Dear Indian media, there are others apart from US elections

This post is born out of frustration. About reporting in the Indian web and electronic media. With the US election scheduled in November, everyone was busy reporting on the tiny details of the two candidates. Where Obama spoke, where did Romney have dinner, how their wives felt, etc. Hell, on the last two days, the reporters went into a kind of frenzy, reporting every step the two candidates took, that Obama cried during his final speech and many more. Now, most of the netizens will not be able to point out on the map, any of the cities or towns these two campaigned in. So, why are these elections so important to hog a major portion of the news space in India? Do we have no other newsworthy matters in hand?
Stephen Harper, Canada's prime minister, chose to visit India at perhaps a wrong time. Because our media was not interested in bringing to us what Harper had brought for the country. Our media felt that it is of more importance for Indians to know who the next US president is! So, nothing was in the prime time about Harper's visit to India. Nor was anything reported about his security personnel rejecting Indian measures and shipping in their own security limousines for Harper. Who is going to find out the truth of why this happened? When a visiting dignitary has to bring in his own security vehicles, is he being snobbish or is our government guilty of inadequacy? But of course, this doesn't matter to our media. What is more important news is how Obama cried in his last campaign speech.
Forget this negative part. The Harper government signed a few agreements with the Indian government. Of these, one was setting up a research programme with three Canadian universities and the IITs in the area of clean water technologies. But we know nothing of that! More importantly the two governments signed an agreement where temporary Indian employees working in Canada and temporary Canadian employees working in India and their will not have to contribute towards their social security or pension plans. This allows both, the companies and their employees, to save costs incurred on things whose benefits they wouldn't have ever received. Do we know of this? No, but we do know that Obama cried during his last speech. Doesn't matter if many Indians working on-site have been crying for years on the unjust contributions they have to make to the US social security system, when they are not eligible to receive any benefit from it.
We cheered Obama when he came to India and hailed him to take the nuclear reactor deal forward. But nuclear reactors run on uranium, which will not come from USA, but from Canada as it has one of the largest reserves of uranium. But we do not yet know at what stage is a deal for uranium supply with Canada? And what did Harper's visit achieve in that direction? We will have to read Canadian newspapers for that because our dear media was busy dissecting why Romney lost and Obama won! More importantly Canada wants to sign a free trade agreement with India. What will this agreement cover? What is the Indian government's view about this agreement? No we won't know of that till our media finds time from reporting how democrats and republicans will never reach any agreement because each controls one house of the US government.
Seriously, I am tired of this minute-by-minute updates of all that doesn't matter to our country. How do these affect India? In almost no way. Romney or Obama it doesn't matter to us. They don't do us any favour. While India has been purchasing military equipment from the US firms through its tax payers' money, the same are given to our western neighbours as part of aid to "fight terrorism". And why cheer Obama who has, during his campaign, talked of India only as a job stealer through outsourcing? More importantly, why not cheer Harper, who has given Indian employees on Canada their fair dues?  What I am seriously tired of is the Indian media. They have their own ideologies and iron-cast agendas. They won't budge from that. The nation's interest is secondary. That's why we saw more headline space for Sandy, compared to Nilam. In the web media it appeared as if Nilam had just kissed the Indian coast while Sandy rammed through the USA. New York's preparations where highlighted throughout, but not Tamil Nadu's. And of course, they conveniently missed the fact that the same Sandy had caused far more devastation in poor countries like Haiti and Cuba, which face crop loss too. But alas, they weren't having elections where the state was ruled by an opposing party to the president.

Bring on the obituaries for nuclear energy

The tragedy of the unprecedented earthquake and tsunami in Japan has given all the so-called experts and environmentalists to pressurise governments around the world to give up power generation using nuclear energy. And they have forced many editorials, which are virtually writing obituaries for nuclear energy.

Thanks to the 24 hour breaking and sensationalising news channels, those opposing the Jaitapur nuclear power project have got a new lease of life. They have been claiming that the earthquake has shown how dangerous nuclear energy is and are asking the government to think of other sources to generate electricity. What other sources? None have a clear answer about it. Many of them say that renewable sources of energy should be used. The proposed Jaitapur project would generate around 10,000 MW of electricity, once fully operational. Do the opponents have an idea, how much land would be required to generate the same amount of power using wind energy? A rule of thumb indicates that roughly 60 acres/MW are required if wind farms are built on land. This means, roughly 6,00,000 acres of land will be required to build a Jaitapur equivalent of wind farm. Do we have that much land to spare, even when farming is possible alongside a wind turbine?

If catastrophic disasters were to shape events in history, we perhaps would never be driving cars or flying in aeroplanes.The debris of Air France flight 447 hasn't yet been recovered. The crash caused a loss of 228 lives. Over the decades, commercial aircraft have crashed for various reasons and we have lost precious lives in these unfortunate incidents. This hasn't prevented the civil aviation sector from expanding like never before, nor has it stymied the development of new, better, larger and faster aeroplanes. So, why does nuclear energy invoke such fear?

Why isn't similar (or greater) contempt reserved for coal-fired power plants? Though they do not pose a threat of radiation contamination, but contamination of the environment due to fly ash and smoke has had an adverse effect on the people residing near such power plants for over generations. And when people talk of problems in disposing nuclear waste, they conveniently forget the havoc caused by fly-ash waste, which is gathering in landfills. In India, less than 50% of fly ash is recycled. Isn't it a problem? We do not have technology to safely dispose fly-ash, yet do not oppose coal-fired power plants.

The point I want to make here, is that we cannot wait beyond a certain limit to get started with enjoying the benefits of technology. We have to use and develop it side-by-side. Anticipate problems, solve them early and if mishaps or disasters occur, we should learn from them and improve designs and procedures accordingly. Writing such premature obituaries is not going to help in any manner. Nuclear power is currently cheapest among the clean methods to generate electricity and if India desires to achieve all-round development, it will have to make use of this source at some point of time. And the earlier it does, the better it would be.

I would like to end with an interesting quote, I heard the other day. "The earthquake and tsunami have resulted in the deaths of more than 10,000 persons in Japan. But the failure of the Fukushima nuclear power plants hasn't yet cause a single death."