-‘There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.’-Goethe
© 2011 Ramaswami Ashok Kumar
Today’s Indian Express(July 21, 2007) screams “CM defends thermal plant at Chamalapura”. How can beautiful Mysore prevent ignorance in action? Where were you CM when the forest was looted? You and the others who are fighting against the Chamalapura Plant were not born then! But we are now a new people. We will fight these gross violations of individual rights of all life till the last drop of our blood.
You are living in a bygone era called modern civilisation. We must usher in an ultra-modern civilisation here right from, yes the candle light era in which we are living today(In your visits did you selectively go to the homes having thermal or hydro or nuke electricity? Are you aware of the villages where candle lights are still the order of the day? Yes even Bangalore and Mysore are examples!). Have you ever heard of the great and sensible introduction of pedal powered gensets to light homes with yes, cheap incandescent bulbs? They are passe when you recycle your excreta back to the fields from where you get your food! Because then the efficiency will be infinity. When you travel in your high tech transport are you using composting toilet or going to the fields to relieve yourself or just wasting it away into sewage, which untreated, is making Karanjikere rapidly a thing of the past? When people recycle, riding the stationary bicycles running generators producing high quality power and energy- electricity- and producing power the isothermal way-enjoying their muscle energy via constant temperature engines(themselves!), they are in a system at infinite percent efficiency! Their excreta will be recycled to the fields via composting toilets of Mahatma Gandhi. Pedal Power will also be used all over Karnataka and indeed on the whole subcontinent via Khadi to produce designer handwoven colourful clothes- the attire of ultra- modern ways of life-50 billion meters per year with jobs enjoyed by 50 million people(Ref 3). Ultra modern ways of life preserve energy in cycles of use! Produce, Use, Return and Enjoy-PUREly- at land use of 1000 MW/km^2 power flow, not the idiotic consumerism of Karnataka and elsewhere that consumes life-all life by hastening their premature deaths- perfect mass murders at a terrific land waste of 4 MW/km^2 or less! There is a dim flicker of the things to come with reversible kilowatthour meters when you extract from Wall Street Journal, the PURE-‘Personal Power generation cranks up’(7.7.1997). Offering Bagina is good! But now the Right of each individual(including living beings other than the human) must precede the good!: For the Gita proclaims: Sticking to one as if it were all(rushing to supply electric power at the cost of 1)end-use saving and management and 2)wasting muscle power and spiritual energy and not reforesting Chamalapura), heedless of the harm, regardless of the consequences, is narrow, dull and deadly ; its false knowledge. Learn thou there’s true knowledge: To see one changeless life in all the lives, in the separate, the One Inseparable. On the other hand, Yogins, renouncing all attachment, do work only by the body, by the mind, by the Reason, even by the senses, for the purification of all that is! Enjoying living energy of 50000 millionwatts(MW) of our 500 million able bodied is the need of the hour. Return of all that is taken from the land in a way that is compatible with Mother Earth is the need of the moment. Enjoying living energy will not leave in its wake a trail of death and destruction for all time(as coal or nuclear fuelled power plants do), the hall mark of modern fundamentalism. Mahatma Gandhi said at the begin of the last century: Given enough time modern civilisation will destroy itself..Chamalapura and the like are relics of an unregulated era, of heavily subsidised fuels, of the highest quality power being squandered in burning lights at one-third percent efficiency, 99%+ ablaze in waste and atrocious pollution, sometimes cleverly but illegally distributed to cause ill health and premature deaths for a very long time to come(millions of years)-flyash products radioactive to cause radioactive polonium-210 pollution in your lungs- a solid which cannot be washed away from your lungs! . In India last year, 10000 MW were supplied(burning 30000 MW worth of coal) to bulbs which converted to light only 100 MW: Rs 100000 crores of capital(power plant and associated transmission, distribution and fuel) sunk in these supply systems were set ablaze into smoke and ash. And this global warming wastes will cause people from the vast peninsular coastline of India to come to the Bangalore and Mysore slums and high rises, further aggravating the match box effect! Note that as Chamalapura comes up, the surrounding area of 100 km radius will be densely populated and subject to mercury(still births/convulsions), lead, cadmium, arsenic and radioactive pollution. Flue Gas Desulphurisation is a costly equipment to install and remove some of the sulphur-di-oxide(causing acid rain which will kill forests) and mercury(adding perhaps another Rs 1000 Cr+ of expense). To this will be added the traffic pollution in the associated roads. See for example the lead ionic pollution taken up by plants(our food!) from soil and air around Chandigarh due to power stations, industries and traffic pollution(Ref 1). Its associated health effects are huge: Lead is particularly harmful to children: can cause brain damage, impair growth, damage kidneys and cause learning and behaviour problems. The sum total of Coal firing and nuclear energy will exterminate non-clonal reproduction of life. Iddilu mattu anushakti- santanamukti! Extinction! Pralaya!(See Flyers after the article references).
Does Mysore want to become another Chandigarh? It need never!Go ahead with ultra modern civilisation or perish with your health degenerating into a big zero. You know what coal fired power stations emanating carbon-di-oxide are doing? They are busy annulling the entire GDP Growth of the World by submergence, glacier melting, arctic melting and conversion of perennial rivers to seasonals and climate change!Its demand for water adds to the number of earthquakes whose frequeancy is relentlessly increasing.
References:
1. Alok Sharma & Sunita Kapila. 2007. Mosses as Bioindicators of Lead Pollution in Chandigarh. Phytomorphology 57(1&2) pp. 45-50.
2.Ashok Kumar R. 2007.Chamalapura Thermal Power Station: A partial estimate of health effects based on radiation release through smoke and flyash utilisation.URL:
http://chamalapuragoisothermala.blogspot.com
3. Ashok Kumar R. 2005. The Characteristics of Modern Civilisation and the Relevance of Khadi. URL:
http://isothermalengines.blogspot.com/
