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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Japan N-fumes reach Jaitapur by Sadaf Modak

The promised power from the Jaitapur nuclear project may light up the area, but Nandkumar Raut already finds the future dark.

“Almost every family in the village has a police case against at least one member,” said the farmer from Madban, the village closest to the project site in Maharashtra’s Ratnagiri district.

Raut said he has at least three cases foisted on him — one barring him from entering his own village — for being part of protests against the project. But the middle-aged man is not deterred, the latest inspiration coming from Anna Hazare, a fellow Maharashtrian. “This village had produced 14 freedom fighters and now Anna Hazare has shown us the way. We will protest till the project is removed from our village.”

Raut, along with many others from Madban and neighbouring villages to be affected by the 9,900MW project, have refused compensation packages of up to Rs 10 lakh an acre offered by the Congress-NCP state government for their land.

There are several others like Raut, some of them day labourers, who have to travel to the local court in Ratnagiri, an hour’s drive away, as many as three times a month. That means days of lost earnings.

Distance, though, hasn’t held back leaders seeking to tap into the resentment. On Saturday, Uddhav Thackeray held a rally in nearby Mithgavane. “This area needs development projects but not at the price of human lives or the loss of livelihood of the farmers and fishermen,” the Sena executive president told a crowd of 20,000.

The speech was peppered with references to Japan’s nuclear crisis, hardly surprising in an area where Fukushima, the stricken nuclear reactor, is a buzzword. “We saw what happened in Japan. One such incident and the whole Konkan coast (of which Jaitapur and Ratnagiri district are a part) will get destroyed. If the locals oppose the project, we won’t allow the government to continue with it,” Thackeray said.

A farmer who attended the rally tried to remove the impression that their protests were turning political. “The Sena is supporting us but the opposition to the project remains our own,” he said.

The protesters have been booked for cases ranging from assembling unlawfully, rioting and even attempt to murder — slapped for attacks on a policeman after his van killed a villager during demonstrations.

Even Manisha Kazwe, Mithgavane’s woman sarpanch, hasn’t gone unscathed: she has been booked after the villagers refused to hoist the national flag on January 26 in protest.

“They also got schoolteachers to tell our children to convince us about the project. Parents refused to send children to school for two days after that,” Kazwe said on Saturday, as several schoolchildren were seen heading to Thackeray’s rally after classes.

The man who heads Janhit Sewa Samiti, which is spearheading the anti-plant movement, has been slapped with a notice asking him to cough up a fine of Rs 9 lakh for protests in December. “All this is an effort to bog us down. As we garner support, the state makes its own efforts to get the poor farmers to back off,” said Pravin Gavankar, who received the penalty notice hours after he attended Thackeray’s public meeting.

Of the 2,335 families to be affected, 122 — only 5 per cent — are learnt to have accepted the compensation. Some of them have had to face social boycott. Another’s property was vandalised.

While farmers fear losing their land, fishermen feel the project will sink their livelihoods by releasing hot water from the project’s six reactors into the sea. They also fear curbs on fishing routes once the plant starts generation.

“We are already being stopped by the authorities who question us about our fishing sticks and other equipment. What will happen once the project starts?” said Raju Wadekar. He accused the government of “fooling” villagers.

Many in nearby Niveli village echo the charges. They said the government was getting them to agree to the project by using force or baits, such as new roads.