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Journalism of Courage
Now, this can happen only in India. Protesters in Maharashtra’s Satara district are threatening to destroy over 1,700 windmills in the region, which tap wind energy for the power-strapped State. Why? They believe that the giant blades slash through clouds and fragment them, thus affecting rainfall. If that is not bizarre enough, the State Government has added more dust to the gathering storm by appointing an expert panel to sort out the issue.
Of course, there’s that inevitable political twist to the drama with the Shiv Sena backing the anti-windmill lobby. On the other side: a significant body of scientific opinion and a few influential leaders from the ruling Congress-NCA government who are associated with the project. The members of the heavyweight government panel, meanwhile, are gearing up for a foreign trip to ‘study’ other windmill projects.
So are windmills monsters or not? Do they really make the rain go away in the Sahyadri plateau? Scientific studies in the past by experts, including the M G Takwale panel assigned by the Maharashtra Energy Development Authority (MEDA), and noted scientist Vasant Gowariker, failed to settle the row and matters came to a head when protesters recently attacked some windmill projects. This forced the State to look at the row afresh.
Today, as many as 34 interested parties made a closed-door presentation before the committee. Headed by Dr G B Pant, Director, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), the panel includes Dr Rajeevan of Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), M P Ramesh, Executive Director of Wind Energy Industrial Centre, Chennai, Prof K Sudhakar of Aerospace Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, Mahesh Viprasad, fellow, The Energy and Research Institute, New Delhi, and Prof A D Tillu who specialises in cloud physics.
The pro-windmill brigade point to the large and fast-growing wind energy programmes in several other countries that have never reported any adverse effect of wind turbines on rainfall patterns. Says Prof Vijay Patil of Sadguru Gadge Maharaj Vidyalaya, Karad, ‘‘Windmills are extremely tiny objects in the whole process if one takes into account factors like the height of windmills, speed and velocity of wind and process of formation of clouds.’’ Pune-based environmentalist Mangesh Kashyap blames the media for misleading the public into believing that windmills are behind the slack rainfall. But Rajendra Kumbhar, one of the vocal critics of the windmills and a Sena sympathiser, told reporters that the protests would continue. ‘‘We will start demolishing the windmills from June 7,’’ he threatened. Kumbhar is dismissive of previous scientific studies that have cleared the project of any ‘wrongdoing’.
Arun Lad, convener of Dushkaal Nivaran Sangharsh Samiti, argues that the windmills ought to be shut for a few months to study their actual effect on rainfall. ‘‘Those citing foreign projects fail to realise that windmills there are located on the plains unlike the hilly areas of Satara. The effects are different,’’ he says.
The Indian Wind Association, meanwhile, has cited trends suggesting that deficit rainfall activity during recent years over the district is part of a natural variability and cannot be attributed to windmills. ‘‘We will try to file our report by July 15,’’ says Dr Pant. He, however, refused to comment on any prima facie opinion or conclusion the panel may have reached following the Friday meeting. ‘‘For us, giving a hearing to all those concerned was more important than who said what.’’ The debate continues.
