A Nuclear Plant In My Backyard
What can rural Indian villagers do to counter the development of a massive government-backed nuclear industry? Amirtharaj Stephen shows us.
Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of profiles of Catchlight Activist Award winners. In 2014, Amirtharaj Stephen won in the emerging category for Koodankulam: A Nuclear Plant In My Backyard.
Words and photos by Amirtharaj Stephen.
I come from a village called Kavalkinaru in the Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu, not far from Kanyakumari. My father was employed at a heavy water plant in Tuticorin, and I spent the first 22 years of my life in the Atomic Energy Township there. I was always told by the people in my township that nuclear energy was safe, and that it was the future. I believed them.
By 2001, construction of the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KNPP) had begun at a distance of about 18 kilometers from my village. Many people in the region did not care much about the power plant or the effect it would have on them, until 2011 when the Japanese tsunami, and the subsequent Fukushima nuclear disaster, caused panic in the region.
Villagers, already severely affected by the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, began raising a lot of questions about the safety of nuclear power. KNPP was just nearing its completion, and the people living in the vicinity of the plant started fearing a similar catastrophe at home.
I had my own concerns about the impact that a power plant might have on my native region. The Indian government had done little to allay villagers’ fears regarding safety of the plant in the event of a disaster — the official response has always been ambiguous, and completely lacking in transparency on plant preparedness. So I decided to visit Idinthakarai village, the nerve center of the anti-nuclear struggle.
During my visit to Idinthakarai, I witnessed the people’s opposition and understood its intensity. Most media in my state (Tamil Nadu) is highly politicized — the media agencies are owned or controlled by individuals with competing partisan interests. Most of the reports that emerge from the site of the protests has political agenda.
“I was always told by the people in my township that nuclear energy was safe, and that it was the future. I believed them.”
I decided to document this struggle independently, and without any political bias, by being with the people and their concerns, and recording the events there almost on a daily basis.
The people of Koodankulam have now been in non-violent protest for more than 1300 days. Throughout they have been repeatedly subjected to violence by government forces.
The protests have not only created a debate over nuclear energy in India, but also questioned the governing principles on which the world’s largest democracy was built. I tried to cover the non-violent protests, human rights violations, and issues related to the livelihood of the local community, and I continue to visit the village and go along with its people whenever there is an agitation or a campaign.
Amirtharaj Stephen is a documentary photographer from Tirunelveli, India. Follow him on Facebook. He worked in association with The Other Media on a campaign to display his photographs in schools, colleges, and public spaces across India.
Based in San Francisco, Catchlight helps visual storytellers find their voice and supports photographers in the creation of new work. Through partnerships with media organizations, Catchlight distributes work through traditional channels and across new platforms. Catchlight produces additional content around photographers’ work to add context and enrich the experience. Live and virtual events coordinated by Catchlight connect visual storytellers directly with their audiences for more intimate and meaningful exchanges.
