Anti-nuclear campaigners in India see the earthquake that hit Japan last week, which threatens the meltdown of the Fukushima atomic power facility there, as a wakeup call for this country’s ambitious nuclear power programme. When India completed a nuclear power cooperation deal with the United States in October 2008, it threw open a 270 billion U.S. dollar market for nuclear reactors. Now members of the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers’ Group are queuing...

The new bribery revelations, a rigged process to import reactors and safety-related concerns must lead to the long-blocked scrutiny of the nuclear deal by Parliament. The world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl raises troubling questions about India's plans for a huge expansion of its nuclear power programme through reactor imports. Given its low per-capita energy consumption, India must generate far more electricity to economically advance. So it needs more nuclear-generated power....

With buffer stocks ahead of harvest being twice the norm, limiting wheat procurement in the coming season is a judicious option. It is time for a thorough overhaul of the foodgrains procurement and buffer stocking policy. With the rabi season harvest of grains — mainly wheat, followed by paddy — just days away, a major challenge will be finding appropriate storage space. As of March 1, the Food Corporation of India...

A rising number of cases of blackmail of government officers by using the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005, are being reported in RTI circles. Some of these cases came out in the open during the hearing of second appeals by the state information commissioner (SIC) Pune, Vijay Kuvelekar, recently. After a particularly gruelling hearing, a gram sevak from Satara broke down before the SIC and revealed that in her village...

Despite Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan's assurance that the government would not go ahead with the Jaitapur nuclear power plant unless it was fully secure, the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) has already sought tenders for building a concrete testing laboratory and a meteorological laboratory at Madhban, the proposed site of the plant. Long-term dangers cited As per the advertisement issued in a Marathi daily on Tuesday, the NPCIL called...