Nuclear safety: Jaitapur watches Japan

As the bird flies, Fukushima in Japan over 5,000km away from coastal Jaitapur in Maharashtra. Yet, the nuclear mishap there has struck fear in the minds of the over 10,000 villagers in the five villages located on the periphery of the proposed 9,900 MW nuclear power plant.

The most scared among them are of course, the 1,200 families living in Madban, which is barely a 2-km wide hillock away from the proposed plant.

“One state-of-the-art reactor gone bad has reeked such havoc. Can you imagine living with six of these, with not such superior technology, in your backyard?” wonders Pravin Gavhankar, a local farmer-turned-activist who stands to lose nearly 150 acres of ancestral land on which he has mango orchards and paddy fields. His activism has only meant that the authorities dangle the sword off externment on his head. Sure enough, even as DNA speaks to him, two constables from the posse of cops posted 24/7 at the village, stop by to advise him, “At this age kaka, you don’t want to multiply your problems.”

Once the cops leave, a crowd of women stop us at the local Bhagwati temple, eager to find out more about the Fukushima incident which they have read about in the papers and watched on television. “Is it true that many people have died?,” asks 68-year-old Tarabai Sawant. She pulls her pallu up to her mouth wondering whether women and children have died.

Across the backwaters, barely 1.5km away at Nata village, the fishermen have brought in their catch. They proudly show us the boatload of shining mackerel which will find its way to markets in Goa, Pune and Mumbai. Sadiq Solkar is only 22, but his eyes shine with excitement as he looks out at the setting sun across the waters.

“The sea is our mother. Without this livelihood, what will uneducated youth like me do? This project will be the end of our livelihood. If the government is really interested in helping us, why can’t they do something to help preserve fish or the mangoes we grow here?” he asks. Others like Farid Dalvi agree with him and say the authorities are lying when they say that Nata is over 15km away from the proposed project. “By road, we are just 7km away. But by boat, it is not even a kilometre away.”

At Tulsunde village, the villagers have been gathering at the local temple everyday in the evening to discuss what is happening in the far east. “Not all of us get papers. Some of us are quite poor and this is the only way of finding out what is happening in Japan,” says Balu Shelar, a local farmer who then leads the congregation in a prayer beseeching the gods to protect them. “In this ancestral land, which has sustained us for generations, we now have to live in fear of being either ousted or worse,” he says.

In the village of Mithbawane, the farmers are digging trenches around the mango saplings where the waste from the fish cleaned will be put in as fertiliser. Local villager Naresh Kadam, 32, says, “If the project is completed, we may become producers of surplus power but do we really want to lose the world-famous Haapus mango for this?” Behind Naresh, the green on the undulating hillocks plays hide-and-seek with the rich, red laterite rocks. And the sea seems far away, just like the potential danger from the projects that could be.