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| May
7, 1999 Planetary panic leaves town deserted Thousands of workers have fled India's largest ship-breaking yard, after rumours predicting large-scale destruction as a result of a peculiar planetary formation. The Alang breakers' yard is set to lose millions as workers flee... |
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May
18, 1999 Read article by Sanjiv Shrivastava in Bombay at BBC-NEWS.
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--- SAFE COPY INDIA BEGIN ------
Friday, May 7, 1999 Published at 14:07 GMT 15:07 UK
World: South Asia
Planetary panic leaves town
deserted
The Alang breakers' yard is set to lose millions as workers flee
By Sanjiv Shrivastava in Bombay
Thousands of workers have fled India's largest
ship-breaking yard, after rumours predicting large-scale
destruction as a result of a peculiar planetary formation.
More than 60,000 workers have left the port town of
Alang, in the belief that the town will be devastated by a
cyclone and flooding on Saturday 8 May.
Leading Indian scientists and astrologers have
dismissed the rumour as "nonsense".
Nobody quite knows how the rumour began.
According to one Indian newspaper, the doomsday
prediction was published in the April issue of an
astrological magazine.
Some others have pointed to a doomsday prediction in
some ancient Indian religious texts.
Economic devastation
Whatever the origin of the rumour, it has already had a
devastating impact on the economy of a flourishing port
township in western India.
Work in the ship-breaking yard has come to a halt,
resulting in the loss of nearly $35m in revenue.
Reclaiming scrap metal from ships is an important
industry in India, which buys 40% of the world total of
ships destined for scrapyards.
The Alang yard accounts for 95% of the ships that are
broken up in the country.
All that has now come to a halt and authorities say by
the time workers return to work, they would have lost
nearly $60m.
Reports 'baseless'
Indian scientists have dismissed reports of any peculiar
planetary formation as completely baseless.
The Indian Institute of Astrophysics says that even if the
feared planetary alignment did occur, there would be no
danger of any natural calamity.
The arrangement of seven heavenly bodies, including the
earth, the sun and the moon, into a straight line, has
occured no fewer than 14 times in the last 1,000 years.
According to scientists, there was no destruction on any
of these occasions.
Leading astrologers have also described the predictions
as a complete hoax.
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--- SAFE COPY INDIA END ------
