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Sunday, November 13, 2011

Once upon a time in Kudankulam As the protest against the Kudankulam nuclear plant in Tamil Nadu gathers steam, Velly Thevar meets the villagers who still yearn for the days when they tilled their lush land and lived without the threat of a nuclear m

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1111113/jsp/7days/story_14742707.jsp
Once upon a time in Kudankulam

The swaying cotton fields spelt good news. When the cotton was plucked and finally weighed on the scales, farmer V. Rajalingam remembers jumping with joy. "Cotton gave us sustenance. There used to be so much cotton that entire households lived off it," he says.

There are no cotton fields in Kudankulam today. Instead, there's a nuclear plant, around which villagers have been mounting protests. And 67-year-old Rajalingam, whose land was taken away when it came up in the 1990s, has tears in his eyes when he recalls those days.

Kudankulam has been in the news for several weeks now because of the ongoing protests against the Kudankulam Nuclear Plant Project (KKNPP). The plant was supposed to have started functioning this December, but its launch has now been postponed.

It is difficult to define Kudankulam, a village tucked away in Tamil Nadu's Tirunelveli district. It's not quite a village, or a town. It's not a seaside village, or a fishermen's colony, though many of its residents trawl the seas — some three kilometres away — for their livelihood.

Once upon a time, long before the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) — KKNPP's parent company — came into their lives and changed their destinies, they were all farmers.

The 2.800 acres of land where the NPCIL has constructed the KKNPP was where the men and women worked through the day. The land, called moorambu or thekkadu, was lush. Huge tamarind trees and date palms serenaded the villagers as they toiled in their cotton farms. Because of the shade of the trees, moorambu land is different from other arable lands. But the villagers stress that it was just right for growing cotton and grains. Rajalingam was among those who tended the fields.

Decades later, he — along with many others residents of Kudankulam — is now a statistic in police records. "I don't even know whether I have 16 or 20 cases against me," he says with a laugh. The police started hounding villagers when the protest movement against the KKNPP began in 2007 — slapping numerous cases against them, mostly relating to disturbing the peace.

Of late, the movement against the plant — which villagers say took away their land and may harm them fatally in the event of a mishap — has been gathering steam. The women of Kudankulam have not just joined the protests but are leading them as well. They organise sit-ins near the gate of the plant, and try and stop work from being carried out at the plant.

The protest has changed its tone over the years. The older villagers who gave away their land to KKNPP — mostly at very low rates, they say — were intimidated by the big babus. Their offspring, having seen land movements elsewhere, are more militant.

They are also more educated than their parents. Kudankulam has two government-aided Tamil medium higher secondary schools, one run by the Roman Catholics and the other by the Church of South India or Protestants, and an English medium school run by the Pentecostal sect. The new generation includes engineers and doctors, and a horde of youngsters who have access to the Internet in cyber cafés, and know of controversies revolving around nuclear energy and the threats to safety.

"I do not want to be a part of a project that would sound the death knell for our children and grandchildren," says villager James (he uses only one name) — a former employee at KKNPP and now a leading protestor.

Their parents, they stress, gave away their land without questioning the NPCIL. The compensation was meagre, and many didn't even get that because their land deeds were not in their own names. They had hoped for jobs, but finally only 36 men from Kudankulam were employed at the plant.

The villagers complain that they had been promised Kudankulam would turn into a developed spot, but little has changed over the years. They still do not have access to fresh water.

So Kudankulam has joined the protest — which the villagers had ironically steered clear of when the plant was coming up, wooed by the vision of development. That was when protests were brewing in Idinthikarai, a seaside village of fisherfolk, just one-and-a-half kilometres away from Kudankulam.

Idinthikarai means a broken shore. Legend has it that Lord Murugan — the reigning deity of Tamil Nadu — was passing by Idinthikarai with his wife Valli when dawn broke over the shore. The place was called Vidhinthikarai, which means where the dawn came when the Lord passed by. But over the years the name changed to Idinthikarai. After all, the shore seems unnaturally cut off from the land, almost as if it had been sawed off.

The villagers believe the project will affect their livelihoods, as they fear that the sea where they fish will be contaminated. They point out that they have already lost the plump lobsters which used to breed at the spot where the KKNPP reactors were built. "We used to export those lobsters. Huge ones," recalls Joe Glady who works in the shipping industry.

The sea is a big draw in the village. Those who don't fish, travel — mostly as mariners in the merchant navy.

The village of 13,000 people is predominantly Roman Catholic. But the minority Hindus are as much a part of the protest as the Christians. As if to testify that, an Our Lady of Lourdes church stands facing a Ganesha temple.

The church has been drawn into the protests. Parish priests have allowed the use of the church premises where a tent has been put up for a relay hunger strike that protestors have been conducting.

For the villagers, the sea is their lifeline. At 8 in the morning, fishermen come home tired after a night out in the sea. Every fisherman carries a fish in his hand — for the family's lunch that day. "The people of Idinthikarai cannot do without fish — even for a day," laughs Raj Leon, one of the residents.

In March this year, when an earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, the villagers sat glued to their television sets — a pre-election gift from then Tamil Nadu chief minister K. Karunanidhi. Every house in Idinthikarai lived the horror of the nuclear accident that followed at Fukushima.

Last week, after 45 days of hunger strikes and morchas, the fishermen finally ventured out into the sea. Fibre glass boats have long replaced the catamarans. But the future, the fishermen of Idinthikarai believe, is uncertain.

At the sea at Idinthikarai, huge stones form a protruding jetty. If you step on each stone, you feel as if you are standing in the middle of the sea. The stones were placed there by the Tamil Nadu government after the 2004 tsunami which hit the Indian coast.

At one end you can see the sawed-off shore of Idinthikarai. If you look the other way, you see the two domes of the nuclear plant rearing up near the shore — symbols of Idinthikarai and Kudankulam's future of discontent.

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