The Hindu Business Line : Technology and the intellectual conflict

Technology has always suffered from hostility. Its critics want what is flawless; technology knows nothing that is flawless. It can seek better solutions but has no perfect one to offer. If only the occasional risks of technology are accepted, even the deaths they may cause, year after year many times more number of people can be saved. If such harsh decisions are not taken, the loss would be more not less. That, says P. V. Indiresan, is the crux of the intellectual conflict.

Not that I hated human distress less but I loathed technology more

— With apologies to William Shakespeare

THE tsunami killed five persons of the atomic power plant in Kalpakkam. All deaths occurred in the staff quarters; the power plant remained unaffected. The power plant was deliberately shut down as a safety precaution and was back in operation in two days. Thus, the tsunami did strike Kalpakkam with vicious force but the power plant itself withstood that onslaught without difficulty.

If serious damage had occurred to the atomic power plant, our doomsayers would certainly have gloated and shouted: "I told you so!" It would appear churlish to say so but many of them are more disappointed than relieved at the way the plant withstood the tsunami's fury. It is not that they want people to get hurt; quite the opposite. Their intentions are noble; their fears are not. Their fears are not novel either; technology has always suffered from hostility.

To everyone, unfamiliar technology is magic; to the morbidly suspicious, it is black magic, the handiwork of the devil himself. Hence, in the hearts of the suspicious, unfamiliar technology evokes fear that at times turns into hatred. Once the same technology becomes widespread, that fear vanishes. The hatred may persist but it becomes a love-hate relationship: the technology would be criticised in one instant and eagerly sought after the next.

For instance, when the automobile was first introduced, Britain passed a law that a pedestrian should walk in front of it with a red flag to warn people that danger was approaching them. We will now consider as ridiculous that regulation, borne out of genuine fear, and promulgated out of real concern for the safety of the people. We do so in spite of the fact present day motor vehicles are much more dangerous than they used to be a century ago. Nowadays, motor vehicles kill every year several times more people than the tsunami has. For that reason, many sophisticated people roundly condemn cars but use them nevertheless. They are even proud to posses them, and will certainly resist with all their might if any attempt were to be made to deprive them of that precious possession.

Human nature has yet another peculiarity. It reacts violently to sudden changes but is quite impervious to even greater dangers that accumulate slowly. We were all shocked at the thousands that were killed by the tsunami. We are not shocked, we are unperturbed by the fact that many more children die each single day due to malnutrition and medical neglect. No doubt, we deplore our high rate of infant mortality. We discuss possible solutions in scholarly seminars. We make recommendations that are often in the nature of belling the cat. Meanwhile millions of children continue to die every year without our doing anything constructive about it.

With any proposal or scheme, there are two kinds of risks: The risk of accepting it, and the risk of not implementing it. The risks too are of two types: Sudden ones that occur rarely and chronic ones that persist all the time. Further, the dangers can be of two types: Familiar ones and unfamiliar ones. It is human nature to reject rare risks but accept frequently occurring risks, prefer the option that creates low but persistent risks that cumulatively cost much more. We all accept with tranquillity what is familiar and will resist the unknown even if that probability is remote. That is why we are moved by the unavoidable tsunami but not by avoidable disease. We dread atomic accidents that have caused serious damage only once in the past fifty years but have no fear of road accidents that cause a hundred times more damage every day.

The Andaman Islands have several primitive tribes. Some of them have shrunk to no more than 50 members. It is widely known that they continue to shrink and may vanish altogether. Yet, we stick fanatically to the ideology that they should not be touched, and because they should not be touched they should not be rescued either. We love tribalism so much that we prefer the tribals to die out rather than improve the quality of their tribalism, make it survivable. While the tribal situation is terrible, the case in the rest of the country is not well either. We are losing some three million children every year due to malnutrition, due to ignorance, due to age-old superstitious prejudices. That is avoidable. As Kerala has shown, much can be done within available resources. Yet, we cannot attain best results without greater economic prosperity.

In this respect, Indira Gandhi was right when she said that poverty is the greatest pollutant. Even Kerala has reached a plateau; it cannot improve mortality rates any more without increasing the per capita income. However, prosperity comes at a price. Other things being equal, there is a strong positive correlation between economic prosperity and electric power consumption. At the least, we need a consumption rate of 5000 units per capita to reduce mortality rates to best possible levels.

Here we come up against the wall of ideology. Many influential opinion-makers in the country oppose tooth and nail every viable technology for power generation. Coal pollutes. Perceived threats to twenty monkeys can halt a hydroelectric project. Nuclear power is an absolute no-no. Let us admit that nuclear power is dangerous, that it can be catastrophic. Yet, on balance, is it more dangerous than poverty, and hence the deaths, that result from the poverty caused by lack of power? We can argue that we should have more benign power, solar power for instance. Unfortunately, solar power is fickle; it is not available when and where we want it. We still do not know how to harness it effectively, even efficiently. People talk of miracle plants that yield oil that can become a substitute for petrol. Unfortunately, few plants have photosynthetic efficiencies higher than 0.5 per cent. At that rate, even if we put every square inch of our land to cultivation of energy crops, we will not meet our energy needs. Sugarcane is the best photosynthesiser but it guzzles so much water that it too is no solution. The situation may change; technology may be discovered that harnesses solar energy better, but none is available today.

In their antagonism, critics who should know better are not averse to twisting the truth. Recently, a TV programme carried on a campaign against the Indian Atomic Energy Commission that its uranium mines were spreading disease among the tribals of Jaduguda in Singhbhum district of Jharkhand. It forgot to mention that the Supreme Court had found no truth in that complaint and that it had actually dismissed a PIL petition making such a charge.

There is a touch of fanaticism here. Had we not been as fanatic as we have been, had we aided the Andaman tribals to face disease and hunger better, they too would have grown in population the way the rest of the country is growing. Our ideology has killed many of these tribals whom we profess to love. Yet, we do not feel any guilt of having committed voluntary manslaughter. Ideology is like religion; it dulls our conscience when we commit sins in the name of faith. As Peter Drucker has pointed out, ideologists are not merely blind to alternative options, they consider it no sin to distort truth, as the TV programme did, to promote their cause.

Peaks are fascinating; averages are boring. An occasional catastrophe is headline news; everyday tragedy is not. How many care to check that tsunamis may kill 10,000 people in India in one day but tsunamis are so infrequent that on an average they kill only 75 persons a year? By all means let us do all that is possible to mitigate its crushing blow but let us not forget that we face even greater tragedies day after day.

If only we are prepared to accept the occasional risks of technology, accept even the deaths they may cause, we can save year after year many times larger number. Even in the recent tragedy, a fond mother had to let go one child to save the other. These are harsh decisions. If we do not make them, we lose more not less. It is nobody's argument that power generation, particularly nuclear power, is not risky. It is. Unfortunately, as of now we know nothing better. That is the crux of the intellectual conflict. Critics want what is flawless; technology knows nothing that is flawless. It can seek better solutions but has no perfect one to offer.

Ultimately, the choice is between the ideal of tribalism, or the reality of shrinkage of tribal population; between generating more power to lay the ground for saving millions of children from untimely death day after day or face the risk of an occasional disaster, a disaster that may never materialise.

There is no greater irony in life than to be killed by passionate love.Purely for the sake of record, the three PHWR nuclear power plants in India have been assessed to be amongst the five best PHWR units in the world.

(The author is a former Director, IIT Madras. Response may be sent to indresan@vsnl.com)

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