*** Excerpts ***

India needs 1, 00,060 MWe of power while we are generating only 1, 00, 034 MWe. Of this –

• 60% is Thermal power which uses coal, diesel and natural gas as fuel
• 25% is Hydro
• 7% is from non-conventional sources like solar, wind and bio-gas; and
• 2.9% is nuclear

World average for nuclear power is 20%. 75% of all France’s power requirements is met by nuclear energy.

• 20% US
• 18% UK
• 12% Germany; and
• 5% China

In addition to its already existing and functioning nuclear reactors, China has 20 new nuclear reactors at an advanced stage of development while another 15 are in the offing. India’s GDP and nuclear capability – nuclear power generation and nuclear defence arsenal will play a critical role in deciding India’s place in global geopolitics.

…It is imperative that all facts about civilian nuclear programme around the world and India’s energy requirements be placed before the nation in terms of hard numbers.

Per capita power consumption

• (India) National per capita consumption – 503 units
• China – 2500 units
• America – 13,000 units
• Tamil Nadu – 900 units

India’s nuclear reactor history so farIndia has 20 nuclear power plants

• Kaiga, Karnataka – 4
• Kakrapar, Gujarat – 2
• Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu – 2
• Narora, Uttar Pradesh – 2
• Rawatbhatta, Rajasthan – 6
• Tarapur, Maharashtra – 4

Total power generated from 20 nuclear reactors – 4780 MW

Nuclear units under construction: 9 of which

• Kalpakkam – 1
• Koodankulam – 2
• Kakrapar – 2
• Rawatbhatta – 2
• Banswara, Rajasthan – 2

Total power that will be generated upon completion – 6700 MW

Facts about Tamil Nadu’s energy requirements and power generating capabilities

Tamil Nadu needs – 12000 MW
Tamil Nadu generates – 7000 MW
Deficit in meeting state requirement – 5000 MW

Given the fact that the two nuclear reactors ready for commissioning in Koodankulam will generate 4800 MW power, Jayalalithaa owes the people of Tamil Nadu an explanation for denying them access to much needed power. People of Chennai suffer one hour power cut seven days of the week while some cities and towns suffer six to seven hours power cut every day. As things stand the situation does not look likely to improve.

*** Excerpts End ***

Here are some more facts and figures to put all this in perspective:

India suffers from a severe shortage of electricity generation capacity. According to the World Bank, roughly 40 percent of residences in India are without electricity. In addition, blackouts are a common occurrence throughout the country’s main cities. Further compounding the situation is that total demand for electricity in the country continues to rise and is outpacing increases in capacity. Additional capacity has failed to materialize in India in light of market regulations, insufficient investment in the sector, and difficulty in obtaining environmental approval and funding for hydropower projects. In addition, coal shortages are further straining power generation capabilities. In order to address this shortfall, the Indian government continues to work towards adding capacity. ..EIA projects that electricity consumption in India will grow at an average rate of 3.3 percent per year through 2035. To meet this growth, India will have to expand their current generation capacity by 234 GW.

But this is unlikely to happen anytime soon..

India will miss the power capacity addition target for the 11th Five Year Plan, Union power minister Sushil Kumar Shinde made this admission while addressing media persons at the annual economic editors conference on Wednesday (Nov 5, ’09).
“We have performed much better in terms of new capacity addition in the 11th Plan as generation capacity worth 18,235 MW has already been commissioned till early October 2009. However, due to various project-related delays, the entire planned target for the plan period may not materialise,” Mr Shinde said. (source)

Apparently, the “Power generation figures were unrealistic:

Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, today (Mar 26, ’11) said it would be an achievement if India could achieve capacity addition of 52,000 MW of power generation at the end of 11th five-year-plan in 2012 despite much higher projections earlier.
…At the outset of 11th plan, target was 78,000 MW of capacity addition, but within two years it was scaled down to 62,000 MW, and now even if the country could add 52,000 MW, it would be a big “achievement”, Ahluwalia said here.

Not surprisingly, India’s per capita energy consumption is amongst the lowest in the world. So if you are amongst the 200-odd million people who enjoy uninterruprted power, count yourselves lucky..and spare a thought for the hundreds of millions who have never known what reliable electric supply means.

Meanwhile, trouble continues at Kudankulam..

Additional References: India Energy Portal; * I have requested my friend Ashutosh (who is an “Energy Expert”) to write a detailed post on this whole issue. I should be able to publish it soon.  Comments, thoughts and additional references, data sources welcome.

Image Data Source: IEA Key energy statistics 2010 and “Energiläget 2050″ by prof. Cristian Azar and Kristian Lindgren ChalmersGöteborg (Swedish) via Wikipedia.

Vatican says Nothing Wrong with Nuclear Power

Nuclear power should be considered a useful energy source, a senior Catholic cardinal has said on Wednesday.

…“With maximum safety requirements in place for people and the environment, and with a ban in place on the hostile use of nuclear technology, why should the peaceful use of nuclear technology be barred?” Martino, the Pope’s justice minister, told Vatican Radio.

“Excluding nuclear energy because of a preconceived principle or for fears of disasters could be a mistake and in come cases could have paradoxical effects.

…Pope Benedict on Sunday marked the fiftieth anniversary of the International Atomic Energy Agency by calling for “progressive and agreed nuclear disarmament and to favour the peaceful and assured use of nuclear technology for real development” [link].

End nuclear power now, say bishops

Catholic bishops in Japan said Thursday they want an immediate end to nuclear power generation.

During a press conference at Motoderakoji Cathedral in Sendai City, they launched a document entitled End Nuclear Energy Now: Coming to terms with the tragic disaster of the Fukushima Daiichi accident.

…The bishops acknowledged that, if nuclear energy were to be abolished, Japan would be left with an energy deficit, and that the problem of CO2 would still need to be addressed. But they insisted that humans have a responsibility to protect “nature and all life, which are God’s creatures,” and to pass a safe environment on to future generations.

…Japan has “a culture, national wisdom, and tradition of living in harmony with nature,” and its Shinto and Buddhist religions are also infused with a similar mentality. And “in Christianity, we also have the mentality of noble poverty.” [link]

P.S. Should the Church even comment on this? What do you think? What is its locus standi to comment on such an issue which has no obvious link to religion?

Also read: Cases against anti-nuke Church officials

These men – along with many others – eventually succumbed to an enemy that had an overwhelming advantage in men, weapons and resources. The Chinese aggression in 1962 should not have come as a surprise but Nehru was too much in love with “Panchsheel” and in thrall of “Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai” to notice that something was amiss. The result was a disaster. As TIME Magazine noted,

…the fighting has shown that the Indians need nearly everything, except courage. Chinese burp guns fire 20 times faster than Indian rifles. The Indian 25-pounder is a good artillery piece, but is almost immobile in the mountains and cannot match the Chinese pack artillery, recoilless guns and bazookas. Each Chinese battalion has a special company of porters whose job it is to make sure the fighting men have ample ammunition and food. The Indians must rely on units from their unwieldy Army Service Corps, who were never trained to operate at heights of 14,000 feet and over mule paths. In addition to bulldozers and four-wheel-drive trucks, the Indians need mechanical saws that can match the speed of those the Chinese use to cut roads through forests.

India’s catastrophic unreadiness for war stems directly from the policy of nonalignment which was devised by Nehru and implemented by his close confidant Krishna Menon.

..after five years under Nehru’s hand-picked Defense Minister, Krishna Menon, the Indian army was lamentably short of ammunition even for its antiquated Lee Enfield rifles.

And such was the extent of a sanguine and relaxed attitude in New Delhi that a road built by China in the heart of Aksai Chin did not come to the notice of the government until two years after it was built.

Nehru bravely noted that “We cannot allow that barrier (the Himalayas) to be penetrated because it is also the principal barrier to India“. But the words had little impact.  The Chinese went ahead and occupied 14,000+ square miles of land that belonged to India in the 1962 war. Not much seems to have changed. This land continues to be under Chinese control. Its troops are stationed on this land. While we euphemistically call it “Line of Actual Control” (LAC), for all practical purposes , this is an international border – along which Chinese forces regularly assert their “right” – with force when necessary.

The 1962 conflict exposed the soft underbelly of our defences: the poorly equipped and ill-resourced armed force – men with canvas shoes fighting in sub-zero temparatures in cotton uniforms…

The men were in cotton uniforms, canvas shoes and were living in the open after marching through slushy roads… There were no porters and everything had to back packed [link]

One of the lessons that India should have learnt (or to be more precise, our political leadership should have learnt) from that period was the need for battle-readiness and preparedness when it comes to China – whose behaviour is frequently devious and usually inscrutable & opaque.

Why am I opening wounds from the past, you may be wondering? Because, almost 40 years since, we appear to have learnt nothing. I discovered yesterday that…

Indian Army’s plans to beef up presence on the Indo-China border have met with fierce resistance from two unexpected quarters — the finance and the environment ministries.

..the ministry of finance is not agreeable to spend a whopping Rs12,000 crore to set up a Mountain Strike Corps even as a plan to create an alternate, all-weather route from Siliguri to North Sikkim to rush troops to the Indo-China border has been rejected by the ministry of environment and forests on the grounds that the alignment passes through eco-sensitive areas.

This refusal of funds comes amidst reports that China is “..training two divisions in high altitude warfare”.  It also comes in the context of this conclusion from an internal study by the Indian Army: “The study group looked at the combined threat from Pakistan and China in a future war and concluded that the bulk of the fighting would take place in the high mountains” [link].

But what do the powers-that-be do? Remain blithefully ignorant of the enormous risks to national security – and continue life as usual – even as China moves steadily ahead, inch-by-inch, from Ladakh to Arunachal. Kyaa karein? We are like this only…

Related Posts: “Never Again The Same”, Inch by inch, slowly but surely, we keep loosing territory… and  Nightmare at Noon* – Water Wars

P.S. It is worth pointing out that India and China have never been neighbours in history…As Prof Brahma Chellaney has noted:

It was not geography but guns…that made China India’s neighbour

…The government ban on construction in Demchok, one of the disputed points in eastern Ladakh, is riling residents, who claim that the Chinese side is speedily ramping up its infrastructure and the Centre is just ‘watching’

..Even the Leh administration cannot go ahead with any construction activity here without getting it approved from the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of External Affairs.

“When China is steadily building infrastructure on its side, there is no point in imposing restrictions on us,” says Gurmet Dorje, who hails from the area and is an elected councillor in the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council.

Demchok is not just any other town in Ladakh. It is on the “Line of Actual Control” between India and China. It also has a long history of “complaints” (and more recently, “warnings”) by the Chinese.  More than 2 years back, in December 2009, China had apparently lodged its protest with India regarding construction of a road in Demchok. More recently, The Tribune newspaper claimed it had

…obtained pictures of Chinese soldiers holding red-coloured banners to warn local residents in the area. “This is the Line of Actual Control, you are on Chinese Territory,” read the banners.

The “history” of Chinese incursions in Demchok goes back to at least a few years...Writing in Jan ’08, Tarun Vijay cautioned us about taking this matter lightly:

Thupstan Chhewang, belonging to the Royals of Leh is a highly respected Ladakhi leader who was once president of Ladakh Congress party. His one member party in Parliament is supporting UPA… His unassuming soft spoken personality exudes confidence and a rare dedication for the cause of his people and the nation. If he has raised an alarm on the Chinese incursions in Ladakh it must be taken seriously.

Of late Ladakh has been witnessing a continuous trespassing by Chinese shepherds and soldiers in Chushul area where we fought a famous war of Trishul mountains led by Major Shaitan Singh (who received Param Vir Chakra after his and his brave men’s bodies were discovered one year after their martyrdom) and in the vast grass lands near Demchok.

…Chinese are known to enter our region in a clandestine manner. In the initial stage they would do it through innocent passages into our territory using shepherds, soldiers and traders. If caught, they would say, oh nothing to worry we simply went wayward.

If not, it continues for years, the intruders would leave their marks, some properties and cattle too. Make some permanent bases. Later these small ‘marks’ would be used to claim that ‘since ages’ Chinese have been using that piece of land – see the ‘proofs’!

We were caught napping during Kargil intrusion. When patriotic Ladakhi shepherds told the Army about Pakistani intrusions initially, it was not taken seriously. In the same way alarms about the latest Chinese intrusion are being taken lightly and in some ‘strategic’ quarters its being suggested that such talks would hamper the growing trade between the two nations.

In Jan ’10, work was abandoned on a road construction project under veiled threats from Chinese:

…The letter (from a village in Ladakh) says that Chinese army officers have been threatening labourers who are making a road under the NREGA scheme.The threats are verbal, but they are enough for the workers to completely abandon the project.

LAHDC Chairman Chering Dorjay said, “People of Demochok were building a road under NREGA scheme, while doing they were threatened by Chinese army. It’s not true that Government had asked them to stop work, people stopped work after they were threatened and subsequently we reported the matter to Deputy Commissioner (DC), Leh.

…Ladakhi authorities say that last January (i.e. in 2009), Chinese army men went as far as to enter Indian territory and assault nomads camping on the winter pastures.Dorjay said, “They came in large numbers and verbally threatened our people and there are incidents when they physically assaulted our people. Last year they burnt one of the tents of our nomad Demchok winter pastures.” In the past, in Ladakh, Chinese helicopters have violated the airspace and their troops had walked way inside Indian territory and painted on the rocks, perhaps all these signs are enough for the Indian side to sit and take a strong note.

This was followed by another “warning” and halting of work in October last year (2010).  Although some brave words were uttered by an ex-CM in response, nothing came out of it…

…Former Jammu & Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah has threatened China of revenge in Leh during summer amid reports of “incursions” into Indian territory in J&K’s Ladakh region.

Farooq Abdullah told reporters in Jammu on Sunday that India will show its strength during summer as there is extreme cold this time in Leh.

The “Establishment” played down these incidents and put them on “perceptional differences about the Line of Actual Control“. But a crucial slip of tongue almost went unnoticed. While referring to Demchok, here is what Chief of Army General VK Singh said:

In this particular case, the so-called T Point… is an area (through which) the Chinese have, over a period of time, felt that the LAC passes through.

That sounded familiar. So I did some digging. Sure enough, this was part of a pattern. So how exactly did the Chinese stance evolve over a period of time? Thanks to Google, I stumbled on this news-report from Aug 2005. That report had “Brigadier Manvendra Singh…officer in charge of the area“, quoted as saying:

Not a single shot has been exchanged in the area (Demchok) and there is complete peace.

What happened between 2005 – 2011? And was this change from an environment of “complete peace” to incremental aggression a well-calibrated Chinese tactic? There are reasons to worry…A PTI report from Jan ’10 mentions how their is unanimity amongst officials that:

..we (India) are withdrawing from LAC and our area has shrunk over a period of time. Though this process (is) very slow but we have lost substantial amount of land in 20-25 years

Why does this matter? While I am hardly qualified to comment on the strategic importance (or otherwise) of Demchok, one thing is clear. It would be a mistake to ignore Demchok as just another sleepy town in the mountains…For one, it is bang on the border with India’s most dangerous strategic rival. It is also possibly the shortest (and easiest) route to Kailash Mansarovar.

Related Post: Inch by inch, slowly but surely, we keep loosing territory…

Moderate Pakistan, if such a thing ever existed, is dead

Below, excerpts from a thought-provoking piece titled, Take Pakistan’s Nukes, Please (emphasis added):

..The attack on Sunday, May 22, by Taliban fighters on the Mehran naval air base in Karachi — its audacity, the foreknowledge it implied, the militaristic precision with which it was executed — carried a message: Pakistan is no longer a contested territory; it is now emphatically their turf. The reins of official power may not be in their hands yet, but the men with whom they rest dare not challenge the extremists’ conception of Pakistan. The battle for hearts and minds is over. Moderate Pakistan, if such a thing ever existed, is dead.
…

It is inconceivable that this attack could have materialized without insider support. It was always known that a substantial number of Pakistan’s armed forces — 30 percent, by some estimates — sympathized with the objectives of the forces they were fighting.

…the world must now acknowledge the fact that Pakistan’s military is so deeply riven, its loyalties so thoroughly fractured, that it is incapable not only of defending Pakistan but is also dangerously unfit to be the custodian of its nuclear arsenal. It is time for Washington, Pakistan’s principal paymaster in the West, to pursue the option of comprehensively denuclearizing Pakistan.

..in reality Pakistan’s nuclear program was in response to the loss of East Pakistan in 1971. Founded as a safe haven for India’s Muslims, Pakistan ended up perpetrating, over nine bloodcurdling months in 1971, the single biggest genocide of Muslims since the birth of Islam, slaughtering 3 million Bengalis, displacing 30 million, and turning half a million women into sex slaves. Pakistan has never offered an official apology, but at the peak of their inhumanity Pakistan’s leaders persisted in presenting their country as a victim.

…For a people conditioned to view in their country’s creation a celestial affirmation of their own superior evolution, the crushing humiliation of defeat was impossible to endure. In 1972, Bhutto assembled Pakistan’s top scientists and demanded a bomb in three years, according to British author Gordon Corera. He then flew to Tripoli, Libya, and, in the name of Islamic solidarity, persuaded Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi to fund the program. “Our resources are your resources,” Qaddafi declared in 1974 to a Pakistani crowd gathered in an imposing sports stadium in Lahore dedicated in the Libyan leader’s name. The same year, Bhutto authorized a young Pakistani metallurgist working on nuclear plants in the Netherlands to steal sensitive information…Pakistan’s acquisition of the bomb was an improvised effort, involving high-level theft of data and undetected procurement of material by flouting Western export controls.

..Nuclear weapons have earned Pakistan the illusion of prestige, but not security. Yet Pakistan latches on to them. Why? There are two reasons.
The first is India. Pakistan’s sense of itself as the authentic home of India’s Muslims cannot be vindicated as long as India remains a secular state encompassing the Muslim-majority province of Kashmir. Pakistan has waged three wars to wrest Kashmir from India, but the experience of defeat led Islamabad to wage low-cost terror warfare. Pakistan has repeatedly dispatched highly trained mobile teams to attack high-profile Indian targets — from the attack on India’s Parliament in 2001 to the bombing of its embassy in Afghanistan in 2008 and the siege of Mumbai the same year — but India’s ability to retaliate, even with surgical strikes on terrorist headquarters, is severely restricted by the threat of an all-out nuclear war. The nuclear weapons shield Pakistan from accountability.
The second reason is aid. Pakistan’s ruling elite believes that America, terrified by the potential cost of dealing with nuclear Pakistan’s failure, will always pay the price for its survival. It’s an extraordinary pattern: Pakistan commits a crime, threatens instability, evades prosecution, and receives a bribe.

…If incentives fail to move the generals in Rawalpindi, then Washington must be prepared to threaten Pakistan with isolation through U.N. mechanisms, including travel bans on its military leaders. Finally, Pakistan must be made to understand the cost of nuclear warfare. If a single nuclear warhead falls into the wrong hands — or is pressed into service by the right hands — there will be no Pakistan. Only denuclearization can now save Pakistan from itself — and the world from Pakistan.

Read the report in full here.