Indian software: From artisans to global
industry
Shivanand Kanavi, global head, marketing
and strategic communication, CMC, writes
about the global contribution of TCS
in developing a new business model in IT services
Today, India has achieved an undisputable leading position in the global software services. Most outsiders think that this has been primarily achieved due to labour arbitrage or availability of low cost computer programmers in India as compared to the US and Europe. However, that is only one of the contributing factors. The primary factor has not been noticed yet by many business historians. In fact, software development used to be an essentially artisan-like activity about four decades ago. This paper argues that innovative industrialisation of such an individualistic activity to large-scale industrial activity by Indian firms has led to the current pole position of India in the field. To illustrate this thesis, the author will use the example and experience of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) because he is familiar with it and also because being the oldest Indian software company it has also been an innovative pioneer. Snake charmers and software In 1968, when TCS came into being, there was no Microsoft, Apple, SAP, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Dell and many others. Hewlett Packard (HP) was known for its oscilloscopes, signal generators, handheld calculators and not computers. EDS and Capgemini had just come into being as data processing companies. Clearly, it was an audacious startup from India. TCS had a couple of IBM machines of 1401 vintage and an ICL machine as well. They were providing bureau services, better known today as business process outsourcing (BPO), services for Indian telephone companies, power utilities, universities and so on. At the same time TCS also started scouting around for any work it could get abroad. In those days India had gone through a severe financial crisis, the rupee had been devalued by 57.5 percent. The US dollars required for importing large and expensive mainframe computers were definitely in short supply. Besides, there was also a perception amongst the public and the politicians that computers would take away jobs and, hence, were best avoided. However, TCS leadership was convinced that computers could play a major role in not only making Indian businesses and banks more efficient but also in helping much of Indian society leapfrog from the 19th to the 21st century. Surely, many people thought that the dream was incredible, but they kept chipping at the walls relentlessly. How TCS has been able to contribute to nation building in India through these efforts is a story to be told another time. Collaborate and flourish In the mid-1970s, TCS decided that it would be good to get into an alliance with a computer maker. The one they chose was Burroughs Corp. Though Burroughs was not the biggest name in computer industry their technology was impressive. The deal was that TCS would sell Burroughs computers in India and support them. This helped TCS engineers gain first hand expertise in operating their systems and troubleshooting. TCS also bought a system for their computer centre to provide Burroughs-based services to their clients. Burroughs soon realised that they had hit a gold mine of engineering talent and started outsourcing software work to TCS. Burroughs’ clients in Europe, US etc., who were switching their systems from some other manufacturer to Burroughs, would need their already running software to run on the new Burroughs machines. In those days each machine had its own dialect of COBOL and, hence, unless one carefully mapped the old programs onto the new Burroughs-understandable instructions, they would not work. TCS executed some interesting and challenging migration assignments in this mould. TCS set up a strong Systems Group, which took the lead in assimilating technology as well as developing new ones. This group came up with a tool called Data Dictionary, which helped automate software migration considerably. Burroughs was impressed. It tried its best to convince the Tata group for a buyout, but the latter decided against selling out TCS and instead agreed to form a new joint venture, Tata Burroughs Limited. Interestingly, IBM, which was a competitor of Burroughs, was also impressed with TCS tools. TCS continued to execute migration and development work for Burroughs and at the same time look for other clients. Later, TCS decided to invest in IBM’s technology and started the most sophisticated IBM-based computing centre in Asia of that time at Chennai. It was risky and expensive, moreover TCS had to convince the Department of Commerce, US Administration in Washington, DC that it was not going to use IBM computers to develop nuclear bombs, but in fact help US businesses become more efficient! Henry Ford and Toyota An important achievement of TCS has been the successful industrialisation and globalisation of software services. It has many similarities and a few dissimilarities with what Henry Ford and Toyota did to manufacturing. This has enabled TCS to execute large projects successfully. Year after year TCS has been delivering software solutions in targeted time and budget with a great amount of certainty. TCS did not have a model to follow, it had to invent one. Forty years ago, computer programming was practiced by a few exceptional individuals. Each programmer had her/his own way of doing things, many of them brilliant but hardly replicable. It was difficult to debug or improve a program written by someone else. Naturally, it was almost never a product of teamwork. Obviously, it could not be scaled up. The situation was very similar to that faced by the auto industry when Henry Ford and his peers were developing quadricycles in their workshops in the 1890s. These workshops could not scale up and serve a mass market. That is why Ford’s assembly line, for Model-T, was pioneering and revolutionary in 1913. It was a product of meticulous planning and hard work in the background and it changed manufacturing forever [1]. Today TCS has achieved the depth and breadth to follow the same processes and achieve the same high quality and deliver them from any of our centres, be they in Hangzhou, Budapest, Sao Paolo, New Jersey, Toronto, Tokyo, Melbourne or in different parts of India. In Clayton Christensen’s terminology it would no doubt qualify as a “disruptive business model” [2]. Innovation engine Like any grand narrative it would be presumptuous to say that four decades ago TCS saw clearly its goal of industrialising software services, then charted the strategy, the path and, eventually, planned and executed to reach where it stands today. Like all big things, TCS started small with powerful ideas like Data Dictionary, a migration tool. TCS was involved in the software engineering standards and quality movement with IEEE from the very beginning. It also had to set up appropriate training of recruits, when there were hardly any colleges teaching computer science in India. TCS had to develop and set up processes to test and debug software. In the late 1980s, TCS executed a large challenging project to set up the clearing and settlement system for banks in Switzerland. It was won against competition from established companies, purely on the basis of TCS’s innovative design. The project helped TCS “push the envelope” in all directions and also helped hone its software design and architecture skills as well as develop a core group of software architects. TCS also developed the systems required to integrate its client site work with the work done by teams of developers in India, known as ‘off-shoring’ and so on. In 1981, TCS set up its R&D centre, Tata Research Design and Development Centre (TRDDC) in Pune [3]. A strong group in software engineering took shape at TRDDC in the mid-1980s. The group started articulating and evangelising concepts of software engineering, some of which were already in practice within TCS. This group was able to develop a highly successful suite of Computer Assisted Software Engineering (CASE) tools and carried forward the work initiated by TCS Systems Group in a methodical way. At another level, TCS also internally evangelised the System Engineering approach to software problems. The agenda now involved identifying reusable components, knowledge repositories, creating a software tool foundry, developing highly sophisticated reverse engineering tools for software maintenance. The jigsaw pieces of industrialisation of software development started falling into place. One of the byproducts of this industrialising process was the development of the highly acclaimed MasterCraft™ – a suite for automatic code generation once the business logic is fed into it [4]. Setting standards On the front of standards TCS intensified its earlier work with IEEE and brought in SEI’s CMM philosophy into the organisation quickly. TCS is the world’s first organisation to achieve an enterprise-wide Maturity Level 5 on CMMI® and P-CMM® based on the most rigorous assessment methodology. TCS has now combined its own vast store of home-grown processes with the best aspects of global standards, such as the SCMM, the PCMM, Six Sigma, ISO 9001 and the Tata Business Excellence Model, to develop its own proprietary quality model, the Integrated Quality Management System (iQMS™). TCS hopes that this archetype will soon become an industry standard. The iQMS™ is central to project management at TCS; it comprises a major chunk of its DNA. This system provides guidelines for the conduct of every project and the means for monitoring it. Together with the various software development methodologies laid out by TCS’s software engineering process groups, iQMS™ lays out a comprehensive roadmap for each project. TCS has ensured that all its development centres, be they in China, Hungary, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, US, Canada, UK, Singapore, India, Australia, Japan etc., follow the same processes and achieve the same high quality. Learning from manufacturing TCS could not have set up the software equivalent of Henry Ford’s assembly line, if it did not build an efficient supply chain. In the 1960s and 1970s TCS started working in close collaboration with the newly set up Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) at Kanpur, Bombay and Madras and later expanded the company’s academic interaction to over 200 engineering colleges in India and several universities abroad. Today, TCS’s Academic Interaction Programme covers a whole spectrum of activities from faculty development; curriculum development in some colleges; scholarship and financial aid to deserving graduate programmes as well as sponsored research and collaborative development of intellectual property. In India, this programme has contributed to raising the standards of computer science and software engineering education. As a result, TCS could recruit over 100,000 high quality engineers in the last four years and move them through its strong internal training programme that covers everything from software engineering to soft skills. The spade work and internal systems have helped to absorb this large human resource into the organisation quickly and deploy them into large projects. To make TCS operations more efficient it set up a system meant for a global services company, very similar in concept to ERP in manufacturing. This system covers everything – project billing, employee services, leave, pay roll and other HR services, internal communication, branding, online appraisal processes, knowledge management etc. Youngsters in TCS (incidentally, the average age in TCS is 26 years) thought that such an ultimate tool should be named Ultimatix, a la René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo. Truly global networked delivery In global manufacturing, it is well recognised that Toyota has taken the assembly line revolution of Henry Ford to the next level by introducing distributed manufacturing, just in time manufacturing, single minute exchange of dies (SMED) etc., which collectively have come to be known as the Toyota Model [4]. Similarly, TCS had to take its software factory approach to the next level. As its client list and diversity grew across continents, the company could not remain an India-based software developer serving global clients. About a decade ago TCS realised that it needed to further globalise its software development system, which became possible due to the global telecom revolution. The solutions and products offered by TCS are in bits and bytes and not in steel or aluminium. Hence, in some ways, TCS could venture into uncharted territory where a brick and mortar manufacturer like Toyota could not physically go. Initially, TCS created the hub-and-spoke system in global delivery where India was the hub and other centres were feeders. Today, however, TCS has gone further to an entirely new system where any of its major global development centres could act as a hub or an anchor for a global collaborative effort. This leads to reduction of time zone issues for clients; facilitates services in a variety of languages and cultures; allows real time collaboration and parallel development with teams sitting in distributed development centres and so on. It also brings out optimum utilisation of in-house expert resources. TCS clients also enjoy de-risking greatly from putting all the eggs into the basket of one centre. Incidentally, TCS already has over 10,000 non-Indian employees. The TCS Global Network Delivery Model™ is the business equivalent of what Paul Baran proposed in his work entitled Introduction to Distributed Communications Networks for Rand Corporation, in 1964. It later became the conceptual framework for packet switched networks with no single centre, and no single path, like Arpanet and, ultimately, the internet [5]. The pioneering conceptual and systemic work done by TCS percolated to other Indian IT companies in the last 10-15 yrs and lo and behold, India now has a vibrant, highly competitive, and high quality software services industry! The author has been asked many times about an order of magnitude difference in size between software companies in India and China. Even IBM, Accenture and HP have very large development centres in India with tens of thousands of Indian engineers. Are the engineering human resources in China any less in quantity than in India? The answer, as we all know, is no. However, Chinese software companies lack scale and the largest among them have less than 5,000 engineers. The reason is simple: they have yet to master the industrialisation of software development. Many observers have pointed out the role played by English education, mathematical and analytical abilities among Indian students, propensity of Indian youth towards science and engineering as careers, labour arbitrage etc., as the determining factors in the rise of Indian IT industry. No doubt all these factors have played a role. However, all such deterministic analysis ‘forgets’ the human factor of leadership. It is similar to saying that if a country has steel, gasoline and machinists then they will have a vibrant auto industry! Without the genius and hard work of Henry Ford and Toyota, the global auto industry could not have reached the scale and sophistication that it has today. Similarly, without the development and adoption of software engineering methodology in TCS and other Indian companies, global software services would not be a vibrant large scale industry that it is today. References
1. Ford, H. and Crowther, S., My Life and Work,
Garden City Publishing Company, Inc., New York, USA (1922),
www.gutenberg.net/etext/7213
2. Christensen, C.M., The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New
Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail, Harvard Business School
Press, (1997).
3. Kanavi, S. (Ed.), Research by Design: Innovation and
TCS, Rupa & Co. (2007).
4. Liker, J.K., The Toyota Way: 14 Management
Principles from the World’s Greatest Manufacturer, McGraw-Hill
Professional (2004).
5. www.rand.org/about/history/baran.html
Shivanand Kanavi
Global head, marketing and strategic communication, CMC, Mumbai shivanand.kanavi@cmcltd.com |
||
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Indian IT: From artisans to global industry
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Energy Security and India
Energy Security and India
It is clear that India cannot
rely on one source of electricity:
be it coal; gas; hydro or nuclear. The bouquet will have all these components.
This requires rational and pragmatic planning and not dogmas, says Shivanand Kanavi.
(This article appeared in Rediff.com at http://www.rediff.com/business/slide-show/slide-show-1-column-an-energy-sufficient-india-a-long-road-ahead/20120320.htm )
Indian energy consumption profile is varied. We use bio mass
like agricultural waste and animal waste like cow dung and wood, char coal for
heating and cooking purposes as well as refinery products like kerosene and
LPG. While a small amount of electrified transportation has been adopted by the
railways most other transportation by road and water is dependent on diesel and
to a lesser extent petrol both of which are refinery products. Industry depends
on electricity as well as coal and fuel oil or diesel for its energy needs.
Today we are importing over 80% of our oil needs which gets
refined into kerosene, LPG, petrol, diesel, fuel oil, naphtha etc hence not
only all our energy needs but also fertilisers and plastics needs are
susceptible to international crude prices. Even though India has recoverable
coal of about 70-80 billion tons, our needs are rising and our annual coal
consumption has crossed 800 million tons. Due to various restrictions on coal
mining due to environmental or forest issues or bottlenecks in railways for
internal transportation; imports of coal from South Africa, Australia and
Indonesia are rising and many Indian companies are buying mines in these
countries to secure these supplies and building plants in India along the
western and eastern coastline. Imported coal is expensive but it has already
reached over 110 million tons this year and is expected to rise dramatically as
energy needs increase. Thus our economy is not only dependent on international
crude prices but also coal prices which are again getting linked to crude
prices as natural gas prices already have.
Electrification is an important component of modernising the
country’s productive forces and increasing the quality of life of people.
Interestingly, Lenin in the emerging Soviet Union realised
it very clearly and accordingly the GOELRO ("State Commission for
Electrification of Russia") was set up as early as 1920. He endorsed the
slogan, ‘The age of steam is the age of the bourgeoisie, the age of electricity
is the age of socialism.’ He said in a
report in Feb 1920, “We must show the peasants that the organisation of
industry on the basis of modern, advanced technology, on electrification which
will provide a link between town and country, will put an end to the division between
town and country, will make it possible to raise the level of culture in the
countryside and to overcome, even in the most remote corners of the land,
backwardness, ignorance, poverty, disease and barbarism. We shall tackle the
problem as soon as we have dealt with our current, basic task, and we shall not
allow ourselves to be deflected for a single moment from the fundamental
practical task.”
The Soviet Plan included construction of a network of 30
regional power plants, including ten large hydroelectric power plants, and
numerous electric-powered large industrial enterprises. It was intended to
increase the total national power output per year to 8.8 billion kWh, as
compared to 1.9 billion kWh of the Imperial Russia in 1913.The Plan was basically
fulfilled by 1931.
India’s current per capita electricity consumption is less
than 750 KWH per annum where as it is already 1500 in China. It is to be noted
that in almost all economic indicators like electricity, steel, telecom etc
India and China were on par in 1991. The consumption in advanced countries of
Europe and North America is much higher, while the world average itself is 2500
KWH per capita. There are still over 10% villages which are not electrified and
according to 2009 data 33% of rural households and 6% of urban households still
do not have access to electricity.
The current profile of electricity generation in India is as
follows:
|
The demand in India for electricity far outstrips supply reportedly
the shortage varies between 8-12%, which amounts to a huge 15,000—20,000 MW of
power. Leave alone rural areas even large cities and giant metropolises are
subjected to regular load shedding that is brown outs and black outs. There
have been many instances of riots in many provinces especially during the
sowing season due to these brown outs when they need electricity for tube wells
and pumps. India needs rapid electrification to raise the standard of living as
well as for agriculture and industry.
In terms of medium and long term planning, Indian coal needs
to be mined efficiently. However it has large amount of silica, which appears
as large amount of fly ash in power stations, when it is burnt. This ash needs
to be disposed of in a way that does not harm the surrounding air and rivers
and lakes. However much needs to be done in this respect. Imported coal has
much higher calorific value but also has sulphur and nitrogenous content which
leads to large release of sulphuric and nitric acids during rain, that is
dangerous to forests and environment. The fact that open pit mining itself
needs to be handled properly to limit the damage to the environment is only
recently being addressed in India. According to scientific studies, the fly ash emitted by a
power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the
surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant
producing the same amount of energy (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste).
Some of the ecologically disastrous effects of coal based thermal power plants
are already visible in Chhattisgarh, where large clusters of pithead coal
powered thermal power plants are scheduled to come up.
From the long term energy security perspective Indian coal
reserves will get exhausted in less than 50 years. Even worldwide the coal
reserves are shrinking. Increasing reliance on imported coal will lead to
Indian economy being more and more at the mercy of global coal prices as it
already is with respect to oil prices. This is in addition to the extraordinary
burden that will be borne by our ports and railways for carrying coal. The
effect on green house gases and climate; effect of ash on pulmonary diseases
and people’s health and so on are additional things to be worried about. Coal
already provides 65% of power capacity and will likely play a major role in the
future also.
Natural gas offers a much cleaner alternative and power
stations can also be set up quickly. However while some discoveries of natural
gas have been made by ONGC and Reliance they are still relatively small
compared to the existing demand. Imported gas through pipelines of Central
Asia, Iran, Bangladesh and Myanmar will also be expensive since the gas prices
are linked today to oil prices, assuming of course that political relations
with these and intervening countries were permitting such pipelines. More over
gas is required for urea fertiliser, plastics and steel industry as well and
there will be a scramble for the same. Thus gas will play a small role as it
does at present (10%).
Methane from Coal Beds is another source that is being
explored in Eastern India. Many blocks have been auctioned to various companies
and it will add a significant but still small amount to the current gas
availability.
Recently ONGC has drilled a R&D well for Shale Gas in Paschim
Banga (West Bengal) and studies are continuing. Shale Gas has been a great new
success story in energy and has meteorically risen to provide 25% of gas in US.
However new environmental concerns are being raised about the chemicals that
are used in hydraulic fracking to release the gas from layers deep down. Like Coal
Bed Methane, Shale Gas too promises to be another source of much needed gas for
India.
Geophysicists tell us that India sits on a large ocean of Gas
Hydrates at great depths. However the technology to exploit these is not yet
available globally and they may provide a valuable gas source in the future.
Hydroelectricity is a renewable source of energy, since we
expect every rainy season to fill up our dams. However due to our high
population density such dams lead to large scale submersion of villages and
forests causing social displacement and social tension. Himalayas have great
hydroelectric potential and that is why dams are being built feverishly in
Bhutan, Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Jammu &
Kashmir. But Himalayas are very young mountains and there is a lot of soil
erosion and the dams would be silted heavily very soon. More over the dams are affecting
forests and causing submersion of agricultural land and villages there too,
though on a smaller scale than in the plains as in the Narmada Basin. That is
why there is already a strong opposition to these dams in the hill states even though
we have tapped a very small amount of this potential. Thus hydro’s contribution
to power generation will remain at about the current levels of 20% and falling.
Many NGO’s believing in the mantra of “small is beautiful”,
say that mini and micro hydro projects are the answers to India’s energy
problems. However, the facts on the ground show that such potential is hardly
2,500 MW and that too at a high cost per megawatt making it hardly a panacea.
State
Wise Numbers And Aggregate Capacity Of Small hydro projects (Upto 25 Mw)
Installed & Under Implementation
(AS ON 31.3.2009) |
||||||
Sl. No.
|
State
|
Projects
Installed
|
Projects
under Implementation
|
|||
Nos.
|
Capacity
(MW)
|
Nos.
|
Capacity
(MW)
|
|||
1
|
Andhra
Pradesh
|
59
|
180.83
|
12
|
21.50
|
|
2
|
Arunachal
Pradesh
|
81
|
61.32
|
43
|
25.94
|
|
3
|
Assam
|
4
|
27.1
|
4
|
15.00
|
|
4
|
Bihar
|
12
|
54.60
|
4
|
3.40
|
|
5
|
Chattisgarh
|
5
|
18.050
|
1
|
1.00
|
|
6
|
Goa
|
1
|
0.050
|
-
|
-
|
|
7
|
Gujarat
|
2
|
7.000
|
2
|
5.60
|
|
8
|
Haryana
|
5
|
62.700
|
1
|
6.00
|
|
9
|
Himachal
Pradesh
|
79
|
230.915
|
9
|
26.75
|
|
10
|
J&K
|
32
|
111.830
|
5
|
5.91
|
|
11
|
Jharkhand
|
6
|
4.050
|
8
|
34.85
|
|
12
|
Karnataka
|
83
|
563.45
|
14
|
85.25
|
|
13
|
Kerala
|
19
|
133.87
|
2
|
3.2
|
|
14
|
Madhya
Pradesh
|
10
|
71.16
|
4
|
19.90
|
|
15
|
Maharashtra
|
29
|
211.325
|
5
|
31.20
|
|
16
|
Manipur
|
8
|
5.450
|
3
|
2.75
|
|
17
|
Meghalaya
|
4
|
31.030
|
3
|
1.70
|
|
18
|
Mizoram
|
18
|
24.470
|
1
|
8.50
|
|
19
|
Nagaland
|
10
|
28.670
|
4
|
4.20
|
|
20
|
Orissa
|
8
|
44.300
|
6
|
23.93
|
|
21
|
Punjab
|
29
|
123.900
|
2
|
18.75
|
|
22
|
Rajasthan
|
10
|
23.850
|
-
|
-
|
|
23
|
Sikkim
|
16
|
47.110
|
2
|
5.20
|
|
24
|
Tamil
Nadu
|
15
|
90.050
|
4
|
13.00
|
|
25
|
Tripura
|
3
|
16.010
|
-
|
-
|
|
26
|
Uttar
Pradesh
|
9
|
25.100
|
-
|
-
|
|
27
|
Uttarakhand
|
93
|
127.92
|
33
|
40.35
|
|
28
|
West
Bengal
|
23
|
98.400
|
16
|
79.25
|
|
29
|
A&N
Islands
|
1
|
5.250
|
-
|
-
|
|
Total
|
674
|
2429.77 MW
|
188
|
483.23 MW
|
||
Recently wind farms have come up in several regions. However
inherently wind in India is not enough to produce power efficiently unlike in
some Nordic countries. It has been estimated that the efficiency of production
from wind is around 35%-25% in Europe and North America but only about 15% in the
windy regions of India. More over wind farms also require large amount of land
which is a problem in land starved India. Of course one has to keep in mind
that wind can only add on to an existing steady base level of production in the
grid and cannot be relied upon for continuous supply. Though India has
impressive figures in wind energy installation, it is a known fact that it has
become a source for exploiting tax loop holes for corporations and not a
serious source of electricity supply to the grid.
Many people naively believe that India having been blessed
with ample amounts of sun light, Solar would be a natural choice as a major source
of electricity. However, converting sunlight to electricity is a very expensive
process and it currently costs about 4 times the conventional. Even though the
technology is more than 100 years old, a lot more advancement has to happen in
basic research in new materials to convert sunlight to electricity more
efficiently (currently it is only 12-16%) and cheaply. People who claim that
solar is environmentally friendly do not understand that the silicon chip
making process uses some of the most toxic chemicals, which are then let out as
effluents. Today India is buying a lot of solar panels from China and if we
decide to start fab for the same in India to lower prices then we will come
across the associated environmental issues as well. Moreover, solar electricity
needs to be stored in expensive and environmentally harmful lead batteries, since
there is no Sun in the night. Any large scale use of solar power would lead to
serious issues over disposing of the batteries. Thus environmental friendliness
of solar technology is a over simplification. It is expected that further
advances in science and technology of materials, efficiency and storage will happen
in perhaps the next 50 years. We should also recognise that solar plants of say
even a modest 100 MW require several square kilometres of land.
India has very little geothermal potential though there are
hot water geysers in the Himalayan region.
India has developed nuclear power reactors using natural
uranium and has been improving the technology in the last 40 years. India does
not yet have the technology for large enriched uranium reactors and is hence
planning to import them from Russia, France and US. Indian Uranium resources
are of very small and of very low quality. However the opening up of international
trade in nuclear materials in 2008 by the Nuclear Suppliers Group has allowed
India to import Uranium from large Uranium producing countries like Kazakhstan
and Russia. In the future, it can also do so from Canada and Australia. India
has also developed the technology to process the radioactive waste from these
reactors and extract useful plutonium from the waste. This reprocessing of fuel
has largely resolved the waste disposal problem, which is very serious in North
America and Europe. Plutonium thus obtained has been used for making bombs as
well as to develop power generation in Fast Breeder Reactors. In fact that is
the reason the reprocessing technology has been strictly controlled by US and
other powers. The first large Fast Breeder Reactor designed by India is soon
coming online in Kalpakkam near Chennai and will take India to the cutting edge
of this technology globally. India is also blessed with large amounts of
Thorium. The first Thorium reactor of the world has also been designed by India
and the construction of a 300 MW Thorium reactor known as AHWR will start soon.
The world will be looking forward to these innovations.
Nuclear reactors are small in size but need a radius of few
kilometres around them to be ready for evacuation in order to diminish the
danger to human life in the highly unlikely case of an accident. So far, in the
nearly 42 years of operation there have been no serious accidents in Indian
reactors. Today’s reactors have been designed to take care of many accidental
scenarios of earthquakes, tsunamis, terrorist attacks etc that have the
potential to damage the reactor core. The reactors are being designed to safely
shut down in an emergency. Thus no radiation need be leaked to the environment.
Uranium mining, handling, reactor maintenance are all
potential sources of radiation exposure to workers. Thus extreme care has to be
taken regarding prescribed safety procedures during the entire cycle and no chalta hai attitude will work.
Many people ask, “Is it (nuclear power) dangerous?” Since
radiation is invisible it leads to many irrational fears. The short answer is,
“Yes it is” and it needs scientifically trained staff to handle it at all
stages. However looking at the energy security of India in the future and
considering the strengths and weaknesses of other sources of electricity
available to us, which have been discussed above, nuclear remains an important
source of energy security for India as our planet’s fossil fuels dwindle and
become extremely expensive. It is also environmentally benign due to no carbon
emission or fly ash disposal and other problems. Nuclear power especially with
Fast Breeders and Thorium Reactors will be an important source that can provide
electricity at competitive rates to the teaming Indians for more than 100 years
based on our own Thorium reserves.
It is clear that India cannot rely on one source of electricity: be it coal (domestic or imported); gas
(domestic or imported); hydro or nuclear. The bouquet will have all these
components. The weight of different components in the bouquet can change as
economic costs and environmental costs vary in the future. This requires
rational and pragmatic planning and not dogmas and irrational prejudices.
The problems of land acquisition and rehabilitation exist in
all large industrial and urbanisation projects and are not peculiar to nuclear
projects as in Jaitapur. The state apparatus needs to handle these sensitively.
Any layman’s concerns on safety, technology etc can be addressed adequately. We
need to see the energy scenario 20-50 years ahead and prepare for it while
trying to address the rising expectation of people in terms of living standards
and energy availability for the same. After all it is increased availability of
electricity and transportation that will see a sea change in common man’s life
in rural and urban India.
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