Koodankulam’s children
The day a nuclear power plant is installed next to one of those plush MLA hostels, or an enclave where politicians have their fancy houses, and there is no murmur of opposition from the inhabitants, t

The day a nuclear power plant is installed next to one of those plush MLA hostels, or an enclave where politicians have their fancy houses, and there is no murmur of opposition from the inhabitants, then and only then can anyone have a right to tell the women and men of Idinthakarai that what they are doing is against the “national interest” or that they are ill-informed, ignorant, seditious, deluded,0 etc.
The battle to shift the Koodankulam nuclear power plant out of the backyard of their homes is one that the people — women particularly — of the village of Idinthakarai in Radhapuram taluka of Tamil Nadu’s Tirunelveli district have been fighting since 2011. In her new book The Ant in the Ear of the Elephant, writer and filmmaker Minnie Vaid details this struggle and what motivates these women, and how deaf the nuclear establishment and successive Indian governments have been to the very real concerns of people who have no powerful political connections to back them up.
Media interest too has been sporadic — the media is yet to identify India’s real heroes, fixated as it is on business people, venture capitalists and the odd NGO that has won international recognition.
The Indian government and much of the public have accepted without question that nuclear power is beneficial for the country (even as the government takes every opportunity to pat itself on the back for its increasing use of “green” power, which is invisible to most of us).
There is very little debate about the dangers of nuclear plants, despite well-publicised nuclear disasters in foreign countries with far better safety records than India’s. A country that made a shocking mess of a chemical disaster like the one in Bhopal 30 odd years ago, and regularly reports horrific loss of lives in fires in theatres, schools and homes, is unlikely to be able to do much better in the event of a nuclear leak or meltdown.
Who better to understand this than the people on the front line of such potential disasters
The astonishing — and uplifting — part of Vaid’s book is its portrayal of the spunky, well-informed women living in and around the fishing village who have managed to sustain their struggle for five years with the help of the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy.
Vaid has visited this community in Idinthakarai often. She has interviewed several of the women and she reproduces what they said verbatim, giving us an interesting insight into what turns ordinary people into gritty moral warriors.
The conviction of the women that theirs is a just cause rings right through the book. We heard it at the launch of the book a couple of months ago, when two of the protesters Milret and Sundari travelled from Idinthakarai to Mumbai to explain their work and why they were so convinced it was essential.
They spoke through a translator with fluency, passion and complete mastery of their subject. These were not women tutored to say something by anti-nuke activists; they were the ones whose livelihoods would be threatened by the water released into the sea by the power plant, whose families would be deformed or die if there was a nuclear accident or disaster.
They told us with much humour about how they were rounded up by the police, sent to jail and slapped with numerous cases of sedition and “waging war against the state”!
How does a virtually illiterate woman partaking of a peaceful protest in her village, fighting for her right to a life free of the fear of a nuclear disaster become an enemy of the state, they asked
Ironically, among the people who could be affected are the residents of what is called Tsunami Colony, which was built by Church’s Auxiliary for Social Action on land provided by the government to rehouse people rendered homeless by the tsunami of 2004.
The nuclear plant is just one kilometre from the last house in this colony (no habitation is allowed within 1.5 km of a nuclear plant according to Atomic Energy Regulatory Board’s own regulations). Imagine the brilliant planning and concern of the powers-that-be that led them to house people already dispossessed by one disaster on the threshold of another potential disaster.
What gave the protest momentum was seeing the horrors of Fukushima in Japan unfold on their television screens in 2013.
Three Mile Island and Chernobyl may be only memories today, but here was a live disaster in the 21st century, in one of the most advanced nations on the planet, bringing death and destruction on a colossal scale. Who would not be scared to death of such a thing happening to them
The strength of Vaid’s book is that it is not going into the nitty-gritty of the nuclear power debate. Indeed, it could hardly do so when one side — the nuclear power establishment — refused to answer even a single question or grant her a single interview.
The strength of the book is its delineation of a grassroots struggle and the colossal insensitivity and disdain of the Indian state when faced with the concern of poor people. While taking immediate note of the protests of powerful elites that turn violent or threaten their political fortunes, political parties in power are indifferent to other causes however just they may be.
The rest of the world has understood the concept of “sustainable development”, but India has not. Our governments prefer the old cliché that “someone” has to suffer for the good of others. Since that someone is never the people making these decisions, or their cronies and constituencies, such a grossly unfair viewpoint continues to prevail.
Sherna Gandhy is a senior journalist based in Pune