pshaw...indian cattle are weak, our fish grow extra eyes...

[Guest guest]

POKHARAN, India - Ranjeeta Ramji grabbed the calf by its head with one hand and

ran the other up and down in front of its eyes, the absence of a reaction

evidence that it was blind.

Then the Indian farmer pointed to a cyst-like swelling on the startled young

animal's neck.

 

" Cancer, cancer, " he said, in English.

 

Four years after India exploded a series of nuclear devices in underground tests

here in the arid Thar desert near the border with Pakistan, villagers are still

asking themselves whether to believe government assurances that no radioactivity

was released.

 

In Khetolai, a village of 1,500 inhabitants about 3.5 km (two miles) from the

security fence that rings the Pokharan military test range, villagers say their

cows have given birth to several blind and diseased calves since the tests took

place.

 

Although they are not sure of the reason, they say they suspect it is because

the cattle head off up a sandy track leading out of the village to graze on

whatever they can find near where the fence cuts through the scrub-dotted

desert.

 

Ramji said his herd had produced four blind calves with tumours since the test

blasts, none of which survived more than a year. Other villagers tell similar

tales.

 

" We've contacted the authorities a number of times but no one has to come to

see, " said Ramji, 60, who can still remember how the ground beneath his feet

shook " like an earthquake " when the five tests were carried out on May 11 and

May 13, 1998.

 

" These cows are our bread and butter, " he said. " There is so little water here

that we can't grow crops so they're our livelihood, " added Ramji, head of a

family of 12.

 

PROUD BUT BITTER

 

India's tests, one of a device nearly three times more powerful than the atomic

bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, were swiftly followed by similar nuclear

tests by Pakistan.

 

For the past six months, the hostile neighbours have been locked in a dispute

over the divided Himalayan region of Kashmir, with one million troops massed on

their border in a military standoff that has raised international fears of a

nuclear war.

 

Like many Indians, the villagers of Khetolai, in the western state of Rajasthan,

derive satisfaction from knowing that their country is a nuclear power and has a

threat to wave at Pakistan.

 

In Khetolai's case, though, that knowledge is tinged with bitterness.

 

" It is good for the country, but for the people around here it isn't, " said

Mooli Devi, the woman head of the village.

 

" We've had a lot of problems with the animals getting sick. "

 

She said villagers had received compensation of 5,000 to 10,000 rupees ($100 to

$200) to repair cracks made by the test explosions in the walls of their

sandstone-built homes and water cisterns, but it had not been enough.

 

" We had to spend a lot more money from our own pockets, " said Devi, 40. " They

should have taken care of the people here. "

 

None of the villagers were evacuated when the tests took place. Instead, they

say, soldiers arrived in jeeps and told them to stay outside their homes.

 

They only found out what made the earth in Khetolai tremble and kicked up a

spiral of the dust on the horizon when they heard reports of the tests on the

radio.

 

AILMENTS

 

" There was a very strange smell, like gunpowder, " said Dhana Ram, a 55-year-old

farmer who stood knotting a rope in the shade to escape the heat that can soar

to 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) in summer and turn this part of India

into a furnace.

 

Ram, like some of the other villagers, said his nose had bled after the nuclear

tests and became severely swollen.

 

" Two days after the tests, a doctor came and asked people if anyone had any

problems, so I showed him my nose " Ram recalled.

 

" At first he said I must have stuck my fingers up my nose. Then they gave me

some medicine and did a blood test. It showed there was nothing wrong with me,

but it took nearly two months to get better. "

 

Others in the village also complained at the time of the tests of itchy skin and

vomiting, ailments that doctors in the area put down to the summer heat.

Villagers were not routinely screened and the government insists there was no

risk to health.

 

" We never got proper check-ups, " said Bhagirath Ram, a 30-year-old who runs a

small store in Khetolai. Now, he says, he is worried about the long-term effects

on his three children, aged two, four and six.

 

" It's a very proud thing to have a nuclear bomb, " the man said.

 

" But if you think of the people of this village, we should have gotten better

medical examinations. "

 

 

 

 

Story by Paul Holmes

 

 

REUTERS NEWS SERVICE