The Hindu Business Line : GM crops: Seeds of contention

NEW Delhi is clearly wavering over a clear-cut policy on genetically modified crops (GM crops). With biodiversity poaching in the garb of "documentation" and "research", even by supposedly "eminent" dramatis personae on the one hand, and the impatient peddling of their wares by multinational and transnational companies (MNCs and TNCs) on the other, it is just not the economic future of India that is being threatened but also its environmental integrity, with far reaching implications on the generations to come.

An American MNC operating in India recently announced that it was ready with a GM mustard seed for commercial cultivation. The International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), principally funded by the US, also recently announced that a GM groundnut was available for commercial exploitation. Another US-based MNC has been peddling a GM cotton, "Bollgard", supposedly resistant to cotton boll-worm. Since there was public pressure against this company, a deviously named cotton variety "Navbharat" (the Bollgard in disguise) was clandestinely distributed to cotton farmers in Gujarat for widespread cultivation. That New Delhi had to instruct the Gujarat Government to burn the cotton fields ploughed with the Navbharat seed to save face speaks volumes on the kind of machinations that go on, even in research, which must be above manoeuvring and manipulation.

With the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) giving the go-ahead for the Bollgard, the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) must be pleased. It may only be a matter of weeks before the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) gives the green signal for Bollard's mass cultivation by cotton farmers, or rather, the cotton `landlords' who have hundreds of acres in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, etc, and not the tiny one-acre subsistence farmers who cannot afford the costly seed.

The situation the country now faces with regard to GM crops is exactly the same India faced almost four decades ago when the country went in for the large-scale cultivation of the "miracle" wheat varieties imported from the International Centre for Maize and Wheat Research (CIMMYT) in Mexico, again lavishly funded and promoted by US interests.

What followed was the so-called Green Revolution — a "high input technology" that hastened the disappearance of our biodiversity. The groundwater in Punjab and Haryana is no more potable. Kattampilly in Kerala's Kannur district is testimony to a failed Green Revolution. Kerala's "rice bowl" — Kuttanad and Palakkad — have been so doused with poisonous chemicals that even dreaded diseases such as Japanese encephalitis have raised their ugly head. A year ago in Wayanad, millions of fish died because of the copper-based fungicide Furadan, sprayed in pepper gardens to control the wilt disease.

Meanwhile, the just-released report "Pilot Analysis of Global Ecosystems: Agroecosystem", jointly authored by the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute and the World Research Institute, points to the pitfalls of high input technology. If the messiahs of the Green Revolution spoke of the "ship-to-mouth" food situation in India, then as a justification for the large-scale adoption of the Mexican wheat and the Filipino rice varieties, the same people, in another garb, are now prodding India to take to GM crops because, as the MNCs say, only through this technology will world hunger be banished. What the Green Revolution achieved was to enormously enrich the 2-3 per cent wheat and rice farmers of Punjab, Haryana, Western Uttar Pradesh and, to an extent, Andhra Pradesh, leaving the vast majority of subsistence farmers in the lurch. The growing suicides among farmers in various parts of India lend testimony to this failed hi-tech agriculture — the hallmark of the Green Revolution. If indeed the Green Revolution has not touched the vast majority of Indian farmers, what guarantee is there that the GM technology will benefit all and not just exploited by super-rich farmers?

It is curious that both the MNCs and those with a new-found interest in GM crops speak on the same wavelength as did the agricultural bureaucracy more than four decades ago to push the so-called Green Revolution. Then, as now, the plea concerned hungry Indians. Yet, the numbers of the hungry has only increased. Consider the statistics. In the pre-Green Revolution phase, India produced about 50 million tonnes of foodgrains. Now the output is around 200 million tonnes — almost a four-fold jump. But, in the same period, the population grew from a mere 10 crore to more than 100 crore now — more than a ten-fold increase!

Between 1992-93 and 1999-2000 — the "reforms" period — food production rose 13.41 per cent, roughly 1.68 per cent per annum, while the population grew at around 2 per cent per annum, clearly setting in motion the Malthusian theory of population growth outstripping food production. In the case of rice, from 1991 to 1999 the average intake was around 200 gm per person per day. In 1991 it was 209.1 gm. In wheat the annual increase was just 2.1 per cent. For coarse cereals, the poor man's food, the decline was 20.8 per cent, and for pulses, the poor man's protein supplement, the decline was 20.5 per cent. So, where has the Green Revolution taken us?

A common refrain of the agricultural fraternity — past and present — is that food per se is scarce, only its inaccessibility is the problem — the paradox of vast stocks of food co-existing with widespread hunger. But the most valid question is that if food production has increased so substantially, would food be as dear to us as it is today? The Green Revolution leading to a "food surplus" situation will be exposed for what it is, especially if the NDA Government dispenses with the Minimum Support Price (MSP) which, at the behest of the farm lobby with political clout, simply mopped up the excess grain from the grain rich farmers at exorbitant prices — an exercise in pure political chicanery. Given the population size and production at around 200 million tonnes (of which more than 50 million tonnes are pulses and coarse grains), the staples, rice and wheat, availability is about 350 gm per person per day which is only 70 per cent of the minimum requirement of 500 gm as stipulated by the National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad.

The way out

So, where does all this leave us? If GM technology is part of the larger question of environmental integrity, then we must address the entire question and not with the ambivalence we now show. Several decades from now, the country may blame the ills on the agricultural front on GM crops for horizontal gene transfers, vanishing biodiversity, and the breakdown of the country's floral base. It is important to remember that in the last four decades many native varieties of crops have disappeared, but which are also staging a come back. Rice is a classic example, and Palakkad, Kerala's rice bowl, is a test case.

The increasing number of rice farmers committing suicides indicates that the cost of production can no longer keep up with the cost of produce. The `miracle' IR rice varieties (originating in the Philippine-based International Rice Research Institute) produces little in the absence of liberal doses of chemical fertilisers and costly pesticides. Not the local Thavalakannan and Chenkazhama — the latter have much better cooking qualities than IR 8, IR20, IR36, IR50, etc. It is the "commodity mindset" that is pushing for food security as an external factor to sustainable food production.

The `gene revolution' seems set to go the way of the Green Revolution where corporate agriculture and its cohorts will hold sway over the average Indian. The philosopher-thinker Santayana said: "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to re-live it". How true of the present day Indians who do not seem to know where they are going.

(The author is a senior fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.)

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