Sort out Sensibly

Several organizations in Meghalaya, including the influential Khasi Students’ Union (KSU), are agitating against the decision of the Meghalaya Government to lease out 422 acres of land to Uranium Corporation of India Limited (UCIL) for pre-project development in areas about the proposed uranium mining site in West Khasi Hills district. The organizations see an anti-people conspiracy in the whole venture. They argue that the government has rated uranium mining far higher than the health of the people. Also, there is the projected fear of unabated settlement of people from outside the State, endangering ‘local-ness’ that is obviously unacceptable to the subnationalist sentiment of the day. On the other side are the votaries of the nuclear enterprise. They say that all fears are unfounded and that the anti-UCIL brigade is being too parochial and paranoid about a grand enterprise meant only for the development of the people. They are calling for reason to prevail and for the opposition groups to realize that uranium mining activities are inevitable for a country bent on energizing itself in a peaceful nuclear fashion. But no one is convinced. No one is prepared to heed the other and appreciate the other’s concern and point of view. Worse, what is being forgotten is the fact that the country has a cream of nuclear scientists whose opinions and suggestions both the parties can seek for a meaningful dialogue on the vexed issue. Where is the harm? Who knows better? The scientist or the layman or the so-called activist with a hidden agenda perhaps? Let us all behave like a sensible society. THE SENTINEL