UPA sabotages India’s thorium energy quest (Org.)

M D Nalapat

Over the past decades, despite severe international sanctions led by the US and China, Indian nuclear scientists such as Dr P K Iyengar and Dr Anil Kakodkar have ensured that this country secures the capability of becoming a major player in the energy market, provided that the Three Stage Programme devised by Homi Jehangir Bhabha in the 1960s gets implemented. However, over the past four years, the UPA has quietly sought to abandon the Three Stage Programme in favour of a massive programme of purchasing foreign reactors that give zero benefit to local technology and very little to local industry.

Interestingly, each time an effort is made to recover sufficient uranium for the nuclear industry, a slew of NGOs emerge that block mining. Although the Manmohan Singh government has evidence that many of these are funded by interests hostile to the indigenous nuclear industry, yet—clearly under pressure from 10 Janpath—it has succumbed to blackmail and refused to mine uranium, especially in Meghalaya. As a result, the PHWR reactors of the Department of Atomic Energy have for long been forced to operate at below 70 per cent of capacity, thereby depriving the country of energy.

Sadly, since 2001, the establishment in India has slowed down the Indian reprocessing programme, the result being that vast pools of irradiated natural uranium have built up,that are a safety hazard and which—once processed—can serve as feedstock for a nuclear energy programme. Because of a tendency of successive governments to succumb to US-China pressure, the Fast Breeder reactor has not yet been fully operationalised, mainly because of lack of fuel. Incidentally, the US, China and the EU are using every means of pressure at their disposal to prevent India from mastering the Fast Breeder Reactor technology, because they know that once such a Rubicon gets passed, India would become one of the key countries in international nuclear commerce. What is a mystery is why governmernts in India have agreed to such anti-Indian diktats for so long, and now appear poised to even scrap the Three Stage Programme altogether.

For the past fifteen years, the Department of Atomic Energy has been working on Advanced Heavy Water Reactors(AHWR) and Compact High Temperature Reactor (CHTR), both being thorium-based. Once these get operationalised, the country would be able to do without costly imports of nuclear plants as well as petro-product feedstock. Of course, this would cut into several Swiss bank accounts held by VVIPs in India, which is why the indigenous AWHR and CHTR programmes are being sabotaged by the Sonia-led UPA.

India’s corrupt protecting the terrorists (Org.)

By M D Nalapat

PALANIAPPAN Chidambaram deserves credit for being open about acknowledging that the sole task of the government is to collect money from the people. This principle got completely enshrined in policy once Sonia Maino chose him as the Union Finance Minister in 2004. From then onwards, the collection agencies of the Government of India were set targets that they were asked to fulfill by using the coercive means at their disposal to the fullest. Anything beyond the target set could be shared among the officials, and this was no small figure, as the financial machinery of government was empowered by Chidambaram to confiscate, imprison and harass at will. As in the time of the British Raj, the country has been bled since 1947 for the benefit of its new rulers. And now the Nehru Era has given way to what may be described as the Maino Era.

That Sonia Maino has very little time for her so-called relatives on the Nehru side of the family is no secret. These unfortunates seldom get invited to Number Ten, and almost never to the holidays in the Maldives or off the coasts of Spain and France that are the locations for get-togethers with the extended branch of the Maino family. As for the Vadras, this clan too have been placed in the same bracket as the Nehrus, which is as a group to be largely ignored socially, even as one Maino after the other gets VVIP treatment in India courtesy the individual who is the fount of their prominence and prosperity, the charming and steely Sonia Maino. Under what provision of the Constitution of India the extended Mainos are given VVIP privileges at airports and elsewhere is not clear, but there must surely be some such provision that is not visible to the naked eye.

What is very clear is that the Maino Era has converted India into a land of scams. A few of these have come to light, although the overwhelming majority still remain hidden, locked up in the records of agencies that regard their foremost duty as the care, feeding and protection of a single clan.

Osama's hidden supporters in India: UPA protecting the culprits of terror on India (Org.)

By M D Nalapat

DAYS after the terror attack on Mumbai that took place on 26-28 November 2008, this columnist was informed by elements in the intelligence community that the operation had been conducted by the ISI, and that serving—in addition to retired—officers of the ISI and other military formations in Pakistan had provided the training and logistics for the youths recruited to carry out the attack. The US-approved Chief of Army Staff, Pervez Ashfaq Kayani, had demanded of the ISI that the organisation “do something” to reduce the rate of growth of the Indian economy. In particular, Kayani wanted to reduce the growing commerce between India and the US-EU combine.

The ISI's reply was the Mumbai terror attack, which was carried out in collusion with elements in the Maharashtra establishment and with the help of sleeper cells within the hotel industry that had been activated in the months prior to the assault. That there was high-level complicity in the 26-28/11 attack became clear when none of the many leads that pointed to the involvement of local Al Qaeda-ISI supporters was ever followed up.

A check of flight records would have shown the number of visits made by friends and relatives of senior police and other officials in Maharashtra to Dubai and London (the two locations favoured by the ISI for meetings with their agents in India). None of this data was ever examined. Indeed, despite clear evidence that the ISI was behind the attack, incoming Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram meekly followed the Washington line (that the Pakistan state was not involved) and the Maino line (that there was zero local involvement in the planning and execution of the crime. It was only after the Obama administration gave permission to Chidambaram via the Headley confession that the Home Minister became more outspoken about the ISI hand. In contrast, on December3, 2008 itself and subsequently, this columnist revealed details about ISI involvement in his column in www.upiasia.com and elsewhere, to indifference from the Union Home Ministry which then—as now—was (and is) more intent on identifying and taking action against threats to the primacy of Sonia Gandhi than it is about national security.