Friends - of - the - Earth

Dr. Richharia's story - Crushed, but not defeated

2011-05-09T14:43:00.002+05:30

Dr. Richharia's story - Crushed, but not defeated

The late Dr. R H Richharia was one of the leading experts on rice in India. He documented and collected an amazing 19,000 rice varieties during his career. As per his estimation, India was home to 200,000 varieties of rice. Dr. Richharia's career was however cut short and he was treated very unfairly by the government in India because he stood up to the International Rice Research Institute's machinations in the country. While we do not agree with the hybridisation programme or in the use of chemicals that was part of Dr. Richharia's work, there are two aspects in his story which are noteworthy - the first was his work with indigenous rice varieties, and the second was the role "foreign powers" and large corporations play in agribusiness and the business of feeding the world. Dr. Richharia came in their way, the rest is history.

We are reproducing in full an interview of Dr. Richharia that appeared in ‘The Illustrated Weekly of India’ in 1986, titled 'Crushed but not defeated'. We repeat that we do not support the hybridisation programme or the use of chemicals in agriculture - this interview is reproduced to relate the role played by the Government and the International Rice Research Institute, Philippines, essentially controlled by USA to support their commercial interests in agriculture and food systems.

It is also relevant to point out here that Dr. Richharia's collection of 19,000 rice varieties is today in the hands of the Indira Gandhi Agricultural University (IGAU), Raipur, Chhatisgarh, which has since then added (only) another 5,000 varieties. The official number of samples existing with IGAU is therefore 24,000. In 2002, IGAU signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the multinational agribusiness corporation, Syngenta, for a collaborative "research" agreement that would have entailed the transfer of this rice germplasm collections from the university to the corporation's laboratories. Syngenta was to have marketed new rice varieties developed by it using this genestock and paid royalties to the university. A local newspaper "leaked" the story and the resultant outcry in the local media forced the University to cancel the agreement.

Crushed, but not defeated

Few scientists in India have been treated as shabbily as Dr R H Richharia, one of the leading rice experts in the country. Director of the Central Rice Research Institute at Cuttack, a post from which he was ignominiously transferred, he developed, for the first time in India, certain rice varieties which gave the highest yield and were free from the usual pests.

Unfortunately, his breakthrough irked the foreign-funded International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. Which, with its influence with the Government of India, tried to stifle his research efforts. A sordid saga of injustice to Dr Richharia followed.

On these pages, Claude Alvares talks to the eminent agricultural scientist who became a victim of an international conspiracy, about the achievements in his research and the various obstacles he had to overcome to continue it.

Could you begin by giving us some idea of your involvement in rice in the late fifties?

It has been my hobby throughout life to collect rice material from whatever source possible and maintain and study it for genetic variability. Rice being my special subject, whoever came and met me, I requested him to give me some samples of rice. In this way I collected enough rice variability while in Bihar upto 1959 and when I came to Cuttack (Orissa) in the same year, I continued the same policy.

Here I started work with 67 rice types from Taiwan and discovered that there were two or three lines which were showing dwarf plants. We were interested in these dwarf varieties because if the rice crop does not lodge and at the same time can stand heavy manuring, that would be an ideal condition to get more production.

So, we found in those 67 varieties, two or three cultures of dwarf types and one of them was identified as Taichung Native 1 (TN 1). I was the first person, with my assistants, to locate that and I felt we should multiply that material and make suitable selections. One of the selections made proved to be resistant to diseases and pests and was high yielding.

How is it that the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) was able to steal a lead on the Central Rice Research Institute (CRRI)? After all, you were the real experts in rice, and Robert Chandler, director of IRRI, had not even seen a rice plant when he was appointed to that post?

Dr Chandler was known to the institute at Cuttack. The IRRI had started by 1962 and he then visited CRRI, and naturally as an innocent scientist, I showed him around. At one place we stopped and I pointed out some plants and said: "This variety will give you the highest production—a record yield in the world, of over 9000 lbs/acre and it is completely free from the usual pests: Taichung Native 1, (TN 1). That mistake I made—I should have told him my selection number and not its origin. He said, you will be a mystic man if you can achieve that. I said, we have already done it and we will confirm it. He just made a note of it.

Dr Chandler returned to Delhi and informed the authorities concerned at the Government of India and the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) that TN 1 and IR 8 have given the highest yield and therefore rice production can be revolutionised in India, if these two varieties are grown.

During that period I was chairing the rice committee at Krishi Bhavan, New Delhi—and Dr B P Pal sent a message that he wanted to meet me during the lunch hour. Dr Cummings (Rockefeller Foundation) was also attending that meeting although he was not a member. I was asked by Dr Pal to allow him (Dr Cummings) to attend that special meeting. I went to meet Dr Pal and he said that, TN 1 had been given to them by Dr Chandler of the IRRI and they had to accept it and introduce it; I said, Dr Pal, you are committing a great mistake, it is all full of diseases and pests, susceptible to disease and pests and some viruses also. The selection I made is different, whereas if you grow the general one (bulk seeds), it is all full of viruses, a plot of which can be seen even today. He said, ‘but how can you stop it—they are sending it by air in tonnes as a gift’. I said, ‘I am not a party to that and I would not recommended its import from there.’

How often did Chandler attempt to interfere with your work?

On another occasion he brought samples of 311 varieties to CRRI, all susceptible to diseases and pests, and handed them over to one of my staff members without my knowledge. This was when we were holding a seminar on rice at the CRRI. A number of scientists from Philippines came for the seminar and were my guests. After handing over the rice material (311 varieties), he instructed my staff member to divide them into two, one lot to be maintained at CRRI and the other lot to go to the Coordinated Rice Research Centre at Hyderabad.

Chandler was leaving that day and I was to drop him at the aerodrome. As I was getting into the car, a staff member came to me saying that he had been given a parcel with the material and he had divided the material into two, as desired by Dr Chandler, and he had brought one half because Dr Freeman (who was in charge of the Hyderabad station) was also gong by the same plane, so he could carry it. This is how I learnt of the virus-susceptible rice material received without my knowledge from the IRRI.

I rebuked my staff member: how had he accepted, divided, allocated material on the instructions of an outsider? Anyway I then asked him whether he had got the quarantine certificate for the material, because we cannot import any plant material without a quarantine certificate. He said, no, sir.

I then asked Dr Chandler directly, "I understand you have passed on a number of rice cultures to a staff member of my institute, half of which are to be given to Dr Freeman for Hyderabad. The material has been brought. But first I want the quarantine certificate from you." He replied, "You mean to say I am gong to introduce virus into your country?" I said, "I have never raised the question of virus. It is you who are saying so. I am only asking for the quarantine certificate, because according to the rules, no foreign seeds and plant material can be allowed into the country without the quarantine certificate." He did not have the certificate and left.

So, my staff were already being bribed or won over and through some of them, (one or two) the IRRI was getting all the information from the CRRI. This is how they stole my institute's work, just to get a lead in the rice world.

I learnt later that Chandler went straight to the minister for agriculture, at New Delhi and told him that if I continue as director of the institute, they would not co-operate. The minister, C Subramaniam, ordered that Dr Richharia should be asked to retire. But Sivaraman, the then cabinet secretary—he was earlier the agriculture secretary—who was a great friend of mine, advised the minister not to do this. "After all, Dr Richharia has done so much work and built up the entire institute (CRRI) in its present form. We can't ask him to retire. The best way is to transfer him as director of the Rice Development Council which we are just commencing".

Sivaraman advised me to go and meet Subramaniam. I phoned his PA and was told to come to his residence between 6.30—7.00 am the next day. I went there early next morning. Everything was silent. Only one man was dusting and cleaning the place. I told him I had an appointment with the minister. He went and told the minister.

I was called in Subramaniam said, "First you say that Taichung is a good variety. Now you are opposing it." I said "I was telling you about the selection that we have made. If you introduce the bulk material directly imported, it will create havoc in the country and all our existing varieties will also be affected by virus and other diseases and pests. The material which I have selected is different." He said: "I don't know all this. Now that the Rockefellers have sent the material, you have to accept it. I said, "I refuse. I don't want to be blamed later on, if someone wants to know who was the director who recommended its introduction."

What is the problem when you import seeds in bulk?

They cannot be free from diseases and pests. You can import in quantities, but they must be treated with certain chemicals, and fungicides, so that if there are any eggs of insects or any mycelia and spores of any disease, they are all killed. They say they did it. But even if they did it, it is very susceptible to new diseases and pests, alternate hosts of which may exist in our surrounding wild flora here. So then the rice crop will get affected, spreading diseases in our innocent indigenous varieties. That is the concept. Introduction of Tungro virus and the like are more dangerous.

What is the susceptibility due to?

Due to the special characteristics of the variety which is related to its gene.

So it is possible to bring in a certain variety which is known to be susceptible to a certain virus?

And this is what they have done in the case of IR-8 and TN-1. They knew about it because they were also experts.

And what was the difference between the Taichung variety that you had and the one that came later?

What I had was a selection resistant to viruses, diseases and pests. Bulk seed is heterogeneous. Out of that bulk, however, we can select individual plants to fit our purpose. This is how, out of thousands of Taichung plants, I had selected a few, and then multiplied them. If you use the bulk, their progeny will be mixed—good and bad.

That means it entered the country with the Green Revolution?

It has come simultaneously under the garb of the Green Revolution and I was the first to discover and realise that the mass/bulk import and introduction of seed would interfere with our productivity and once introduced, these viruses (Tungro virus, transitory virus, etc), would be difficult to eradicate. Now the dwarf genes of exotic origin in rice have become a permanent feature in India.

It is instructive to note how a country like the US with very little involvement in rice, could end up controlling rice research, and the destiny of millions.

This is how they won. If the CRRI came up, then they (the IRRI) were nowhere and the purpose of pouring in millions of dollars into the IRRI would be defeated.

They were in search of a place where they could control the rice research in respect of introducing varieties or whatever they wished to do. So first they approached the Government of India to hand over the Central Rice Research Institute to the Rockefeller Foundation Trust to establish an International Rice Research Institute. I had then just joined the CRRI.

When the subject was discussed with me, I did not favour this transfer and I argued that to establish an international organisation on the soil of India would be unhealthy because we would not have any control. I felt that the Central Rice Research Institute should function an independent institution and should not be handed over to the Rockefellers, who, after all, were a private concern. In those days, the Government of India was also of the same opinion. After this, they announced the establishment of an International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, somewhere in 1960. Good work was being carried out by the Central Rice Research Institute in this country, making germplasm collections from indigenous rice varieties which could give you 30-40 per cent higher yield. We were also evolving varieties which would be responsive to high fertilisation, and working to develop non-lodging types and work connected with green manure crops and plant nutrition, utilising radio isotopes etc but all these activities met with an abrupt end; all of a sudden these programmes were all modified and workers' activities were directed towards evolving HYVs, responsive to high fertilisers with the dwarfing gene from the dwarf rice variety TN1 and IR8, crossed with all our renewed rice variety available in the rice region of India, to be converted into high yielding dwarfs, which means that unless you use the blood from IR 8 or Taichung Native 1, you cannot get HYVs, forgetting at the same time that such genes are also available in the indigenous rice varieties.

The ICAR yielded to this pressure which I had opposed. The man behind this strategy was Dr Robert E Chandler. They went to the extent of saying that in the existing rice germplasm of India, dwarf genes do not exist, which is not a fact. If you spoke in favour of this strategy, they promoted you and if you opposed it, they (ICAR) demoted you, broke you, as they succeeded in breaking me.

So they retired you permanently?

They game me three months notice in 1966 when the CRRI was being transferred under the ICAR, i.e., on March 31, 1966. Naturally the three months' notice was handed over to me on January 1, so that I would not be able to opt for ICAR although I had filled up my option form for working under the ICAR after March 31, 1966, as I was aware of the fact that being the senior most, next to next director general, I would take over as the next director general.

So my advocate who had filed a case at the Orissa High Court against the ICAR and Government of India (ministry of food and agriculture) argued, that ‘you should give the reason why you have asked my client (Dr Richharia) to retire in such a hurry. What wrong was being done to the nation if he was allowed to continue a few months more, and retire honourably’. They had no answer. There were two aspects to my case—with one stone you kill two birds—if I retire on that particular date, their man, Dr Swaminathan, becomes the director general. Second, if I am removed, then they were free to introduce high yielding varieties of rice of any type and in any way they liked.

Two years, three years, the fourth and more passed by. I had to leave Cuttack. How long could I continue in that institute in the director's bungalow? After a certain time they would charge penal rent and take police action. At one stage, water connections were stopped and I was humiliated in many ways which I do not wish to narrate. So my advocate advised me to leave that place and go home, when it became intolerable.

So I appealed to my advocate that he must tell the Chief Justice of the great injustice that is being done to me by the opposite parties in delaying returns. At that time there were three dates fixed for the case. I had to go to Cuttack and at one stage nothing was left with us.

So I asked my wife what we should do. We had to maintain our children also. They had sent me word that if we withdrew the case, they would allow me to go to FAO. She said, ‘Please yourself, but let me tell you one thing. If you go away, people will say that Dr Richharia must have been involved in some corruption. That is why in the end he reconciled, withdrew the case and went to FAO. So many corrupt people go to FAO’. I agreed with her.

So I accepted my wife's advice, and took a State Bank loan again, went to Cuttack for three weeks, paid the advocate his fees and the advocate explained my case to the Chief Justice. Notice was then issued to the Government of India and ICAR that by a certain time, the desired information should be returned. Then finally they sent the replies. We do not consider Dr Richharia to be a scientist and therefore we asked him to retire from ICAR. Yes sir, ICAR did not consider Dr Richharia to be a scientist and therefore did not like to accept his option! I won the case. They were not justified in giving me three months' notice.

Then naturally the judgement had to be implemented. They called me there at CRRI. I refused. Then they especially sent papers to me for my signature at Bhopal. Then I took over as director, and on the other side I handed over charge. I said I will not join now. All my papers were locked. When I handed over charge and proceeded on leave, I said to Padmanabhan, who took over charge from me, that for one month I will work in this room. He agreed and said: "Yes sir, you can work".

The next morning when I went to the institute, my room was double locked. All my research materials and scientific papers were confiscated. I have not got them till today.

When did the MP government ask you to start the Rice Research Institute?

In 1971, I joined as agricultural advisor and I continued and built up this rice germplasm bank at Raipur in Chhatisgarh (MP), so that it soon had the richest material available including that from Abhujmad of Bastar.

Tell me how did this second institute also get shut down? Why was the World Bank interested and what was Swaminathan's role in this?

Swaminathan was already interested in the IRRI and then he was made secretary and vice-chairman of the ICAR. So all these projects on rice, including the departments, were all under him. They wanted to collect all the rice material. Through the ICAR, they were collecting rice types from various places and through the ICAR, they were collecting rice types from various places and through the CRRI, Cuttack, functioning under the ICAR.

Then they came to me. I said, I am not going to part with the material until I study it: how can I pass on something about which I know nothing?

One or two persons from ICAR came and met me personally. They said, "What objection do you have to parting with your material when they also want to give you some in exchange? The IRRI representative had also very tactfully told me that they wanted material in exchange. I had made it clear to them that we were not interested in their material as it would come from the virus belt, whereas my rice material represents resistance. By that time I had already given out disease and pest resistant rice types in Chhattisgarh, the rice bowl of MP.

Was the ICAR chief in league with the IRRI?

He was behind it all, because he held all the power—how it will be organised, how much will remain with the CRRI, how half will go to Delhi and from there to the IRRI. He was the all in all. Moreover he was the secretary to the government and also the director general of the ICAR. He knew everything about India's food secrets and all its statistics. He was taken there to take advantage of his knowledge and experience on India's food policy. He knew all about our rice wealth. Where the material is, and who are the people working on it etc.

So the institute was shot down?

I did not refuse point-blank to part with my indigenous rice germplasm. I said, ‘I’ll certainly give you the material after I have studied it’. And I did give a few samples to them including some dwarf varieties which I had collected and bred. I told the scientist from IRRI who came especially to see me for this purpose, that if my rice material can do good to the South east Asian countries, do take it—on one condition, that whatever investigations you do with my material, you must send me a copy of the results achieved with special reference to dwarfing genes. They took the material but they never sent me the information.

I have been fighting to show that we have got better material in India where rice originated. They agree, and in their books they have mentioned the work of the MPRRI. That is why they wanted to get this material. They used to come at least once in two years to see my work at Raipur and nothing remained hidden. They therefore, wanted to get this material. They hoped that after the amount of suffering caused by them, I would have learnt a lesson, so they approached me to forward the material.

Then they learnt that I had not changed, and I was not happy to part with the material because neither had they financed the MPRRI nor the ICAR. It was the state government that had financed it and also my age old efforts. So I said, no objection, I'll part with this material after I have researched it. They felt I was not coming round. They also knew that there was something in my material, which is now in charge of technical staff trained by them for the purpose.

So they thought of plan, going well out of their way. I am sure the government never put up any scheme like this. They said, we will give Rs. 4 crores (naturally through some recognised agency, here it was the ‘World Bank’) for continuing rice research but since there will be a duplication of research work because of MPRRI activities, that institute should be stopped. Underlying aim being to grab all the material first in the germplasm form, simultaneously replacing it by susceptible material (dwarfs), thus creating scope for the consumption of pesticides manufactured by their companies.

They felt that if I continue with my work, I would introduce my indigenous rice HYVs. This they had to block, and they succeeded in depriving me of my material and records and rendered me helpless. They will now spread that objectionable and susceptible rice material all over India to reduce rice production.

Dr Richharia, was there a credible alternative to increasing rice production in India? You have spoken of the Adivasis and their techniques. Did your people also have their own ideas?

I had proposed that hybrid vigour exploitation is possible in India, by utilising vegetative propagation technology which constituted a direct challenge to the dwarf plant type technology concept. But the energy and intellect of our rice scientists was wasted and now attempts are being made to channelise their energy through other futile lines. That HYV dwarfs are no good has been proved beyond doubt and there are authoritative recommendations on this subject.

What next? Well, I think the plant breeders of India are free to go ahead in their own way and develop their own methods; so they (IRRI) have worked out another strategy which involves exploitation of hybrid vigour in India, on which I have been working for years and which I have been working for years and which I have developed. They suggested using male sterile lines, as done in China. To develop stable male sterile lines and restorer systems is not an ordinary business. It requires time and good material and yet success is not assured, and at the same time, it will not be possible to maintain such quality varieties as Basmati with the same aroma and increased productivity. Basmati must also have male sterile lines. It may be possible, it may not, but all these scientists must work only to find out whether you get it or not, thus diverting their attention and energy from their own line of work.

On the other hand, I said, why don't you exploit the hybrid vigour through clonal propagation which insures the economic production of crossed seeds from F1 plans for full normal crop from the F2 population (hybrid vigour persists in later generations also).

We would be committing a big mistake if we import those lines from China as it will involve a big risk as was done with TN 1 and IR 8. And I doubt if those lines would thrive well under variable Indian agro-climactic environments. It will be indeed unfortunate if we get our scientists involved in that exotic material instead of our own indigenous types. But my question is, why are we not taking this seriously?

Source : The Illustrated Weekly of India, March 23, 1986

The Great Gene Robbery by Claude Alvares

2011-05-09T14:27:00.003+05:30

The Great Gene Robbery

(First published by the Illustrated Weekly of India in its issue dated March 23, 1986

By Claude Alvares

In 1982, Dr M S Swaminathan withdrew from his position as Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Cabinet (SACC) and deputy chairman of the Planning Commission – he was also earlier secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture – and defected to join the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) based at Los Banos in the Philippines as Director-General. The word ‘defected’ is used here on purpose: in no other country of the world, would a scientist in such a strategically important position, privy to all the country’s scientific secrets particularly of those related to food, be permitted to leave and overnight become the employee of an institution controlled by two private foundations so closely allied to American capitalism and US foreign policy interests.

IRRI had been set up in 1960 as part of America’s efforts to control and direct rice research in Asia, even though American is hardly a rice eating country.

A famous plant-breeder had once said, in regard to rice: ‘He who controls the supply of rice will control the destiny of the entire Asiatic orbit. The most important thing to the majority of the Asia is not capitalism or socialism or any other political ideology but food which means life itself, and in most of Asia, food is rice.’

Earl Butz, a former US Secretary of Agriculture, is notorious for one sentence that he uttered in a course of an otherwise utterly insignificant life: ‘If food can be used as a weapon we would be happy to use it.’

And today, as we near the end of the twentieth century, we have to admit that the research concerning the two major cereals that rule our lives – wheat and rice – is wholly directed and controlled by institutions set up under American imperialism.

In many ways Dr Swaminathan’s appointment to IRRI would have been considered a demotion. While in India, he had lorded it over a scientific establishment that employed thousands of scientists, in the Philippines he would have not more than 200 scientists under him. The principal compensation, however, was the money, income tax free.

Already this international institute, always run by American directors, was facing the collapse of its High Yielding Varieties (HYVs) strategy, as seed after seed fell victim to waves of pest epidemics. Urgently required was a massive expansion of IRRI’s rice germplasm, genes from which were essential for passing on resistance to the HYVs. The largest collection of rice varieties, of rice germplasm, remained in the Indian sub continent. Swaminathan’s appointment was critical to this quest.

The IRRI is not a premier institute of science. It is a privately-controlled agricultural research centre. Even so, it is difficult to conceive of a man with Swaminathan’s record becoming its director general. Unless of course the person being appointed is known more for his ability to get things done than for his scientific work. Certainly no scientist with an equivalent scientific record would have found an appointment as director of, say, the Max Planck Institute, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), or the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR). I ask knowledgeable people in the Philippines how Swaminathan could have been appointed to the post of director general of IRRI. The most plausible answer was also the funniest.

There were apparently three applicants for the post. The first, a vice-president of the Rockefeller Foundation, insisted on coming to the institute with both his wife and his mistress, if he got the job. The second candidate, from West Germany, was found, upon examination, not to have a degree that he had stitched on to his name. In comparison, Dr M S Swaminathan whom an article in the 1979 Yearbook of Science and the Future, published by the Encyclopedia Britannica, put in the company of Paul Kammerer and Cyril Burt, two of the leading scientific frauds of the twentieth century, appeared white as snow.

_____________________________

India is rice country. Rice is a critical component of a complex eco-system, tied to legends, used as symbol, essential witness at religious ceremonies and rituals. Such an immense preoccupation with rice would, which is to be expected, call forth its own brand of competence to grow it; so we find a bewildering number of techniques, some of which even today, place Indian rice farmers, some Adivasis, in a class far ahead of international science (see box).

In the Jagannath Temple at Puri in Orissa, I was told, freshly harvested rice is presented to the deity everyday, and various varieties of rice, placed in pots, one on top of the other, with a single flame beneath the lowermost, still cook simultaneously. In Chattisgarh region there is a rice variety called Bora, which can be ground directly into flour and made into rotis. Other varieties have fascinating names, like the kali-mooch of Gwalior, the moti-chur and the khowa; the latter, as its name signifies, tastes like dried milk. The dhokra-dhokri, with its length of grain over 14 mm is the longest rice in the world and the variety Bhimsen has the largest width; there is variety called udan pakheru – because of its long, featherlike structure.

There may have been as many as 1,20,000 varieties of rice in the country, adapted to different environments, and selected and evolved by farmers for specific human needs. These varieties are a product of nature’s desire for diversity, eagerly husbanded by indigenous and non-formal science.

(Dr. R H Richharia)

The Central Rice Research Institute (CRRI), at Cuttack, had been working on the different problems associated with rice culture ever since it had been set up in the late 1950s. Dr R H Richharia took over as its director in 1959, and a number of competent scientists had come up with interesting work that sooner or later would converge into a strategy to produce more rice. Already in 1963, C. Gangadharan, a CRRI scientist had, for example, produced a mutant variety that was short-statured and produced high yields. The institute had also been working on Taiwanese and Japanese varieties. The work was slow because it takes time to discover which varieties are stable, and resistant to diseases and pests.

Gangadharan has placed the history of rice research in India into three major periods and the developments are highly suggestive. The first phase, from 1912 to the 1950s, concentrated on pure line selections, and by the end of the period, a total of 445 improved rice varieties, mostly the result of pure line methods of selection, were bred.

But what is interesting for our purpose and which starkly illuminates the major schism that would soon develop between indigenous science and ‘international science’ is the broad list of objectives of this early research. Gangadharan lists nine including earliness, deep water and flood resistance, lodging resistance, drought resistance, non-shedding of grain, dormancy of seed, control of wild rice, disease resistance and higher response to heavy manuring. Since pure line selection is itself based on natural selection occurring over centuries, there was no problem of incompatibility between genes and the environment, and therefore no pest problem.

The second phase was less promising. It involved the initially unsuccessful effort at hybridising the Japonica and Indica varieties. The objective, writes Gangadharan, ‘was to transfer the high yielding ability and response to fertilisers that characterise the Japonicas into local Indica varieties which are adapted to local conditions of culture and to the prevalent diseases and pests. Japan had used chemical fertilisers from the beginning of this century and Japonicas showed a response under Japanese conditions whereas the Indicas had not been cultivated under high fertility conditions.’

Only four successes were reported from this programme. The problem was that the Japonicas were both photo-period and temperature sensitive and additionally the seed had been brought from some of the coldest regions of Japan. When these varieties were planted in the tropical environment, they not only gave different but negative results. The introduction of the Philippines semi-dwarf varieties put an abrupt end to this line of research. Later the CRRI imported seed from the milder, temperate region of Japan. This time the efforts were successful but IRRI’s control over the rice research programme would effectively keep these efforts out of circulation, and science.

Which brings us to the third phase inaugurated by IRRI, and also the subject of this investigation.

IRRI was established on the basis of a note written by a Rockefeller official in 1959. Both the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations put up the money to start the institute, which was established formally in 1960 and began functioning fully in 1962. From start to finish, the CRRI would be no match in an unequal battle all the way. The IRRI officials would literally buy rice scientists from different parts of Asia, and take over most of the outstanding talent simply because of IRRI’s ability to offer them salaries not only in dollars, but out of proportion to what they received in their own countries, and its ability to provide accommodation, and opportunities for educating staff children anywhere in the world.

By 1966, IRRI had come up with its first success. It is important to emphasise that whereas the CRRI had nine objectives governing its research, IRRI had only one. IR8 was a semi-dwarf rice variety, the result of a cross between an Indonesian tall rice plant and a Taiwanese dwarf variety. Distinctive of the plant was its ability to stand heavy fertilisation, and heavier yields, without lodging. (It also inaugurated a vast market for American fertilisers all over Asia). Without water, fertilisers and pesticides, IR8 did not perform extraordinarily better than the older rices. The disadvantage of the latter was solely that they tended to lodge when given extra nutrients, thus leading to losses.

The CRRI had, as mentioned earlier, been working with identical material and in fact had isolated dwarf varieties from Taiwan that were free from susceptibility to viral attacks. When the news arrived that the Indian government was planning, at the insistence of IRRI experts, to import the new IRRI seed in bulk into India, Dr Richharia, CRRI director, objected.

The government seems to have found Dr Richharia’s advice contradictory: earlier, it had been informed by the CRRI that Taichung varieties could provide a breakthrough in rice production; now Richharia was objecting to their import. The contradiction stemmed from the fact that bureaucrats and politicians have little grounding in genetics: they did not seem to understand that seed tested after numerous adaptive trials over many seasons, and then selected and multiplied, is radically different from seed imported in bulk from abroad. The latter, because of its mixed population, will contain seed carrying disease and which might be susceptible to pests. IRRI at that point of time was too keen to get its seeds grown on a large scale before decisions could be reversed, to subscribe to caution of any kind.

It was also the tremendous leverage that the Americans maintained over the Indian science establishment that enabled IRRI to ride roughshod over the protests of Indian scientists. Though the country was allegedly nonaligned in politics, most of its policies in science and economics were largely under the control of Americans. Thus the community development programme originated with Albert Myers. Douglas Emswinger of the Ford Foundation once boasted that he had better access to Pandit Nehru than any of the latter’s cabinet colleagues. Dr Richharia first came to know of his appointment to the director’s post at the CRRI from an American, Prof Claim. Dr. Robert Chandler, director of IRRI, reported directly to Agriculture Minister, C. Subramanam.

Chandler, in his recent account of the IRRI, An Adventure in Applied Science, has admitted that he had never seen a rice plant when he took over as director of IRRI. Yet, it was at his instigation, and because he had been castigated once by Dr Richharia for bringing rice seed into the country without a quarantine certificate, thus violating the country's laws, that the government decided to retire Dr Richharia, at that time one of the world's leading rice specialists.

Once IR8 and TN1 had become fairly established within India and all rice research oriented solely in the direction of semi-dwarfs using these parents, IRRI would naturally retain the lead, with large doses of political clout and advertising to make up for shortfalls in science. Rice scientists from Asia, if they wished to make a career, would have to support the IRRI research direction.

One additional significant factor that seems to have made an impact on the government at the time were the disastrous harvests of 1965 and 1966. What weighed with the Government of India (and also former President Marcos of the Phillipines) in choosing to uncritically deploy IRRI technology, was that the latter, for the first time, offered an almost automatic method of raising food that would place it within the control of the administration, taking it out of the hands of the peasants. If the government concentrated its resources in a few, well-endowed areas, using the HYV package, it could produce a sizeable output of food that would be independent of the whims of the monsoons. Again, the very method of agriculture, based on expensive inputs, required credit, and this assured the government that a good proportion of the grain thus produced would end up in the market, in the hands of government procurement agencies, and could then be used to keep prices stable in the cities.

Two major developments totally ruined the prospect of a promised land overflowing with rice and honey. The first was economic: the oil price hike of 1973 effectively limited a fertiliser-based agricultural strategy. It would make Green Revolution inputs so expensive that they would have to be subsidised by Governments, if farmers were not to give up using them forever. The second major problem, also irreversible, arrived in the form of disease and insects. The growing of varieties with a narrow genetic base (all with the same dwarfing gene, dee-gee-wo-gen), upset insect ecology and invented entire generations of pests. Dr Swaminathan has himself made quite a shameless summary of the fate of IRRI varieties, in a recent issue of Mazingira. He writes:

‘It is difficult to develop a variety that has a useful life of more than five to six years in tropical environments unless genes for horizontal (more stable) resistance are identified and incorporated. Year round rice cultivation causes disease and insect organisms to occur in overlapping generations and increases the chance of new races or biotypes developing; thus new pest problems continuously arise. Variety IR8, released in 1966, suffered from serious attacks of bacterial blight (BB) in 1968 and 1969. In 1970 and 1971, outbreaks of rice tungro virus (RTV) destroyed IR8 yields throughout the Philippines. The IR20 variety, released in 1969, had BB resistance and RTV tolerance, and it replaced IR8 in 1971 and 1972. However, outbreaks of brown plant hopper (BPH) and grassy stunt virus (GSV) in 1973 destroyed IR20 in most Philippine provinces. Variety IR26, with BPH resistance, was released in 1973 and became the dominant Philippine variety in 1974 and 1975. In 1976, a new BPH biotype attacked it and IR36 was released; it had a different gene for resistance to the new BPH biotype and replaced IR26 within one year. It is now the dominant variety in the Philippines. Its resistance to BPH has held till recently, but it is now being threatened by ragged stunt and wilted stunt (both new diseases), as well as by another new biotype of BPH (No. 3).

In India, the situation was equally horrifying. All of Dr Richharia's predictions had come true. ‘The introduction of high-yielding varieties,’ noted a task force of eminent rice breeders, ‘has brought about a marked change in the status of insect pests like gall midge, brown planthopper, leaf folder, whore maggot, etc. Most of the HYVs released so far are susceptible to major pests with a crop loss of 30 to 100 per cent... Most of the HYVs are the derivatives of TN1 or IR8 and therefore, have the dwarfing gene known as dee-gee-wo-gen. The narrow genetic base has created alarming uniformity, causing vulnerability to diseases and pests. Most of the released varieties are not suitable for typical uplands and lowlands which together constitute about 75 per cent of the total rice area of the country.’

The IRRI counter-strategy against the pests involved breeding of varieties, with genes for resistance to such pests, taken from wild relatives of the rice plant and its traditional cultivars. All of a sudden it seemed critical that massive efforts be made to make as complete a collection of the older varieties: many of the traditional Indicas were found to be important donors for resistance. Gene incorporation strategy, in other words, required vast germplasm resources, most of which were to be found in India. The recruitment of Dr M S Swaminathan would be instrumental in the task of collection.

In India, again, Dr Richharia stood in the way.

After he had been retired from service at Chandler's insistence, Richharia had gone to the Orissa High Court, where for three years, alone, he fought a legal battle that ruined his family, disrupted the education of his children, and brought tremendous strains on his wife's health. The legal battle was successful, for in 1970, the Court ordered his reinstatement as director of the CRRI. He had redeemed his honour.

In the meanwhile, the Madhya Pradesh government had appointed Dr Richharia as an agricultural advisor, and the rice man set about his disrupted rice work once again, with his usual zeal. Within the space of six years, he had built up the infrastructure of a new rice research institute at Raipur. Here, this extraordinarily gifted and imaginative rice scientist maintained over 19,000 varieties of rice in situ on a shoestring budget of Rs. 20,000 per annum, with not even a microscope in his office-cum-laboratory, situated in the neighbourhood of cooperative rice mills. His assistants included two agricultural graduates and six village level workers, the latter drawing a salary of Rs.250 per month. Richharia had created, practically out of nothing, one of the most extraordinary living gene banks in the world, and provided ample proof of what Indian scientists are capable of, if they are given proper encouragement.

An attack of leaf blight that devastated the corn crop of the US in 1970, and which had resulted from the extensive planting of hybrids that shared a single source of cytoplasm, and the continuous attacks on IRRI varieties, impelled IRRI to sponsor a Rice Genetic Conservation Workshop in 1977. Swaminathan attended it as an ‘observer’. The report of that workshop begins with the statement: ‘The founders of IRRI showed great foresight when in 1960-61 they planned the establishment of a rice germplasm bank.’ Nonsense. The certified aims and objects for the institute merely talk of a collection of the world's literature on rice. The workshop, being held 17 years after the establishment of IRRI, indicated that the germplasm problem was becoming important only now.

After the workshop, IRRI's covetous gaze fell on Richharia’s 19,000 varieties at the Madhya Pradesh Rice Research Institute (MPRRI). Not only had Richharia now uncovered a fascinating world of traditional rices, some of which produced between 8-9 tonnes per hectare – better than the IRRI varieties – he had also discovered dwarf plants without the susceptible dwarfing gene of the IRRI varieties. His extension work among the farmers would soon begin to pose a direct challenge to IRRI itself.

IRRI staff members journeyed to Raipur and asked for his material. Still moulded in the old scientific tradition, he refused because he had not studied the material himself. He was decidedly against any proposal for ‘exchange’, for this could only mean giving up his uncontaminated varieties for IRRI's susceptible ones.

So the IRRI did the next best thing: it got the MPRRI shut down!

The ICAR floated a scheme for agricultural development in Madhya Pradesh, particularly for rice. The World Bank contributed Rs.4 crores. The condition laid down was: close down the MPRRI, since it would lead to a ‘duplication of work.’ At a special meeting of the MPRRI Board, Madhya Pradesh's chief secretary who was not a trustee, was present. He had been earlier connected with the Ford Foundation. A resolution was passed closing down the Institute, and the rice germplasm passed over to the Jawaharlal Nehru Krishi Vishwa Vidyalaya (JNKVV), whose vice-chancellor, Sukhdev Singh, also joined the IRRI board of trustees. Scientists were sent to IRRI for training in germplasm transfer, and Richharia's team was disbanded.

This time too, they locked Dr. Richharia's rooms and took away all his research papers.

On June 4, 1982, Dr M N Shrivastava, rice breeder, JNKVV, wrote to P S Srinivasan, the IRRI liaison officer, addressed it care of Ford Foundation, New Delhi, enclosing two sets of material as requested by T. T. Chang of IRRI: ‘First set (264 accessions) is from our early duration collection and second set (170 samples) is part of those varieties which were identified to be popular with the farmers of Madhya Pradesh and Dr R H Richharia, former director of MPRRI, purified them and recommended replacing originals with these purified versions.’

But with Richharia out of the fray, nature herself now jumped into the ring. It responded with the necessary mutations, and began to lay low the new pest resistant varieties, rendering even the strategy of gene incorporation, of temporary utility. And then, in a fashion that only those with some respect for nature's awesome ways would understand, it delivered the coup de grace.

The distinctive success of the HYVs lay in their being short stemmed, able to stand heavy nitrogen applications without lodging, when compared with the older varieties. The incorporation of more and more genes from traditional cultivars not only passed on resistance characters, but also the tendency to lodge. Ergo, modern varieties began to lose their non-lodging character, the main advantage they had against the older cultivars. Research Highlights for 1983, an IRRI publication, observes:

‘Modern rices produce high grain yields with large amounts of applied nitrogen. However, heavy applications increase lodging, which reduces yields. Additionally, as higher levels of insect pest and disease resistance have been bred into modern semi-dwarf varieties, lodging resistance has tended to decline.’

The green revolution in rice had begun to involute.

What then have been the ‘achievements’ of such corrupt and politically naive science? (One set of all IRRI germplasm has been sent to Fort Collins, the maximum security installation in the US, without the permission of the Indian government). Has such science achieved any of its declared aims? Bharat Dogra summed it up:

‘Starting from just five million hectares in 1970-71, over 18 million hectares or nearly half the area of (rice) has now been brought under the HYVs programme till 1982-83... Therefore, this crop must have received a substantial share of the benefit of the overall increase in irrigation and the increase in the overall consumption of NPK fertilisers. However, compared to the increase in the area under HYVs and the increase in fertilisers and irrigation, the production of rice has increased to a lesser extent. During the period mentioned above (1970-71 to 1982-83), the production of rice has gone up from 42.23 million tonnes to 46.48 million tonnes. Assuming the production of non-HYVs did not experience any increase at all and all the difference in rice production was on HYVs land, we get an increase in production of about 4 million tonnes as a result of extension of HYVs programme to nearly 13 million hectares of land. In other words, an increase of 0.31 tonnes was achieved with HYV per hectare. This is a relatively small accomplishment which could have been easily achieved even without the expensive HYV programme and its infrastructure by making better use of village-based resources.’

A 33-member official working group headed by K C S Acharya, additional secretary in the ministry of agriculture, has determined that the growth rate of rice production after the Green Revolution has been less when compared with the pre-Green Revolution period.

Millions of hectares of rice are now routinely devastated by BPH and other pests and no compensation is available to farmers who are induced to take to such ‘modernised’ agriculture. Such pest infestations have been introduced into the Indian environment. The IRRI officials knew what they were doing, and they did it for the cheap objective of wanting to assert IRRI primacy.

The unmonitored, hasty introduction of HYVs of seed has led to genetic erosion of tremendous proportions, as hundreds of priceless traditional varieties have been lost to mankind. It is only in the eighties that the IRRI has begun to acknowledge the true worth of the older varieties. What a curious circle of events!

The IRRI inaugurated the revolution in rice by holding in ridicule the basis of traditional agriculture – the traditional cultivar, itself the result of close trial and error experimentation by farmers over decades – and sought to displace it with its own product, the HYV. However, since the HYV was not closely adapted to any environment, it required extensive support, having attracted pest infestations on a mass scale. Protection could only come from the same traditional cultivars, which at the time of HYV propagation, had been loaded with abuse.

Is there a way out: how can such a state of science exist nearly 40 years after independence? Why does the director of the CRRI continue to remain as a trustee of the IRRI, which he has been since 1979? To continue and deepen the dependence? The IRRI has no future, politically, and also as far as research is concerned. Politically, its future was tied to former President Marcos, and Filipino farmers and scientists had already begun to demand its closure. As far as research is concerned, the IRRI has no new ideas, and is now eagerly visiting China to learn Chinese techniques of growing hybrid rice, the next frontier in rice yield enhancement.

The CRRI has ample talent to match Chinese science. It has still vital access to hundreds of indigenous cultivars (a recent count of rice collection centres indicated that there were about 44,000 varieties, whereas the IRRI has 70,000). What then should be done?

First, the CRRI should be upgraded to international standards, for that is the only sure guarantee of the funds it needs, and which it has been deprived of, ever since Indian politicians decided to back IRRI science. Today, the CRRI germplasm unit does not have even a jeep to operate its collection of rice cultivars.

Second, all further export of rice germplasm to IRRI should be banned, since germplasm is part of our national heritage, and its preservation is enjoined by the Constitution in the chapter on Fundamental Duties. Third, steps should be taken to gradually replace IRRI varieties, and all those having IRRI parents, with productive indigenous varieties in the fields. This is already happening in the Philippines: farmers are exchanging old varieties with each other, disowning IRRI seeds, aptly described as ‘seeds of imperialism’ and ‘seeds of sabotage.’

There seems to have been some awareness at the level of the government that the rice revolution had been grounded, due to environmental and economic factors. The late Prime Minister, Mrs Gandhi, had asked Dr Richharia for a rice production increase plan. After he submitted it, he heard no more about it. After an article by Dom Moraes on Richharia, the M. P. Government hastily set about attempting to find some funds to ask the latter to resume his work. Now that proposal has been scotched by the same forces that once got the MPRRI to close down.

More than 25 years have passed in this costly, wasteful, environmentally unsound, flirtation with the exogene. The sorry and sad record only serves to underline the principle – despite our continuing mesmerisation by western science – that for genuine development of any worthwhile kind, the indigene is still the best gene.

DMK’s real 'scam of the decade’, which puts the 2G scam to shame !

2010-12-04T16:46:00.001+05:30

At play in the fields of the lord

DMK’s stint at the Environment Ministry straddled two coalitions and three terms: within it lie clues to the unraveling the real 'scam of the decade’, which puts the 2G scam to shame

BY Shantanu Guha Ray
Delhi

It is ironic that the same headline-grabbing story of the 2G or second-generation spectrum scam that alerted people to the curious fact of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s (DMK) 12-year uninterrupted stint in Delhi, straddling two coalitions and three terms, has managed to hide the fallout of this fact despite the 24-hour media glare. There is an unacknowledged and irreparable loss to India’s ecological and natural resources due to decisions taken by DMK ministers TR Baalu and Andimuthu Raja during their terms as environment ministers. If a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) is ever formed, which looks unlikely as of now, it should probably be examining the environmental and pollution crimes committed by the two with as much vigour as it investigates the spectrum scam.

It may be recalled that Baalu was the Union Minister for Environment and Forests from October 13, 1999, to December 21, 2003, during the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance government. He was succeeded by Raja, who was in charge of the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) from May 23, 2004 to May 17, 2007. It was during his tenure as MoEF minister that the Raja-Niira Radia relationship blossomed in January 2006, which made environmental clearances for various projects of Radia’s clients easier. Radia's influence in the ministry was an open secret. Actually, the roots of the present scam can be traced back to Raja’s incarnation as environment minister when environmental clearances for various projects brought companies across sectors closer to him. With the assistance of RK Chandolia, then a director, planning and coordination, in the ministry, and Radia, clearances were granted at a supersonic speed.

During the terms of the DMK ministers, the MoEF had almost decided to grant a self-certification option which would have exempted project expansion and modernisation proposals from seeking environment clearances, through one of the major amendments proposed to the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) notification, 2006, which delineates a legal process for the grant of environment clearances to industrial and infrastructure projects.

Raja’s tenure as environment minister has been termed by environmental groups as the “death certificate” of the MoEF. EIA notifications were first issued in 1994 under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986. In the 20 years from 1986 to 2006, the MoEF cleared 4,016 projects. According to the 2009 report by the environmental group Kalpavriksh, entitled ‘Calling the Bluff: Revealing the state of Monitoring and Compliance of Environmental Clearance Conditions’, the MoEF cleared 80 to 100 projects every month with a range of environment and social impacts. Under the new EIA 2006 Notification, 2,016 projects were cleared between 2006 and 2008 in just two years. The MoEF chose to have no database on the extent of compliance of the projects it cleared. Those projects which were cleared under his regime now merit rigorous scrutiny.

Besides, the appointments for the Expert Appraisal Committees (EACs) and their conflicts of interests also need to be examined and their decisions reviewed. Under the EIA notification of 2006, the EACs’ role at the fourth stage of environment clearance (after the EIA report and the public hearing) is of enormous significance on sectors such as river valley and hydel/thermal power projects, industries, mining, infrastructure, etc. By 2005, out of 64 members in the various EACs, almost two-thirds of the members were from the National Capital Region and Tamil Nadu. It is as if most of the expertise on environment must come from DMK’s legislative constituencies so long it is in power.

The story of P Abraham, the former secretary, Ministry of Power, who was appointed in April 2007 by Raja, reveals the rot that set in during the DMK (mis)rule. Even though he was a proponent of hydropower projects, he was appointed to chair the EAC on River Valley and Hydroelectric Projects. After this was exposed by environmental groups, he was made to resign by the present environment minister. But no investigation has happened into all the clearances granted under Abhraham’s tenure.

If Raja’s tenure at the MoEF was a disaster for the environment, under his predecessor, Baalu, it had assumed a surreal garb. Instead of making every firm liable for their environmental crimes, Baalu launched the (mouthful) “Government's Charter on Corporate Responsibility for Environmental Protection” (CREP) on March 13, 2003, while arbitrarily choosing 17 out of the 64 heavily polluting industries under the highly polluting “red” category. A MoEF official, on condition of anonymity, had then commented that this done to attract funds for fighting elections which were then around the corner.

A Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) official revealed anonymously that in order to prepare this charter, some 17 meetings were held almost between 5 December 5, 2002, and January 10, 2003. In fact as many as four meetings took place in a day on some occasions. The “negotiations” for even this effete charter continued till March 12, 2003.

Even though the issue of monitoring and implementation was left unaddressed, Baalu had told the media, “We will not punish any industry if it fails to implement the charter, as such an act would be against the spirit of voluntary compliance.”


Both A Raja (left) and TR Baalu had headed the Environment Ministry earlier

Showing remarkable innocence, Baalu had the said that the pollution control boards and the industry would work together to check pollution. The (voluntary) CREP is applicable to 2,098 units in 17 categories of major polluting industries, including sugar (525 units), pharmaceuticals (397 units), distilleries (232 units), leather (150 units), pesticide (150 units), cement (126 units), fertilizer (111 units), dyes and dye intermediates (100 units), pulp and paper (96 units), thermal power plants (83 units), petrochemicals (51 units), caustic soda (35 units), refineries (17 units), iron and steel (8 units), aluminium (14 units), copper (6 units) and zinc (4 units). It recommended toxic technologies like incinerators, which emit harmful dioxins, to deal with hazardous waste of all kinds. In fact, to facilitate this move, there was at that time a proposal to make import of incinerators duty-free.

Meanwhile, the 150 units belonging to the pesticide industry suggested segregation, detoxication and treatment of highly toxic waste streams by standards set up by the industry itself.

Unlike the pesticide industry, the cement industry was unable to come to a consensus on the exact radius of the area around a cement plant that is vulnerable to pollution. When they were unable to decide whether the belt under threat of pollution around the project should be fixed at 3 or 7 km, the then special secretary, MoEF, VK Duggal, using remarkable mathematical genius, fixed a 5 km limit, it being the average of the two contending limits.

For other disagreements that any industry body had with the charter, the ministry had a simple solution – it simply deleted the problematic clauses. One clause in the charter required “all the major tannery units to obtain ISO 14000 certification by December 2004”. This was deleted. The section on tanneries exploring the possibility of “sulphur recovery (for reuse) from sulphide-bearing effluents, by December 2005,” was also removed from the charter.

The chlor-alkali industry benefited the most from such omissions. The draft charter had proposed shutting down all chlor-alkali plants based on mercury cell technology by December 2005 and had directed them to adopt membrane technology. The deadline was removed from the charter. Had the timeframe for compliance been retained, it would have seemed consistent with the incentive given in that year’s Union budget to encourage the shift to membrane cell technology. The incentive related to a 10 per cent reduction in customs duty on components of membrane cell technology. This was to make their import cheaper.

The charter requires the industry to reduce mercury consumption to below 50 gm for every of product manufactured, which is still very high. As of now, mercury-based chlor-alkali units are being allowed to release approximately 25-30 tonnes of mercury annually to produce 500,000 to 600,000 tonnes of caustic soda, in comparison to best-practices of Western Europe, where only 9 tonnes of mercury is consumed to produce 6 million tonnes of caustic soda.

Although the petrochemical sector and refineries is included in the list of highly polluting industry, it was treated with notable softness. When asked about punishing the industries which do not comply, Baalu had once said that the charter incorporates voluntary initiatives and the industry would self regulate.

Needless to say, there was no civil society consultation in drafting CREP. The two-day seminar at Ashoka Hotel, Delhi, where the charter was released, resembled a corporate launch.

Not surprisingly, less than 50 per cent of the projects cleared in 2003 had monitoring reports generated by the MoEF, and only 150 of the 223 projects cleared in 2003 had at least one compliance report submitted by project authorities.

Clearances by the DMK environment ministers ignored issues like soil erosion and land degradation for projects impacting about 146.82 million hectares of the country’s total geographical area of 328.60 million hectares, besides generation of 4.4 million tonnes of hazardous waste across the country during this period, and poisoning of the food chain as evidenced in Punjab where 287 toxic chemicals were detected in the umbilical cord blood in a mother’s womb. The resulting human costs due to callous and corrupt decision-making put the financial loss in the spectrum scam to shame.

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main47.asp?filename=Ws241110ENVIRONMENT.asp

Deschooling Farmers

2009-09-05T08:10:00.002+05:30

A new bill in Tamil Nadu puts farmers at the thrall of agriculture university graduates On the last day of its budget session the Tamil Nadu assembly passed 30 bills without any discussion. One of them was without parallel. If the governer signs the bill, writings of Thiruvalluavar, Oovaiyar and many more poets would become unlawful as they have several things to say about farming. Let us forget the people long dead. Even prominent personalities associated with agriculture like Norman Borlaug, the doyen of the modern agriculture system, cannot give suggestions to farmers in Tamil Nadu.
A first suggestion will attract a fine of Rs 5,000; they will be fined Rs 10,000 if they repeat their crime. They might even be imprisoned for six months. The Tamil Nadu State Agriculture Council 2009 says only those with a degree from three universities in Tamil Nadu can counsel farmers. Such esteemed advisors will be called agricultural practitioners—like medical or legal practitioners. All farmers of Tamil Nadu will have to abjectly follow the agricultural graduates. Many of these graduates would have seen a paddy plant for the first time during their college life. What the agricultural universities all over the world have done so far is to pick up farmers’ innovation, work on it, improve it and give back the farmers their knowledge—packaged very often as a new product. Has an agricultural university ever discovered a food crop or pioneered the domestication of any animal species? During colonial rule, agriculture universities were geared towards the export market and towards mills in Manchester. But many British scholars did acknowledge farmers’ knowledge. One of them, Albert Howard, declared “Indian farmers will be my professors for next five years”. In every village community the knowledge of farming is embedded in folk songs, stories, and riddles. A Tamil riddle asks: “ Adi kattula, nadu mattula, nuni veetula. athu yenna? (What is the item at whose base lies the field, cattle is at its middle and the house on the tip?) This answer is paddy. The riddle can give a lesson or two to our agriculture economists. When paddy is harvested we leave the basal portion in the land as it is of no use to the farmer or the cattle. The straw goes to cattle, which give the farmer milk and supplies draught power and provides manure. The land and the cattle were nourished from what the farmer cannot use. The result was the tip, the grain, kept inside the house. The green revolution taught the farmer to feed the soil with fertilizer, a work he earlier left to nature. It brought in new types of seeds, which left his cattle without fodder. He was forced to sell the cattle and lost the manure. He could not keep the grain inside the house; he had to sell it to repay loans. He also had to part with his wife’s jewels and the land documents. If the government was seriously interested in helping the farmer then it should have directed the scientist to go to the villages and learn from them. Let’s take the technology that officials and those used to jargon refer to as the system of rice intensification. The farmers had begun using the method since the late 1990s but the government programme began in 2002. That farmers are way ahead of government thinking is a challenge to the managers of agriculture science, who have sold themselves to Monsanto and other multinationals. In fact, the vice chancellor of the Tamil Nadu Agriclutural University had, sometime ago, said, “The university will promote Bt brinjal seeds.” Laws will not stop farmers from sharing experiences. But this bill, if enacted, will rob the farmers the choice of to whom he/she should listen. This is a violation of one’s fundamental right. (R Selvam was a government official till 1994 when he began organic farming) Courtesy: Down to Earth, Sep 15, 2009

Questions of real national security

2009-08-11T10:46:00.000+05:30

Policies with regard to agriculture, education and health need to change in order to ensure a meaningful and wide-ranging security for this country.

The arms business is probably the second largest business in the world after the food business. It is, therefore, not surprising that we consider national security to be just what the defence and allied services provide the country.

But there could not be a greater illusion than that. With all the weapons in the world, we must not consider ourselves secure unless we have agriculture security (which is synonymous with food security, farmers’ security and rural sector security), education security, and health security. If India were secure on these fronts, there would have been no so-called left-wing extremism affecting a quarter of the districts: in many areas the government’s writ does not seem to run now.

We waived farmers’ loans, but did we take steps to empower them so that they do not need to take any more loans? What we did was for political gain. For what we did not do, the explanation is that we pay only lip service to farmers’ security.

Agriculture security concerns seeds, agro-chemicals, water, power and soil. It involves the marriage of traditional and modern agricultural practices; the de facto empowerment of panchayats and women; the marketing of agro-products at fair prices. Such security requires the provision of sources of augmentation of income to agriculturists and village-dwellers through the development of traditional arts and crafts, medicinal plants, and the unparalleled repertoire of fruits and vegetables. Also involved here are organic farming; the use of post-harvest technologies; orchid tissue culture (for example, Arunachal Pradesh has 650 varieties of orchids which, if exploited, can bring the State an income of Rs.10,000 crore a year), mushroom culture, and the appropriate use of fisheries and marine wealth. Other elements include intelligent energy use; the empowerment of the rural sector with knowledge; microcredit; the integration of rural and urban sectors; appropriate research such as on organic farming, bio-pesticides, and the development of varieties with all the advantages of hybrids, that would benefit India: research that is being encouraged under the Indo-U.S. Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture would be of greater use to the U.S. The integration of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme with carefully thought-out developmental plans; prevention and management of disasters such as floods and famine and the cleaning up of land records are also not to be forgotten. Then come a system to prevent, detect and take care of bio-terrorism against agriculture. Emerging new and exotic diseases of plants and animals need to be tackled by setting up centres of plant and animal disease control. Climate change has to be addressed, bearing in mind the fact that a one-degree rise of temperature can bring down the production of wheat by 5 million tonnes. None of the above constituents of agriculture security has been adequately taken care of.

If a power from outside India wishes to control this country’s destiny today, it is not going to drop a nuclear bomb: it only has to control Indian agriculture. And to do that, it needs to control just seed and agro-chemicals production. The Indian government is not cognizant of this: otherwise, more than 30 per cent of the country’s seed business today would not have been under the control of multinational seed companies. Indeed, a moratorium on genetically modified (GM) crops would have been declared until preparations were made to test them adequately.

As regards education, the most important division in the country today is between those (numbering less than 10 per cent) who have access to good education and those (adding up to more than 90 per cent) who have only education without any value. The former are the rulers and the latter are the ruled.

With the extensive commercialisation of both school and higher (including professional) education leading to a university degree, education has become a commodity to be sold and purchased. India is perhaps the only country in which this has happened so extensively, with the buyer getting the minimum that the seller can get away with. So a private school has no hesitation in charging Rs.10,000 as laboratory fees for a Class I student, and there is often no correlation between what is charged and for what amount the receipt is given. You could sometimes get your required registration and university affiliation for an engineering, medical, pharmacy or nursing college that you are setting up by buying off the inspection team and officers of the accreditation authority. It is no surprise, therefore, that 80 per cent of the engineering graduates (in fact, graduates in all areas) India produces are unemployable.

Till the 1960s, there was no commercialisation of education, and government-run or trust-run schools were uniformly good. The children of the rich and the poor went to the same school, and the rich and the powerful had a stake in government schools. Now only the poor send their children to government schools; they might as well not do that too for, at times the school may exist only in name or the designated teacher may not come for weeks on end. Or, if he is a little more considerate, he may send a surrogate replacement for 20 per cent of his salary which he would compensate for by engaging in a more lucrative business activity during school hours.

The Right to Education Bill that has just been passed by the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha, if it is notified by the government, will only be a boon for those who make money in the school business, while it will be a disaster for those who have no access to education today.

Unfortunately, that is what the rich and the ruling classes want. For education is the most important weapon of empowerment, and the best defence against exploitation.

To be truly independent as a nation, and to maintain national dignity, India needs a knowledge society in which every citizen has a minimum amount of knowledge. The country can do that only by decommercialising and decommodifying education and setting up a common school system (for which there has been a continuous demand since the days of the Kothari Commission in the early-1960s) in which the students of the rich and the poor in the same neighbourhood would be studying in the same school without paying any fees, and with a new curricular framework. That is the only way for us to ensure education security.

As regards health security, the lack of a sense of ethics in the medical profession (with some exceptions granted), and corruption in the Central Government Health Service, in the corporate health sector, and in the Medical Council of India, are matters of common knowledge. Inflated bills, pay-offs, unnecessary medical tests and a lack of general physicians are all well-known and well-documented phenomena. In Bhopal on September 24, 2008, a gas tragedy victim was denied medical assistance in the Bhopal Memorial Hospital which was permitted to be set up by Union Carbide expressly for the gas tragedy victims; he died the next day while waiting in the hospital. But who cares?

Our rural health-care scheme covers just a few diseases. Contrast our health-care efforts with that of China’s recently announced well-thought-of programme of spending $124 billion to modernise its national health-care system in the next three years.

We seem to really care only about the requirements of countries such as the U.S., the multinational companies, and the top 15-20 per cent of our rich and the powerful. According to an article in The Lancet (May 16, 2009), a small country like Ghana lost $60 million since 1951 which it spent on training health workers who have migrated to the U.S., the U.K. and Canada. The U.K. alone saved £103 million in training costs by importing Ghanians. It is unclear what the corresponding figures are for India and the U.S., but there is no doubt that the U.S. will be the winner.

Ironically, the Indian government can do everything required to ensure agriculture, education and health security. The Green Revolution was based on our own varieties and not seed companies’ hybrids. Some of the best schools in the country even today are the Central Schools, or Kendriya Vidyalayas. And many of the best institutes of higher learning in every sector are government institutions. Some of our best hospitals, such as the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi, the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in Chandigarh, and the Christian Medical College Hospital in Vellore, are run by the government or a trust without a profit motive.

If the present Indian policies with regard to agriculture, education and health security continue to be pursued, there could well be a civil war in the next 10 to 15 years.

-Dr. P.M. Bhargava

(The writer is former vice-chairman,

National Knowledge Commission.)

Courtesy: The Hindu, 11-08-2009

A Time Bomb We Await - Hillary Clinton was here to urge a dangerous deal — that the US never has to clean up another Bhopal mess!

2009-07-29T23:17:00.003+05:30

THE FALLOUT of Hillary Clinton’s recent visit to India could be dangerously nuclear, literally. Clinton’s India visit had an important agenda – to urge India to pass a law to ensure that a Bhopallike disaster does not trouble its victims for as long as the 25-year-old tragedy has. There is one twist, though. Bhopalis are not the subject of this proposed legislation. Rather, the ‘victims’ that the two Governments are committed to helping are US multinationals like GE that are champing at the bit to supply nuclear equipment and lure India’s $175 billion nuclear market. India expects to set up 40,000 MW of nuclear power plants over the next 20 years.

The poor little rich American corporations are petulant. State-owned companies like France’s Areva SA and Russia’s Rusatom are already in the race to supply equipment to India. But private sector players like GE and Toshiba Westinghouse say they will not invest until India ratifies the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage (CSCNL) and installs a domestic civilian nuclear liability regime. They want no part of the liabilities arising out of a Bhopal-like disaster. Rather, they say, the entire liability in the event of a catastrophe should be borne solely by the Indian operator of the facility. Like his predecessor, President Obama is pushing India to guarantee that the Union Carbides of the nuclear world suffer no losses regardless of the role that may have been played by their equipment or technology in causing the disaster.

Exclusive liability for operators of facilities and supplier immunity may have been the norm in earlier nuclear liability conventions adopted by some nations. “But then, no other nation has suffered a Bhopal like disaser,” states Kanyakumari-based anti-nuke activist S.P. Udayakumar. Indeed, Union Carbide’s decision to deploy flawed design and untested technology contributed substantially to the magnitude of the disaster.

An unnamed minister quoted in a June 27 Business Standard article says the Government has a draft nuclear liability bill ready. “What this will do is indemnify American companies so that they don’t have to go through another Union Carbide in Bhopal,” he said. Local operators, on the other hand, will have to raise $450 million up-front to cover post-disaster compensation costs. Additional costs will have to be borne by Indian taxpayers. The Price-Andersen Act in the US also imposes a similar burden on the American taxpayer. According to Cato Institute, the free market think-tank, this could translate into a subsidy of 2 to 3 US cents for every unit of electricity generated. Another estimate places the annual subsidy extended by the Price Andersen Act to the industry at about $3 billion.

Ironically, the liability cap — $450 million — is exactly what Union Carbide paid for the Bhopal disaster. Whittled down from the original $3 billion that the Government estimated as the cost of compensation, the final settlement when spread across 6 lakh victims amounted to a paltry $500 per victim – insufficient even to cover a year’s medical bills, leave alone pay for treating sick children born after the disaster.

BHOPAL ACTIVISTS are “disgusted” by the attitudes of the Indian and US Governments. “A nuclear disaster will have far greater impact than Bhopal had. Environmental contamination will spread farther. Bhopal has taught us that $450 million is woefully inadequate to deal with a disaster’s fallouts,” said Rachna Dhingra of The Bhopal Group for Information and Action. In 2006 and 2008, Bhopal survivors, including children, walked 800 km to Delhi to demand for economic, medical and environmental rehabilitation, provision of clean drinking water, and punishment of the guilty corporations from the Prime Minister. On both occassions, the PM conceded the demands, albeit after making them wait for months on the streets of Jantar Mantar, and suffer police torture. Till date, he has not delivered on his promises.

Contrast this with the speed at which the UPA and the US Governments are moving to appease corporate interests. During his visit to Washington in March 2009, India’s special envoy Shyam Saran told the Americans that progress was being made on the liability law. In April, he said the internal processes for India’s accession to the CSCNL were complete and promised that the law would be enacted after the national elections. During Clinton’s visit, this was a significant point on the agenda.

A panel discussion organised on the eve of Clinton’s visit to New Delhi was openly critical of the proposed liability regime. But the organisers – the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace and the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal – clearly stated that they were not opposed to the concept of a liability regime. “But such a law should be informed by the experiences of disaster victims, rather than be influenced by the interests of corporate perpetrators of such disasters,” a statement by the two organisations clarified.

Such progressive legislation is not without precedent. Post-Chernobyl, the trend in civilian nuclear liability law began tilting towards unlimited liability, and non-exclusive liability. Non-exclusive liability would allow victims to recover compensation from operators under dedicated nuclear liability laws, even while keeping their options open to asserting claims from other defendants under other statutes such as product liability laws. Countries like Japan, Austria, Germany and Switzerland have already done away with the cap on liability.

Austria, through a 1999 law, additionally opened up liability to suppliers and service providers. None of these countries have ratified any of the international conventions relating to liability because these laws do not adequately address victims’ needs.

India’s liability bill is likely to be modeled after a draft prepared by FICCI’s nuclear task force, comprising key beneficiaries namely NPCIL, Tata, Reliance, Larsen & Toubro and Gammon India. Strangely, all this talk about disaster liability, and the normal tone in which these discussions are being held hides a sinister possibility: That despite all assurances given by India’s nuclear proponents that a nuclear disaster will not happen, the fact is that the nuclear industry is already negotiating to cut its losses in the event of a such a calamity. Private industries want the business, but don’t want to bear the risks. The Indian nuclear establishment wants the technology, even if it means exposing Indians to the risk of being hurt by a nuclear disaster. Even worse, it is asking future victims to make do with what little compensation may be on offer from their own tax money in order to ensure that private equipment suppliers are not inconvenienced. If these are the costs, is nuclear power even worth it?

-NITYANAND JAYARAMAN

(The Author is a journalist and
activist volunteering with the
International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal)
From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 6, Issue 30, Dated August 01, 2009

Older than the Vedas, the very Indian brinjal doesn’t need a GM variety!

2009-07-29T22:47:00.002+05:30

How They Ate It...

4th century BC brinjal recipe from Ettuthogai, an ancient Tamil text: Smear green brinjal with gingelly oil. Roast it on charcoal and then peel it. Mash it when cold. Heat some more gingelly oil. Add mustard seeds, curry leaves, crushed pepper corns, ginger powder and chopped fresh ginger. Finally, add the mashed brinjal and cook briefly till well-blended. (Courtesy: Jacob Aruni)

***

There is an enchanting Tamil folk tale about brinjal. One day a king, delighted with his brinjal fry, praised it lavishly. “It is the king of all vegetables,” his minister agreed loyally. “That is why god has given it a crown on top of its head.” The king then had it cooked every day for each meal, till he grew sick of it. “I can’t eat it any more,” he thundered. The minister didn’t miss a step. “Yes sir, it is the worst vegetable! That is why god has driven a nail into its head,” he put in promptly.

It is not just folk tales that document our love for brinjal. Across the country, brinjal is an intrinsic part of our traditions. For instance, the history of the popular Sode Matha temple, in Karnataka’s Udupi district, is inseparable from the vegetable. Poisoned, Lord Hayavadana asked for a naivedyam prepared from a special type of brinjal called gulla. That variety is now widely known as ‘mattu gulla’, the former being the name of the village where it was first cultivated. For Bengalis who relish their begun bhaja, brinjal is also a must for gota sheddho (a boiled dish of vegetables) that’s eaten a day after Saraswati Puja. And Ayurveda recommends it for its anti-rheumatic and anti-tussive properties. Brinjal is even older than Sanskrit, which had to borrow the word ‘vartaka’ and ‘vrntaka’ from the Munda language.

And now this vegetable, with its illustrious history, faces a period of upheaval as the government prepares to release a genetically modified (GM) variety into the market. And in the tussle between pro-GM and anti-GM lobbies, new details about brinjal are coming to light through an ongoing series of “brinjal festivals” in different cities, and new research on its origins and properties.

Urban consumers, their acquaintance with this vegetable largely restricted to the high-yielding purple varieties, are discovering for the first time the immense range of brinjals available in India—over 2,000 varieties, from the large yellow ‘kotti tale badane’ (literally, cat’s head brinjal) from Karnataka with a texture “soft as butter” to the finger-thin ‘salte begun’ from Bengal, and a host of others—striped and prickly, minute and bulbous. Some varieties are uniquely suited for local dishes, like ‘lamudhadha badane’ used for vangi bhath in the south. Then there is the whitish egg-shaped variety that explains the name (eggplant) Americans gave it when they first cultivated it in the 17th century.

India was familiar with the brinjal for very many centuries before that. The brinjal finds mention in many ancient Indian texts, like Ettuthogai in Tamil, that chronicles the lifestyle of people living two millenia back. Jacob Aruni, a Chennai-based chef, says, “In the text, brinjal comes across as a vegetable for the mediocre, not fit enough for kings who liked to feast on yam, drumstick and banana flowers. Nonetheless, there are detailed accounts of the vegetable being cooked with dal and also fish.”

By raising awareness about the vegetable’s diversity, proponents of sustainable agriculture hope to increase pressure on the government to stop it from releasing genetically modified brinjal—commonly referred to as Bt brinjal—for public consumption. They emphasise the fact that brinjal originated in India. Some countries that have been identified as centres of origin for certain species have moratoriums on genetic modification of those crops. For example, Peru, where potato originated, and Mexico, original home of corn, have a ban on genetic testing of these two. This comes from the fear that the alien gene, mostly sourced from other species, could escape (in some instances it indeed has) from the modified varieties, and contaminate the crop’s entire natural genetic diversity.

“If that happens here with brinjal, all our conservation work would be laid waste,” says Krishna Prasad of the Bangalore-based Sahaja Samrudha, a grouping of organic farmers from Karnataka. The organisation has a seed bank of 52 species found in Karnataka. “Brinjal cross-pollinates openly. There is every chance that all its natural varieties could be polluted.”

With efforts to protect it and celebrate its many varieties, the humble brinjal has become a hot potato for many. To the outrage of brinjal enthusiasts, a government expert committee on GM recently refuted brinjal’s indigenous status, and said it originated in Africa. “Certainly, that is a way of bypassing provisions of the Cartagena Protocol, which demands an extra-cautious approach for testing GM varieties in regions where the crop originated,” says Kavitha Kuruganthi of the Coalition for a GM-Free India.

I.S. Bisht, a principal scientist at the Delhi-based National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, asserts that Solanum melongena L (the botanical name for brinjal) originated in the wild in India and adjoining areas—a view seconded by noted food historian K.T. Achaya, who also states that brinjal is an indigenous vegetable that originated from a wild ancestor. The bureau has acquired and conserved as many as 2,500 varieties of brinjal, 95 per cent of them from India.

So why aren’t more brinjal varieties cultivated widely? Anshuman Das, secretary of Development Research Communication & Services Centre in Calcutta, blames low awareness among urban consumers of the many varieties, which results in poor demand for all except the common ones. “We have to break that cycle to revive these varieties,” he adds. Hopefully, with this newfound attention, a time will soon come when urban consumers will be knowledgeable enough to ask for brinjals by their name. Much like the way we do with mangoes now.

-DEBARSHI DASGUPTA

Courtesy: Outlook, Aug 03, 2009

Jindal drops iron ore mining plan

2008-12-26T17:48:00.000+05:30

SALEM: Confronted with severe resistance from environmental activists and farmers, private sector steel giant Jindal has pulled out from its proposed iron-ore mining plans at Kanchamalai even before a mandatory environmental impact assessment could be carried out in the area.

The hushed up matter has come to light now through an official confirmation, three months after the company’s decision. However, the company is in no exit mood as it had expanded its steel plant at Potenery in Salem district from 1 million tonnes to 2 million tonnes, in just a year with a plan to feed itself from the iron ore mined from Kanchamalai.

The company is vigorously pursuing the Tiruvanamalai iron ore reserves over an area of 325 hectares in the forested Kavuthi Malai and Vediappan Malai in Imam Karianthal village in Chengam taluk. A public hearing is scheduled to be held on December 27.

“This is a historic development and a first of its kind in this part of the state,” said Piyush Sethia of ‘Speak Out Salem’ which spearheaded the anti-mining movement with active support from the farmers surrounding the Kanchamalai hill.“We have saved our hill rich in herbs, a pilgrimage site and a source of many natural springs that had been the lifeline of thousands of people living in the ten villages around here,” said a jubilant farmer leader R S Mani of the Kanchamalai Padugappu Iyakkam.

The resistance to Kanchamalai iron ore mining started on May 29, 2008 when the Supreme Court empowered committee members, Mahendra Vyas and Jayakrishna arrived and elicited views of the people. The people came to know of the proposal only at that stage.

No official study or consent from the people was done on part of the Tamil Nadu Government. The Kanchamalai Padugappu Iyakkam was formed and a mass RTI application filing protest, siege of the mining department and Collector’s office and a series of demonstrations and meetings were held.

Jindal Steel Works (JSW) Salem plant (formerly SISCOL) had planned to tap low grade magnetite quartz ore available in Kanchamalai area in Salem and in Tiruvannamalai district (Tamil Nadu) by putting up mining facilities at an investment of Rs 400 crore. 75 million tonnes of resource was to be tapped by TIMCO a joint venture between Jindal Vijaynagar Ltd and TIDCO was to supply the iron ore to JSW Steel’s Salem facility.

638 hectares was sought at Kanchamalai, a place rich in indigenous herbs, and 330 hectares at Tiruvannamalai district. Around 90,000 trees at Kanchamalai and 200,000 trees in Tiruvannamalai district including those grown under the Japanese government funded Tamil Nadu Afforestation Project in the last ten years at a cost of over Rs 10 crore will be felled if the project is cleared.

Courtesy: Indian Express, 26-12-08

Genetically modified food, a hot potato for the Govt

2008-12-12T14:54:00.000+05:30

New Delhi: After imposing a ban on smoking in public, Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss is working towards banning genetically modified (GM) seeds.

He says his ministry will oppose the entry of GM seeds into the country. The move comes after months of protests by activists, farmers and consumers across India.

“As the Union Health Minister, I will continue opposing it. BT Brinjal is being brought into the country without proper research on its safety. We should oppose it collectively,” Ramadoss says.

The minister's remarks come at a time when BT Brinjal — the first GM vegetable — is on the verge of getting approval for commercial release.

Union Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal, however, is well known for his advocacy of GM food.

“Of course the Government is pro-GM otherwise the GM technology would not be there. We already have GM cotton and there are many other products that are in the pipeline and will be in the market,” Sibal says.

Inadequate research and lack of independent monitoring of the impact of GM food, more specifically BT Brinjal, will certainly give fodder for confrontation.

There have been reports of several deaths across the world following allergic reaction to GM food.

“Latest Austrian study released three weeks ago shows that the mice become infertile after being introduced to GM foods,” Kavitha Kuruganti, a Green Peace activist, says.

What is worrying activists and farmers is the hurry with which the Government seems to be embracing GM technology, when around 180 countries in the world do not allow it.

Courtesy: CNN-IBN

Anbumani to oppose entry of genetically modified food

2008-12-10T17:33:00.000+05:30

KANCHEEPURAM: Union Minister for Health Anbumani Ramadoss on Tuesday said that he would oppose any move to introduce genetically modified food or seeds in the agriculture sector.
Addressing a State-level farmer’s conference, organised by the Thamizhnadu Uzhavar Periyakkam, here, he said, “As a Central Minister I will oppose any move to introduce GM food or seeds in India.”

The Pattali Makkal Katchi had taken a policy decision to oppose introduction of genetically modified seeds.

He said efforts were being made by certain quarters to introduce Bt.Brinjal, a genetically modified variety, without conducting any test on Indian soil.

“The Ministry of Health will oppose it and will not allow introduction of such a variety without conducting proper tests.”

He said the PMK, if voted to power in Tamil Nadu, would present a separate budget for agriculture.

Delivering the special address, PMK founder S.Ramadoss said that heavy loss suffered by farmers in taking up agricultural operations forced them to dispose of their land holdings.
“A day will come when, by issuance of a G.O., your lands will be given back to you and those who had bought from you will be made to enter into a long-term lease agreement with you.”

Dr.Ramadoss warned that if the trend of “taking away” cultivable lands from farmers for setting up special economic zones were to continue, it would lead to a revolt.

If it happened, no government would have the strength to face such situation. Twenty-five resolutions, including a demand for a separate budget for agriculture, industrial status for agriculture, fair and justifiable rate for agriculture produce, setting up of special agriculture economic zones and free distribution of seeds were adopted at the conference.

PMK president and executive president, TUP, G.K.Mani, natural farming concept proponent Nammalwar and Union Minister for State (Railways) R.Velu participated in conference.

Courtesy: The Hindu, 10-12-2008

Climate-ready : Seed multinationals rush for patents

2008-11-21T20:33:00.000+05:30

SIX leading multinational seed companies, BASF, Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont, Bayer and Dow, have claimed patent rights on seeds and knowledge designed to combat the impact of climate change in agriculture.

They have filed 532 applications in various patent offices for such seeds and plant genomes. Monsanto and BASF have a us $1.5 billion joint-venture for developing climate-ready genes.

“It is unacceptable that these six companies should monopolise and control all the dna sequencing that can be used to respond to any kind of stress. There are many local seeds which are drought-resistant, salinity-tolerant and resistant to water-logging. If these are patented, it will be a scary situation,” said Pat Roy Mooney, Right Livelihood Award winner and founder of the Ottawa-based ETC group that works on cultural and ecological issues.

Addressing a conference in Delhi, Mooney said concentration of such patents in the hands of a few companies was not good for world food security. “They could deny access of such seeds to some countries, the prices of these seeds would be extremely high and unaffordable to developing countries,” he added.

Director of the uk-based Institute of Science in Society, Mae-Won Ho, objected to the very concept of patenting of genes. “It is possible that one dna has many functions and several dnas have the same function. This is nature’s gift and should not be patented,” she said.

-Savvy Soumya Misra

Courtesty: Down to Earth Nov 15, 2008