[Reader-list] Japan’s Nuclear Crisis and The Indian Bureaucrat-Scientist – A Very Modest Note at Sanhati

[Nagraj Adve]

Date: 19 March 2011
Subject: Japan’s Nuclear Crisis and The Indian Bureaucrat-Scientist –
A Very Modest Note at Sanhati



Japan’s Nuclear Crisis and The Indian Bureaucrat-Scientist – A Very
Modest Note at Sanhati

Japan’s Nuclear Crisis and The Indian Bureaucrat-Scientist – A Very Modest Note

March 18, 2011

By Kuver Sinha

As Japan’s nuclear crisis continues, the reaction of top officials of
India’s nuclear establishment makes for interesting reading.

“There is no nuclear accident or incident in Japan’s Fukushima
plants…It was purely a chemical reaction and not a nuclear emergency
as described by some section of media” - Dr. Srikumar Banerjee,
Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission.

Dr. Banerjee has evidently been living under a rock – in the outside
world, the fact that Japan is facing a nuclear emergency is not a
conspiracy theory created by “some sections of media”. It is the
truth. Japan itself acknowledges that it is on the brink of a very
much nuclear disaster, and the real time updates on Google News get
refreshed every minute as the world watches. To my knowledge, Dr.
Banerjee is the only public official till now who has dismissed
Fukushima as a chemical glitch.

One can debate about how exactly the explosions happened, but when a
radius of dozens of miles has been cleared due to radiation threats
and people in faraway Tokyo are locking themselves up inside, the word
“chemical” is just plain mischievous.

How does one explain this ridiculous statement coming from a top
bureaucrat-scientist?

These days one finds several newly minted capitalized words which,
Atlas-like, carry the weight of the nation. India Inc., Indian Culture
– these words carry the hopes and aspirations of the future
generation, the generation that will leave its mark on the world
stage. To these, one may add the thundering authority of Indian
Science.

The bureaucrat-scientists are the high priests of this edifice. They
are an exceptional group of people. For some among them, acronyms of
academies and honours voted in by other top dogs in the old boys’ club
keep accumulating at the end of their names, till one gets lost in the
maze of letters and deciphers only a single word - “Entitlement”.

Amply entitled, these Very Important Persons sometimes descend from
the Chairs of their Academies and Agencies, to pronounce the final
word on scientific policy.

The nation needs a report on GM crops? Give the fools a copied out
version of a cobwebbed layman’s report typed up in a hurry by some
arbitrary person a few years ago. Just make sure it toes the correct
line. If the media calls you out, who cares – the Academies wrote it –
They define Science.

Japan’s nuclear plants face meltdown? Who cares – just call it a
“chemical reaction” failure or something. Tell the public that what’s
happening there doesn’t fall in the category of a “nuclear incident” –
after all, nobody got nuked, did they? Tell them that India’s nuclear
industry doesn’t even need to think twice about such trivial “chemical
failures”.

This is not the place to enter into a debate on nuclear power or the
politics (or even bribes) behind treaties. It is not the place to
point out the conditions in Jadugoda, or the fact that India has seen
devastating earthquakes, tsunamis, and cyclones recently, or even to
point out the fact that our greatest industrial disaster, Bhopal,
didn’t need an earthquake or a tsunami. The mere presence of the plant
in a third world country, where the lives of workers have no value,
was enough. One may argue that that’s the way political economy works,
the assurances of the Banerjees and Andersons notwithstanding.

We will not debate these things, because one cannot debate in the face
of diktats. The bureaucrat-scientist doesn’t even engage with the
question seriously. He has two methods of dealing with evolving
questions. First – there is no question. Second – in the remote
possibility that there is a question, it is trivial.

“There is no nuclear incident” – “There is no debate about GM crops”.

In our country, the bureaucrats of the nuclear establishment don’t
even pretend to play anymore.

This is remarkable, because in the sciences one is generally taught to
question authority and pursue logic ruthlessly. Oracles die hard. The
fact that there has been very little criticism of the ridiculous
statements emanating from the Entitled is ominous.

Ominous, but not surprising. One has to step back, and remember that
there is a difference between science and Science. The first, science,
deals with the way Nature behaves. The second, Science, is a
class-construct to push agendas that make money and create power. It
deals with the way classes behave.

In Science, two and two can make four, six, or eight, depending on the
class alliances.

The Very Important Persons of Indian Science are actually not all that
important, since ultimately they are beholden to class dynamics. If
one gets the impression that they are sometimes cavalier in their
methods – after all, nobody else, absolutely nobody, has called
Japan’s crisis a “chemical reaction” – it is because the game has
already been fixed.

The game has been so overwhelmingly fixed that the
bureaucrat-scientist doesn’t even have to pretend to play.

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