Tamil Nadu CM takes the right,and bold,call. Centre should help make Koodankulam a success The impasse over the Koodankulam nuclear power plant was a political issue to begin with. It was the Centres political failure that prompted Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa to write to the prime minister last September,asking for a suspension of work till the concerns of local residents were addressed. A lot of water had flown under the bridge since as the first of the twin Russian-built 1,000 MW reactors sat dangerously idle with minimal operations,long after its hot run had been completed in August and it had missed its year-end deadline for going critical until the Tamil Nadu governments decision to make the plant operational on Monday. What the chief minister had flagged in September was the Centre and the atomic authorities failure to communicate,their neglect of the public information angle. Notwithstanding the anti-nuclear protests and the Peoples Movement Against Nuclear Energy,or the prime ministers flagging of NGOs associated with the Church,the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) admitted earlier this month that it had indeed failed to address the fears of the locals and had in fact taken them for granted. As it happens,Jayalalithaas green signal is accompanied by a Rs 500-crore developmental package for the area. The CM should be congratulated for her courage,but the task of conducting thorough information and confidence-building campaigns is far from over. Tamil Nadu,meanwhile,has been reeling under power shortfalls,with its deficit reaching almost 3,000 MW,to meet which the state government had asked for 1,000 MW from the Central pool. Tamil Nadu is now likely to get the full capacity from the first reactor 500 MW,and an advance of 500 MW from the second reactor supposed to be commissioned soon. Be that as it may,Jayalalithaa has taken a brave political call underlining and this is a lesson to the UPA that an effective CMs politics is linked to her states interests which dont necessarily have to be framed in terms of conflict with the party or the government at the Centre. Its now up to the UPA to help Tamil Nadu and atomic authorities remove the rest of the hurdles from the plants path,which can in turn rescue Indias nuclear future from the hopelessness it plunged into at Jaitapur and Koodankulam.
