Kudankulam

The Story of an Indo-Russian Nuclear Power Plant

author Professor Raminder Kaur

A history and ethnography of the largest anti-nuclear power plant movement, providing important perspectives on changes in social movements in India over the last 4 decades
One of few books that have at its heart the many facets of a grassroots movement for energy justice in the global south from the 1980s that, three decades on, went on to become an international phenomenon
The book discusses how national and transnational solidarity was both received and curtailed, and direct and indirect repression of the anti-nuclear movement with the engineering of 'death conditions' for its protagonists
The book analyses the (re)production of knowledge and ignorance in the understanding of radiation, tactics to create an evidence-base in response to the otherwise unavailable or inaccessible data on radiation and public health in India

Kudankulam

The Story of an Indo-Russian Nuclear Power Plant

author Professor Raminder Kaur

Description

Since the 1980s, the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu has faced multiple forms of resistance. Women and men from different walks of life — fishers, farmers, environmentalists, activists, writers, scholars, teachers, journalists, doctors, and lawyers among many others — have come together to combat the deadly radioactive repercussions and repression that come with the development of a high-security nuclear installation. Drawing upon their experiences, this historical and ethnographic study accounts for the anti-nuclear campaign's part in 'right-to-lives' movements while engaging with the (re)production of knowledge and ignorance in the understanding of radiation, and efforts to create an evidence base in response to the otherwise unavailable or insufficient data on the environment and public health in India. Tracing the grassroots struggle for 'energy justice' off- and on-line, the author looks into the larger questions of development, democracy, and nationalism. These have marked not just parts of India identified for large-scale constructions, but also other regions of the world where state functionaries have much to gain from corporate collaborations at the cost of local residents who lose their livelihoods, and are forcibly displaced, persecuted, or even killed in order to execute governmental designs in the name of the nation.

Kudankulam

The Story of an Indo-Russian Nuclear Power Plant

author Professor Raminder Kaur

Table of Contents
Map
List of Figures
Preface
Chapter 1: Radiation Burdens
· Democratic Development?
· Altering the National-Nuclear Narrative
· Criticality
Chapter 2: A Nuclear Paradise
· The Place and the People
· Rare Minerals
· The Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant and Township
· Neo-Brahmanism
· An Anxious Accolade
· Deep Vision
Chapter 3: Cultures of Dissent
· Movements in Perspective
· The Initial Phase
· The Neoliberal Era
· The Tyranny of Technicality
· A New Philosophy of Life
Chapter 4: The World of In/visibles
· Knowledge, Ignorance and Uncertainty
· Enchantment
· Safe?
· Disenchantment
· W/holes
Chapter 5: Full Lives
· Countering Risks
· Josef
· Savitri
· Rajesh
· Risky Times
Chapter 6: The Plot Thickens
· The Nuclear State of Exception
· The Days Before
· The Public Hearing
· The Days After
· Equivocal Victories
Chapter 7: Discipline and Deviance
· The Discursive Web of Statistics
· Information Warfare
· Planning the Survey
· Ethnography of a Survey
· Drops of Experience
· 'Numbers are Required, Not Reasons'
· Public Presentations
· Speaking to Power
Chapter 8: An Unlikely Powerhouse
· A Siren Call
· Open-Air Jail
· Waging Non-Violence
· A University without Walls
· The Backbone
· Cracking Concrete
Chapter 9: Digitalia
· The Un/holy Trinity
· A Digital Letter by a 'Foreign Hand'
· Planetary Forces
Chapter 10: Do we Exist?
· Silent, Quick and Slow
· Crackdown to Meltdown
· Onlife Ondeath
· Toxygen
· Murk
Chapter 11: The Sparks that Hover
· Looking Back
· Looking Forwards
· Embers
Epilogue
Index

Kudankulam

The Story of an Indo-Russian Nuclear Power Plant

author Professor Raminder Kaur

Author Information

author Professor Raminder Kaur, Professor of Anthropology and Cultural Studies, School of Global Studies, University of Sussex

Raminder Kaur is professor of Anthropology and Cultural Studies in the School of Global Studies at the University of Sussex. She is the author of Atomic Mumbai: Living with the Radiance of a Thousand Suns (2013) and Performative Politics and the Cultures of Hinduism (2003/5). She is also co-author of Diaspora and Hybridity (with Virinder Kalra and John Hutnyk, 2005), and Adventure Comics and Youth Cultures in India (with Saif Eqbal, 2018). She is co-editor of Arts and Aesthetics in a Globalizing World (2015), Mapping Changing Identities: New Directions in Uncertain Times (2013), Censorship in South Asia: Cultural Regulation from Sedition to Seduction (2009), Bollyworld: Popular Indian Cinema through a Transnational Lens (2005) and Travel Worlds: Journeys in Contemporary Cultural Politics (1999). Aside from her scholarly writing, she has also produced several scripts for theatre productions www.sohayavisions.com

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Kudankulam

The Story of an Indo-Russian Nuclear Power Plant

author Professor Raminder Kaur

Reviews and Awards

"Kaur writes with sympathy, empirical depth, and theoretical acuity about the movement to stop the construction of the nuclear reactors at Kudankulam." - Hugh Gusterson, Author of People of the Bomb: Portraits of America's Nuclear Complex and Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War

"This exceptional book illuminates the social and political lives around the Kudankulam nuclear power plant by adopting a sharply focused ethnographic lens on the agency of people challenging the destructive pathways of capital. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the multifaceted ways in which environmental and social justice activism and collective struggles challenge the very basis of modernity and "development"." - Navtej Purewal, Professor of Political Sociology and Development Studies, SOAS, University of London, UK

"Raminder Kaur provides a scholarly, insightful, and empathetic account of the heroic (or should it be heroinic) struggle waged against the construction of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant by the people of that area. Based on years of careful fieldwork, this book is a fitting tribute to that landmark struggle." - V. Ramana, Professor and Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security Director, Liu Institute for Global Issues, University of British Columbia, Canada