Fighting neoliberalism in Bengal

Sanhati
Editorial Statement
Resources for Activists
Journal
Newsreel
Pictures and Videos
Links
Contact Us
Whistle Blowers and the Public Interest
June 25, 2013
by M. V. Ramana
The bulk of development policies, justified in the national interest, actually
diminish poor peoples ability to control and gainfully use natural resources.
Every national project is presented as beneficial for the masses even though it
requires some poor people to surrender their land or their livelihood. While the
greater good of the nationappears to be a laudable cause, it must appear
suspicious to the rural poor who are consistently chosen, time and time again, to
make all the sacrifices, while those more powerful reap the benefits. Amita
Baviskar, In the Belly of the River
There is a common message emanating from the centers of power in Washington,
D.C. and New Delhi: Whistle blowing, or truth telling as the act may be more
accurately described, is not a welcome activity. As I write this, officials in the
United States are searching all over Hong Kong for Edward Snowden, the high
school dropout, who revealed the U.S. National Security Agencys surveillance
programme. Proving its status as a loyal ally of the United States, the United
Kingdom warned airlines not to fly Snowden to Britain. In the meanwhile, the
trial of Bradley Manning, the most famous truth teller in the United States, started
in Maryland, USA.
A much less celebrated truth teller was also in the Courts recently in New Delhi.
Once upon a time, Manoj Mishrawas employed by the Nuclear Power
Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) at its Kakrapar Atomic Power Station
(KAPS) in Gujarat and was the president of Kakrapar Unit Kendriya Sachivalaya
Hindi Parishad. Before describing why this person was at the Supreme Court, a
little bit of geography and history might be in order.
Kakrapar was originally considered as a potential site for a nuclear power plant in
the 1960s but then rejected. The reason given then was that there was a large
population within the exclusion area and the site was close to a major source of
water used for drinking and cultivation (For more on the criteria used for reactor
siting, see pp. 44-46 of The Power of Promise). In addition to the population,
another problem with the Kakrapar site was that it was in a low-lying area, prone
to flooding. This was of particular concern because the site was close to the Ukai
Dam and it was conceivable that the whole reactor might get flooded.
In 1980, however, the Atomic Energy Commission announced that Kakrapar was
to become the fifth nuclear power station and the two reactors there started
commercial operations in 1993 and 1995. Of course, neither of the problems
originally cited had changed. If anything, the population in the area had only
increased, both naturally and because of various construction activities.Though
some amount ofearth-fillingwas done to avoid flooding, things didnt turn out so
well.
The outlet from the turbine building of KAPS leads to an artificial lake called
Moticher, which has gates to control the flow of water. On 15 and 16 June 1994,
there were heavy rains in South Gujarat andthe water level of the lake began to
rise. The ducts thatwere meant to let out water ended up becoming conduits for
water to come in. And since there were no arrangements either for sealing cable
trenches and valve pits, they too allowed water to enter. Water began entering the
complex on the night of 15 June and by the next morning, there was water in the
turbine building as well as other parts of the reactor complex. The workers inthe
morning shift had to swim in chest-high water, and the control room was
reportedly inaccessible for some time. Finally, a site emergency was declared and
workers were evacuated.
By this time, another problem had become apparent. The gates that could control
the flow of water into Moticher had not been well maintained, and so, mud had
collected around them and they could not be opened. The KAPS management
requested help from the district and state authorities, but that evidently didnt
help either. Fortunately, villagers from the area, who were worried about the
security of their own homes, made a breach in the embankment of the lake that
allowed the water to drain out. Finally, on 18 June, a large pump was brought to
Kakrapar from Tarapur, and the work of removing the water from the turbine
building began.
In the meanwhile, much of the equipment in the turbine building was submerged,
including the water pumps used to cool the reactor core. Electrical power from
the grid failed, and diesel generators had to be used. Fortunately, the reactor had
been shutdown following the major fire at the Narora for inspection of turbine
blades. The floodwater carried away canisters of radioactive waste, and it is not
clear if they were ever recovered or if any of them released its contents into the
waters.
This is where Manoj Mishra comes in. NPCIL officials evidently did not bother
to inform members of the public about what happened. The way the public got to
know anything about the damage at KAPS was because Mishra wrote a letter to
Gujarat Samachar about what happened. For this revelation, Mishra was
suspended and, after an internal inquiry, removed from service in March 1996.
Since then, Mishra has been fighting the nuclear establishment in courtsand
losing. This process of fighting in the courts took him to the Gujarat High Court,
which, in 2007, dismissed his case. Mishra then appealed to the Supreme Court,
and in April of this year, the SC dismissed his appeal. Itsobservations are worth
quoting at some length:
it will be apposite to notice the growing acceptance of the phenomenon of
whistleblower.A whistleblower is a person who raises a concern about the
wrongdoing occurring in an organisation or body of people. Usually this person
would be from that same organisation. The revealed misconduct may beclassified
in many ways; for example, a violation of a law, rule, regulation and/or a direct
threat to public interest, such as fraud, health/safety violations and corruption.
Whistleblowers may make their allegations internally (for example, to other
people within the accused organisation) or externally (to regulators, law
enforcement agencies, to the media or to groups concerned with the issues)
In our view, a person like the respondent can appropriately be described as a
whistleblower for the system who has tried to highlight the malfunctioning of an
important institution established for dealing with cases involving revenue of the
State and there is no reason to silence such a person by invoking Articles 129 or
215 of the Constitution or the provisions of the Act
In our opinion, the aforesaid observations are of no avail to the appellantthe
appellant is educated only upto 12th standard. He is neither an engineer, nor an
expert on the functioning of the Atomic Energy Plants. Apart from being an
insider, the appellant did not fulfill the criteria for being granted the status of a
whistle blower. One of the basic requirements of a person being accepted as
awhistle blower is that his primary motive for the activity should be in
furtherance of public good. In other words, the activity has to be undertaken in
public interest, exposing illegal activities of a public organization or authority.
The conduct of the appellant, in our opinion, does not fall within the high moral
and ethical standard that would be required of a bona fide whistle blower.
There are many questions that we should ask. First, in what way is the education
level of Manoj Mishra relevant to deciding if he was a whistle blower, and why
should any whistle blower be an expert on whatever it is that he or she is
revealing the truth about? If someone reveals that a pharmaceutical company is
producing contaminated drugs meant to treat cardiac problems (Such things do
happen, see for example), does that person have to be an expert on how
pharmaceutical plants operate? Or should he or she be a doctor with many years
of experience in treating heart disease? Second, what might have happened if
Mishra had actually been an expert in the operation of atomic power plants? Well,
we can only speculate. But remember that for Mishra to become an expert, he
would necessarily have to have spent several years at the DAEs training school,
during the course of which he would likely not just have learnt about nuclear
reactor physics and engineering, but also become indoctrinated to trust authority
and support the NPCIL and DAE policies of secrecy unquestioningly. This is a
potential reason for the paucity of truth tellers from the upper echelons of the
DAE or NPCIL. Or most other hierarchical organizations, for that matter. Third,
what exactly is the public interest in this case? It is clear what the interest of
NPCIL and DAE would have beento hide the news that its design and its
maintenance were inadequate to protect against even moderately severe floods.
But, for the public, it would be just the opposite: to hear about what happened
within KAPS during the floods, so they know what risks they faced.
Why then did the Court argue otherwise? Of course, we cannot know for sure.
But some clues can be had from the other recent Supreme Court judgment. This
decision dismissed a plea seeking to halt the commissioning of the Koodankulam
nuclear reactors, under construction in Tamil Nadu, till the implementation of key
additional safety measures recommended after the Fukushima accidents of 2011.
As is well known, the massive release of radioactive materials from the reactors
at Fukushima Daiichi, which has resulted in the contamination of a large swath of
area and is now estimated to lead in the long run to something on the order of a
thousand cancers, also added to the already strong opposition among people
living around Koodankulam. What the Supreme Court decided, in essence, was
that these people will now have to put up with such minor inconveniences,
minor radiological detriments and minor environmental detriments.
The Courts opinion is replete with references to the public interest. While
setting up a project of this nature, we have to have an overall view of larger
public interest rather than smaller violation of right to life guaranteed under
Article 21 of the Constitution. Elsewhere, Larger public interest of the
community should give way to individual apprehension of violation of human
rights and right to life guaranteed under Article 21. It went on further to say,
Nuclear power plant is being established not to negate right to life but to protect
the right to life guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitutionit will only
protect the right to life guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution for
achieving a larger public interest and will also achieve the object and purpose of
Atomic Energy Act. And so on, and so forth.
Whats important about this decision is that the Judges idea of public interest
seems to be based largely, if not completely, on testimony offered by various
arms of the nuclear establishment. The decision,in essence, neglects the
numerous pieces of expert testimony submitted by the petitioners questioning
various aspects of the governments wisdom in building nuclear reactors in
general, including at Koodankulam. For this reason, if the Supreme Court
decision was meant to help settle the contentious debate over Koodankulam, it
has not, and cannot, succeed in this aim. The reliance on expert testimony from
within the nuclear establishment demonstrates myopia on a very basic issue the
lack of public trust regarding thenuclear establishment.
But back to the basic point: arguments made by powerful institutions about the
public interest often hide a more divisive reality: it is hard, if not impossible, to
come up with a clearly defined and widely accepted notion of public interest that
can apply to a large range of areas. [See Robert Jensens arguments on a related
theme, the national interest, albeit in a different context]. More important, even if
there might besome common public interest (clean air, for example), trying to
actually reach that common interest usually involves having those goals be
negotiated through power struggles, and the imposition of hardship to one
disadvantaged group or the other.
The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek once wrote: It is indeed true that we
live in a society of risky choices, but it is one in which only some do the
choosing, while others do the risking. To this one may add, those who have the
power to choose often make choices that are beneficial to them but have become
adept at passing off those choices as being in the public interest. Whistle blowers
seem to care more for those suffering the consequences, real or potential, than the
interests of the powerful elite. We, at least those of us who do not belong to these
exclusive elite enclaves of power, owe these whistle blowers a huge debt of
gratitude.
[M. V. Ramana is with the Program on Science and Global Security at the
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University
and the author of The Power of Promise: Examining Nuclear Energy in India
(Penguin 2012)]
Search
Events
Haryana - Maruti workers' struggle : Manesar chalo, July 18
Delhi - Citizens' Protest Against John Kerry's Visit, June 24
Bhilai, Chattisgarh - Invitation for Shaheed Divas, July 1
Kolkata - Protest against violence on women, June 21
Kolkata - Rally Against Rape, June 17
Older
Media Feed
June 23: Credit crunch hits China
Jun 23 : On the Espionage Act charges against Edward Snowden
June 20 : Building blocks of servitude
Jun 18 : The Deeper Meaning Of Mass Spying In America
Jun 18 : Protests erupt across Brazil over high costs and poor services
Jun 17 : The war in Bastar
Jun 11 : The diverse revolt of Turkish youth and the production of the
political
Older
Commentary and Mediawatch
Like 0
email facebook twitter
Tayyip Istifa
West Bengal : The chit fund crisis: looting the poor with political
connivance
Cheerleader of a Lynch Mob
Ashis Nandy, radically conservative
People under surveillance, Privacy law for whom ?
Older
Social Media
Follow us on Facebook
Digital Archives
Porichoy Patrika
Now Weekly
Liberation
Frontier
Videos: Sanhati Youtube Channel
Resources
Statements from Organisations
Indian People's Tribunal 2010: Resource Documents
Sanhati Statement against Operation Green Hunt: National and International
Signatories
Lalgarh Movement Archives: Nov 2008 - Present
Days and Nights in the Heartland of Rebellion - Gautam Navlakha
Economics Notes
Understanding Exploitation in Rural Bihar: A Note
Neoliberalism and the New Gilded Age: The Wealth Pyramid in the US
Some Aspects of Agricultural Investment in India II
Some Aspects of Agricultural Investment in India: Part I
Older
Cartoons
Select Pages
The PCAPA Letters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Reports from Narayanpatna, Orissa
State Violence in Kalinganagar
Krishi Mukti Sangram Samiti, Assam: A brief note and an interview with
Akhil Gogoi
Andal Aerotropoilis, Falta SEZ
Older Journal Articles
Journal 2011. Issue No. 9, Sep
Journal 2011. Issue No. 8, Aug
Journal 2011. Issue No. 7, July
Journal 2011. Issue No. 6, June
Journal 2011. Issue No. 5, May
Journal 2011. Issue No. 4, Apr
Journal 2011. Issue No. 3, Mar
Journal 2011. Issue No. 2, Feb
Journal 2011. Issue No. 1, Jan
Journal 2010. Issue No. 14
Journal 2010. Issue No. 13
Journal 2010. Issue No. 12
Journal 2010. Issue No. 11
Journal 2010. Issue No. 10
Journal 2010. Issue No. 9
Journal 2010. Issue No. 8
Journal 2010. Issue No. 7
Journal 2010. Issue No. 6
Journal 2010. Issue No. 5
Journal 2010. Issue No. 4
Journal 2010. Issue No. 3
Journal 2010. Issue No. 2
Journal 2010. Issue No. 1
Regular Columnists
D. Rai Chaudhuri [Jan 11]
Workers News [Oct 23]
Sankar Ray [Dec 9]
Sanhati powered by WordPress | Valid XHTML 1.0 | RSS