Governance Now, Sept 1-15
Government will forever remain a suspect for the way it sought to compromise polluter-pays principle
By the time you read this both houses of parliament would have passed the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill 2010, hopefully without any more mischief. But few would be assured by prime minister Manmohan Singh’s solemn declaration in parliament that he was not working for the US interests or that he shared the opposition’s concerns for nuclear safeguards. In fact, the opposition had charged his government with using “a sleight of hand” in drafting the law and trying to “hustle” it through parliament. This was not without reason and the doubts over the government’s sincerity will linger on until US president Barack Obama’s goes back after his visit in November.
To begin with, the government wanted to get the nuclear bill passed in the last budget session without anybody having a clue about it. A parliamentary panel, that went through the bill subsequently, strongly objected to the fact that even the ministries which would play crucial roles in the event of a nuclear disaster weren’t consulted. It pointed out that “when the Committee inquired from the Secretaries of Ministries/Departments of Government of India who appeared before the Committee as to whether the draft nuclear liability Bill was referred to them for their views/comments, some of them viz. Ministries of Health & Family Welfare, Agriculture, Labour & Employment, Food & Public Distribution, etc. replied in the negative”. It did ask the government to do so in future but that is of no consequence.
The problem began right at the beginning when it was learnt that the government had compromised on the “polluter-pays” principle by letting off both the nuclear operator and the supplier of nuclear equipments lightly in the event of a nuclear disaster. The opposition blocked the bill’s tabling but the government did so surreptitiously, in the midst of pandemonium on the last day of the session. Then the bill was referred to a parliamentary panel dealing with science and technology, which was headed by loyal Congressman T Subbarami Reddy, and not the one dealing with energy as it should have been. And on the very first day of the panel’s meet, the government slipped in an amendment removing supplier’s liability completely. This was detected and a storm was raised. The panel was forced to retain the provision and also modify the language which required that “willful act” or “gross negligence” needed to be established. When the panel’s report was tabled in parliament, someone played mischief again and inserted a word “and” to link supplier liability to a written contract with the operator. This led to another round of storm until “and” was deleted.
But that was not all. The union cabinet, while revising the bill to be passed, made changes that sought establishing “intent” of the supplier to “cause nuclear damage” for it to be liable. Understandably, another storm was raised until this was dropped too and sanity, in the bill, was restored. All these manoeuvres were linked to the US because it is the turn of the US suppliers to enter the scene. The government has already signed deals with Russia and France, which too protect the supplier from liability but that is another story.
The operator’s liability, which was initially a lowly Rs 500 crore, also provoked protest until it was raised to Rs 1,500 crore. It is still less than about Rs 2,200 crore paid to the Bhopal victims. But doubts remain because the bill passed by Lok Sabha contained a clause that provides for the government to assume “full liability” for a nuclear installation not operated by it if it is of the opinion that this is necessary “in public interest”. Now what is this “public interest” needs to be explained.
Coming as it does after the Bhopal verdict and the subsequent uproar over gross injustice to the victims in terms of compensation it is a pity that the government could do no better than use subterfuge, rather than sincerity, in passing such a crucial law.
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