Leading from the back

Technology is not something a radical thinker would crib about. In fact, the Left has generally been supportive of research, training and consequent development as long it is largely aimed at the social good. Investments with a long haul and ripple effect are also very much a part of the lexicon of radical economic thinking. Serious economic literature on the myopia of markets and the need for policy planning goes back to this tradition. This tradition resonates in this year’s Nobel Prize for Economics. Then where is the problem?

This is, in my mind, an important question for those of us who have sympathy with a strategic view on economic policy and technological choice questions.

We simply cannot burn two billion tonnes annually of power grade coal in the next two decades or so. Renewable energy is great, but it can go only so far. I could understand the objection if it was to uranium import for that makes us almost as vulnerable as petroleum dependence. In fact, worse, since uranium trade is government directed in the surplus country. But as Kakodkar has said, we are after thorium and we have enough of that for thousands of years. The fast breeder reactor through thorium is the only way of completing the fuel cycle in India. We can do it ourself but that is complicated and will take time. The Americans, and once they agree, the French, Japanese, Canadians, Germans, Russians and others will cooperate and make it easier. We are not a banana republic that the Hyde Act will make us a push-over. Come on comrades, you must take the larger view of history of this former colony gearing up to take its place in the sun. You have to lead from the back.