The Hindu Business Line : Why farmers want GEAC scrapped

Farm organisations have launched an attack on the much-hyped Genetic Engineering Approval Committee for its action of arbitrarily clearing three Mahyco varieties of Bt cotton seeds while ordering the uprooting of cotton plants grown from an unapproved Bt seed, despite the latter's superior yields and environmental advantages. The farmers are justified as the GEAC has clearly overstepped its mandate, argues Sharad Joshi.

AS FAR BACK as in 1984, the farmers' movement demanded that the Agricultural Prices Commission (APC), as it was then called, be scrapped. The farmers accused the APC of deliberately manipulating and vitiating the methodology relating to the calculation of production costs of agricultural commodities in a manner that resulted in fixation of low minimum support prices.

This also resulted in procurement prices being much lower than the prices prevailing in the open market and, in fact, served as a signal of the maximum ever prices that the farmer should be allowed to receive.

More recently, in October 2002, the farmers' movement struck at another major pillar of the State domination of agriculture and demanded scrapping of the Food Corporation of India (FCI).

The FCI colossus was charge-sheeted by the farmers on various counts: establishing an expansive and expensive bureaucratic set-up that had a vested interest in continuing the syndrome of food scarcity and turning it to the advantage of its sprawling empire; failure to render any worthwhile service either to the farmers or to the consumers; frustrating the objectives of the PDS; and failure to ensure development of infrastructure for post-harvest handling, especially for warehousing, grading, processing and export.

The farm leaders are clearly encouraged by the results obtained. The APC was not scrapped but supplanted by the CACP (the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices) with a modified composition and mandate.

The whole methodology of computation of costs was reviewed and modified substantially as regards inclusion of domiciliary labour and of wages at rates lower than the statutory minimum wages.

The FCI has not become extinct either; but proposals to promote emergence of private sector warehousing networks that give an advance of over 70 per cent of the going market price and warehousing receipts that are negotiable instruments under law are under active consideration in various ministries.

Now, the farm organisations have opened attack on yet another much hyped institution: The Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) under the ministry of Environment and Forests.

The Kisan Co-ordination Committee (KCC), which brings together the pro-reforms farm organisations, targeted the APC and the FCI, while the Leftist organisations stood by them. The GEAC, by contrast, is under attack from both the Left and the Right.

The Green brigade NGOs — which, like watermelons, are green outside but red inside — have rallied together sundry splinter groups of erstwhile KCC organisations and are enraged that the GEAC cleared, in March 2002, three Mahyco varieties of Bt cotton seeds.

They have demanded that the Central Vigilance Commissioner carry out an investigation in the dealings of the GEAC. The more radical KCC has demanded straightforward scrapping of the said Committee and, further, exhorted farmers to disregard the injunctions of the GEAC if they find that the impugned seed variety is, in fact, good and advantageous.

The NGOs would not go as far as the KCC to demand scrapping of the GEAC. That is understandable. Some of their henchmen have impressive paper qualifications in biotechnology and entertain hopes to be appointed to the committee sometime in future. They would not torpedo their dreamboat by demanding the scrapping of the GEAC. It suits their plans better to target the present incumbents and help create vacancies.

The KCC farm leaders' ambitions lie elsewhere and they feel that the GEAC, as it is constituted and working now, can bring no good to the farmer and farm production. They would be happy to see it disappear from the scene altogether.

The Genetic Engineering Approval Committee, under the Ministry of Environment and Forests, is responsible for clearing specific applications of genetic engineering after taking into account the possible environmental and other hazards. It has been in the vortex of controversy for quite some time.

It took the GEAC seven long years from the date of first application of trials to final clearance for commercial production of Bt cotton. During this interval, using the same variety of cotton-seed, other cotton-producing countries have gone ahead and increased the production, the yield and quality of lint and yarn, marginalising India in the international market.

When an accident put a variety with Bt properties into the hands of Gujarat farmers and produced a bountiful crop, the GEAC was peeved at the encroachment on its competence and ordered uprooting and burning of the unlawful bounty about a year back.

Three months later, it found it pointless to withhold the permission for commercial production and gave the green signal to three varieties of Mahyco seeds, with certain conditionalities that were patently unenforceable.

The KCC carried out a comprehensive exercise to assess the comparative results in the season that had far-from-normal monsoons and fairly unusual weather conditions.

The result would not do the GEAC proud. The weaknesses in the hybrids approved by the GEAC came to the fore, lending a clear advantage to the unapproved seed.

The KCC has questioned the decision of the GEAC to approve specific hybrids rather than limit itself to its legitimate mandate as indicated in its nomenclature and approve only the CRY-1 A(c) and leave it to the seed producers to engineer it in isolation or along with other approved genes to produce promising varieties.

All told, the GEAC has dealt a body-blow to gene technology in India.

Newspapers are full of stories of the disastrous results of GM cotton seeds when, in fact, it is the GEAC seed that failed, and the non-GEAC Bt seeds that yielded outstanding results: yields as high as 22 quintals per acre, drastic reduction in expenditure on pesticides and labour and clear environmental advantages for crops in adjoining plots as also for health of labour working in the fields.

The cost of production of the blacklisted cotton could be as low as Rs 500 per quintal, against the going domestic market price of around Rs 2,000.

India could shortly become world-competitive if only the GEAC could be quarantined.

In Hindi, asarkari means both private and effective. That sums up well the situation of the non-GEAC Bt seed, and the KCC has done a patriotic deed in demanding the GEAC's scrapping and starting a civil disobedience agitation against its misdeeds.

(The author is Founder, Shetkari Sanghatana. Feedback may be sent to sharad@mah.nic.in)

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