre for boat people has dark importance for the Indian community. Yes, Indians come to Australia by Singapore Airlines but it was a rather frightening litmus test of this countries strong immunity to foreign bodies.

The widely televised proceedings had terrifying close ups of a mob that were very different to one another. Bronzed fair dinkum Aussies in singlets and thongs and pallid, long retired Scots in frayed jumpers their Mothers knitted for them in the war.

What sickened me to bottom of my guts was the uniformity in their expressions. Undisguised fear. Hysterical aggressiveness. Magpies defending their nest from invaders.

If this is a cross section of Australia how deep is the reserve of political will to continue Australia’s multicultural immigration policy? Today the Age reported that a majority of Australians supported the detention of asylum seeking children. This dark satanic fact proves the Australian well of human kindness is anything but bottomless and indeed may dry up.

For the message that migrant communities are hugely beneficial to Australia is simply not out there. It is a political hot potato. If Labor openly evangelized that immigrants are indeed a great asset to the nation they would lose a great amount of support and in these knife edged times would lose power. Which is a frustrating paradox as a great deal of Labor’s electorate is a people smuggler’s passenger list.

But this message must get out. How long will this insane concentration of hate towards a comically small amount of boat people last? How long will they be the fall guys for the wider immigrant community? For it as wildly strange as it is true that in Australia it is politically correct to be repugnantly racist against someone who has arrived here on a fishing boat but not by Qantas. Socially acceptable to vent jaundiced frustration with the wider immigrant community on to ‘queue jumpers’. Will a hatred for other modes of transport transpire?

Could the focus of this irrational hatred spread towards Indians? It tragically has, evidenced by the atrocious attacks on students, but not to it’s terrifying potential because we are enjoying prosperity. They are happy for Indians to do the jobs they don’t covert. Until of course severe recession strikes and suddenly Indians will be taking all the jobs from ‘Fair dinkum Aussie fellas’. Because the message has not reached Australians who do not have the foggiest clue how much their economy is supported by the vast numbers that arrive here annually. The robust property market is heavily underpinned by the thousands resettling here. Indians make up an unusually high proportion of the new property buyers in the outer suburbs of the country’s metros. Shamefully it must also be noted that the goras have become addicted to the cheap labor that Indian migrants offer in the convenience store and taxi industries. Ten years ago the Premier of Victoria reportedly begged the Immigration Department to stop checking Indian driver’s working hours because all the taxis had disappeared.

But don’t worry. In less than a generation you’ll own the 711 and a fleet of taxis which makes a very important point. The Australian is not entrepreneurial. In the fast shrinking world of globalization the Australian laid back attitude will simply not cut the mustard. Coal and gold are finite resources. They need the relentless energy of a Punjabi boy who could sell a television to someone who is legally blind and then sell a stereo to their half deaf sister. Any of you who have conducted business in Sada Bazaar will know an Australian would lose his shirt before he sipped his first morning late.

The next general election will be a blood bath. Will Gillard, still petrified from her brush with political death, succumb and follow the German Chancellor by declaring the multicultural society a disaster and then heighten the Indian proof fence around this Island? Winning the votes of individuals who would fail miserably to settle in their own country if they themselves were subjected to the very point system that they devised.

To do so would be disingenuous as India’s criminally undervalued talent pool is cheap and easy. For Australia is the only country in the world that suffers a brain drain from experts refusing to leave.

One Billion Are Not A Minority

India has to euthanise her deep inferiority complex. Paul Henry’s racism has turned on the well-dusted sixty-year-old babu gramophone, that still plays childishly over defensive records. This was only matched by the New Zealand Government’s infuriating over-defensiveness when it made a formal apology to the Indian Government, bewilderingly setting a precedent for taking responsibility for racists and intellectual midgets not in her employ.

I was born a Kiwi but the entirety of my life is India connected, and I love her with a depth that is at least as deep as my love for New Zealand. I want the whispered prophecies of economic superstardom to be a glorious roar, not a sulky whimper from imagined slights against chaste Mother India from populations that would barely qualify for a Lok Sabha constituency, or be a less-than-respectful turn out for a single day at the Kumbh Mela.

Like India, we carry our Bal Thackerays grudgingly. We ignore better judgment and restrain from publicly hanging them for destroying hard won international relationships, a labour of many years, with single sentences. Though please take solace in the knowledge that if Henry’s fate was in my hands, he would be begging to be hanged, but the fickleness of democracy dictates that I am not New Zealand’s Prime Minister. (That Henry’s name is not reminiscent of any Punjabi abuse, is also a cruel, cruel fate).

India, stop running to mummy when some half wit gora calls you a name in the international playground. It betrays a lack of confidence. It is unbecoming of your future ‘Superpower Number One.’ Superpowers are not home to leaders with egos so embarrassingly fragile to obscure sensationalists. If the United States were distracted from nation building by the multitude of criticism it receives, they would still be a rabble of disorganised drunks. One billion people are not a minority. Stop being one. Jai Hind!