This article discusses two prominent protest movements in India responding to nuclear energy expansion, protests related to the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project in Tamil Nadu and the Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project in Maharashtra. Partly based on ethnographic fieldwork at both sites, the article argues that these protest movements are substantially different from anti-nuclear mobilisations outside South Asia. Indian nuclear-related protest movements problematise the tensions of development and environment from a grassroots perspective but struggle with opposing claims that more energy is needed. Locally, project-affected people do not trust government agencies to protect them and the local environment against creeping pollutions and potential disasters. Above all, local grievances are directed against high-handed procedures of compensating project-affected persons. Seen from this angle, these protest movements are in effect contributing to the arduous process of democratisation of governance regarding the constantly changing modalities of expanding energy provisions in India.
ApteD., BhaveV., PitaleR., NagaleP. & PrasadeA. (2012) A Preliminary Report on Diversity of Coastal Ecosystems of Maharashtra. Part 3: Ecologically Sensitive Coastal Areas of Ratnagiri, Rajapur and Vijaydurga. Mumbai: Bombay Natural History Society.
2.
AvenellS. (2016) ‘Antinuclear Radicals: Scientific Experts and Antinuclear Activism in Japan’, Science, Technology and Society, 21(1): 88–109.
3.
BaxiU. (1986) Inconvenient Forum and Convenient Catastrophe: The Bhopal Case. Bombay: N.M. Tripathi.
4.
BhadraM. (2013) ‘Fighting Nuclear Energy, Fighting for India’s Democracy’, Science as Culture, 22(2): 238–46.
5.
BidwaiP. (2011) ‘People vs Nuclear Power in Jaitapur, Maharashtra’, Economic & Political Weekly, 46(8): 10–14.
6.
BidwaiP. (2014, January6) ‘Between Ambition and Reality: India’s Nuclear Power Programme’. New Delhi: The Heinrich Böll Foundation. URL (consulted 19July2021), from https://in.boell.org/en/2014/04/07/between-ambition-and-reality-indias-nuclear-power-programme
7.
BusbyJ.W. (2013) ‘Vaunted Hopes: Climate Change and the Unlikely Nuclear Renaissance’. In StulbergA. & FuhrmannM. (Eds), The Nuclear Renaissance and International Security (pp. 124–53). Redwood City: Stanford University Press.
8.
CAG (2017) ‘Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India on Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project, Units I and II’. New Delhi: Comptroller and Auditor General of India, Union Government. URL (consulted 19September2021), from https://cag.gov.in/sites/default/files/audit_report_files/Report_No.38_of_2017_Performance_Audit_on_Kudankulam_Nuclear_Power_Project%2C_Units_I_and_II_Department_of_Atomic_Energy.pdf
9.
ChandraV.K. (2017, June) Anti-Nuclear Movements in India: The Case of Kovvada, Andhra Pradesh. Working Paper 259. Singapore: Institute of South Asian Studies. National University of Singapore.
10.
ChandraV.K. (2021) Society, Resistance and Civil Nuclear Policy in India: Nuclearising the State. New Delhi: Routledge.
11.
ChoudhuryU. (2012) ‘The Impact of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Crisis on Anti-Nuclear Movements in India’, Social Alternatives, 31(3): 39–44.
12.
CohenS.P. (2002) India: Emerging Power. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
13.
CrutzenP.J. (2006) ‘The Anthropocene’. In EhlersE. & KrafftT. (Eds), Earth System Science in the Anthropocene (pp. 13–18). Cham: Springer.
14.
DawsonJ.I. (1995) ‘Anti-Nuclear Activism in the USSR and Its Successor States: A Surrogate for Nationalism?’, Environmental Politics, 4(3): 441–66.
15.
GadekarS. (1996) ‘Koodankulam Reactors: A Bad Bargain!’, Anumukti, 10(1): 1–2.
16.
GadgilM. & GuhaR. (1994) ‘Ecological Conflicts and the Environmental Movement in India’, Development and Change, 25(1): 101–36.
17.
GlaserA. (2012) ‘From Brokdorf to Fukushima: The Long Journey to Nuclear Phase-Out’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 68(6): 10–21.
18.
GoswamiD. (2012) ‘India’s Solar Sunrise’, Renewable Energy Focus, 13(2): 28–30.
19.
GuhaR. (2000) Environmentalism. A Global History. New York: Longman.
20.
HoM.S. (2018) ‘Taiwan’s Anti-Nuclear Movement: The Making of a Militant Citizen Movement’, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 48(3): 445–64.
21.
IAEA (2021) ‘Power Reactor Information System, Country Statistics, India’. URL (consulted 22September2021), from https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/CountryDetails.aspx?current=IN
22.
JahnD. & KorolczukS. (2012) ‘German Exceptionalism: The End of Nuclear Energy in Germany!’, Environmental Politics, 21(1): 159–64.
23.
JohnstoneP. (2010) ‘The Nuclear Power Renaissance in the UK: Democratic Deficiencies within the “Consensus” on Sustainability’, Human Geography, 3(2): 91–104.
24.
JoppkeC. (1991) ‘Social Movements during Cycles of Issue Attention: The Decline of the Anti-Nuclear Energy Movements in West Germany and the USA’, The British Journal of Sociology, 42(1): 43–60.
25.
KaurR. (2013) ‘Sovereignty without Hegemony, the Nuclear State, and a ‘Secret Public Hearing’ in India’, Theory, Culture & Society, 30(3): 3–28.
26.
KaurR. (2020) Kudankulam: The Story of an Indo-Russian Nuclear Power Plant. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
27.
KhanA. (2018) Interrogating State, Nuclear Energy and Social Movements in India; A Study of People’s Movements in Kudankulam and Jaitapur. Mumbai: Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Unpublished PhD Dissertation).
28.
KhanA. (2019) ‘India Needs to Wake up from Its Nuclear Fantasy’, Economic & Political Weekly, 54(41). EPW Engage. URL (consulted 22September2021), from https://www.epw.in/engage/article/india-needs-wake-its-nuclear-fantasy
29.
KitscheltH. (1986) ‘Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest: Anti-Nuclear Movements in Four Democracies’, British Journal of Political Science, 16(1): 57–85.
30.
KoopmansR. & DuyvendakJ. (1995) ‘The Political Construction of the Nuclear Energy Issue and Its Impact on the Mobilization of Anti-Nuclear Movements in Western Europe’, Social Problems, 42(2): 235–51.
31.
LewallenA. & HolmbergR. (2019) The People of Asia Say No to Nuclear Power. New Delhi: No Nukes in Asia Forum.
32.
LitmanenT. (1998) International Anti-Nuclear Movements in Finland, France and the United States. Peace Research, 30(4): 1–19.
33.
MirchandaniG.G. & NamboodiriP.K.S. (1981) Nuclear India: A Technological Assessment. New Delhi: Vision Books.
34.
NandyA. (1988) ‘Introduction: Science as a Reason of State’. In NandyA. (Ed.), Science, Hegemony and Violence (pp. 1–23). New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
35.
NEERI (2008, November) Comprehensive EIA for Proposed Nuclear Power Project at Jaitapur Dist. Ratnagiri, Maharashtra. New Delhi: National Environmental Engineering Research Institute. Ministry of Environment & Forests, Government of India.
36.
NPCIL (2011, January) Misconceptions and Facts about Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project (JNPP). Mumbai: Corporate Planning and Corporate Communications Group. Nuclear Power Corporation of India.
37.
RajuS. & RamanaM.V. (2013) ‘Cost of Electricity from the Jaitapur Nuclear Power Plant’, Economic & Political Weekly, 48(29): 26–7.
38.
RamanaM.V. (2012) The Power of Promise: Examining Nuclear Energy in India. London: Penguin UK.
39.
SarkarJ. (2011, July28) ‘An Indian Anti-Nuclear Movement?’New Delhi: Manohar Parrikar Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses. URL (consulted 19September2021), from https://idsa.in/idsacomments/AnIndianAntiNuclearMovement_jsarkar_280711.
40.
SarkarS. (2011) ‘The Impossibility of Just Land Acquisition’, Economic & Political Weekly, 46(41): 35–8.
41.
SrikantP. (2009) Koodankulam Anti-Nuclear Movement: A Struggle for Alternative Development?Bangalore: Institute for Social and Economic Change.
42.
VanaikA. (2001) ‘Developing the Anti-Nuclear Movement’, Economic & Political Weekly, 36(18): 1494–7.
43.
VisvanathanS. (1998) ‘A Celebration of Difference: Science and Democracy in India’, Science, 280(5360): 42–3.
44.
VisvanathanS. (2007) ‘Between Cosmology and System: The Heuristics of a Dissenting Imagination’. In de Sousa SantosB. (Ed.), Another Knowledge Is Possible: Beyond Northern Epistemologies (pp. 182–218). London: Verso.
45.
WiliartyS. (2013) ‘Nuclear Power in Germany and France’, Polity, 45(2): 281–96.
