Indian Jesuit calls for end to country’s nuclear program

(April, 12, 2011) Indian Jesuit Father Ambrose Pinto has called for an end to the country’s nuclear programme. “With less than half of the billions that are expected to be spent on nuclear energy, it might be possible to deliver electricity in every city and every house in India,” Fr. Ambrose Pinto told the Missionary News Service on Monday.
Fr. Pinto who has recently taken over the leadership of Saint Joseph’s University College in Bangalore said that the institute is soon to be powered exclusively by solar energy. The priest said he believes it should be possible to develop alternative forms of energy across India, at half the cost the country is planning to spend on developing nuclear power through a new agreement with the US. According to the New York Times, the agreement is worth some 150 billion US dollars. “India has adopted a sole development model, the capitalist and neo-liberal one,” said Fr.Pinto, but it’s a mistaken model.
Fr. Pinto noted that 13 years after nuclear experiments in Pokhran in 1998, about 150 km. from the Pakistani border, the land is still a desert, where farmers have no land to farm. He said they are paying for the arrogance of a country that spends billions on nuclear energy, forgetting about the 60% of the population that lives below the poverty line. Fr. Pinto said the recent nuclear accident in Fukushima, Japan shows that even the most advanced countries are at risk.