GM Watch Warning: India next target of GM crops.

[Jagannath Chatterjee]

Subject: GMW: India grist for U.S. mills/Bt cotton suicides will haunt
planners
From: "GM WATCH" <info@...>
Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 23:14:25 GMT

GM WATCH daily
http://www.gmwatch.org

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1.Bt cotton suicides will haunt planners
2.Grist for the U.S. mills

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1.Bt cotton suicides will haunt planners

...the Indian farmer must be taught about crop diversification, crop
shifting and the effect of genetically developed seeds and fertilisers.
The bitter experience of Bt cotton growers across the country and
suicides by many of them will continue to haunt the planners. So, the
farmers must be protected from the hype that surrounds new biotech
seeds and fertilisersand educated about their compatibility to the
Indian environment.

[Sudhansu R. Das, Villagescope - Reviving the rural economy,
BusinessLine, 14 February 2006
http://southasia.oneworld.net/article/view/127424/1/5339]

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2.Grist for the US mills
KP Prabhakaran Nair, (Down to Earth Feature)
http://www.centralchronicle.com/20060214/1402302.htm

The Indian media has a penchant for the sensational. Caught up in the
scandals over former minister K Natwar Singh's Iraq liaisons and the
surrender of Abu Salem, it paid short shrift to a landmark memorandum
of understanding (MoU) that was signed between India and the US on
November
12, 2005.

The treaty will open up the country's most important public sector
agricultural research establishments to private players from the US.
It is a follow-up of what transpired between Prime Minister, Manmohan
Singh and the US President George Bush, when the former visited the US
in July 2005. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research - with a
network of 47 national institutes, including four deemed universities
- the New Delhi-based Indian Agricultural Research Institute, the
National Dairy Research Institute in Karnal, Haryana, the Indian
Veterinary Research Institute in Izatnagar, the Central Institute of
Fisheries Education in Mumbai, 29 National Research Centres, 11
Project Directorates and 4 National Bureaus will now be open to US
American private sector companies to "help identify research areas,
that have the potential for rapid commercialisation."

But will "rapid commercialisation" benefit the Indian farmer? It can,
if there are appropriate policies and safeguards to protect poor
farmers from trade-related shocks and other vagaries of
commercialisation. But the country does not afford its farmers much
security against the whims of the market. Lest we forget, not too far
back, the BT cotton fiasco drove farmers to suicide in Andhra Pradesh
and Vidarbha: there was no insurance umbrella to cover these
agriculturists from financial loss.

The treaty has other perils. It threatens to expose the country's bio
wealth to the machinations of US-based corporates and research
institutes. Agro-interests in the US have had designs on the country's
bio-resources for quite some time now. In 1995, the medicine centre of
the University of Michigan even managed to secure a US patent on
certain therapeutic uses of turmeric. And then in 1997, a private
agricultural company in the US patented basmati rice as "texmati".
Such biopiracy happened clandestinely. But now it can take place with
official sanction. The MoU to open up our agricultural research
institutes to private players from the US will ensure exactly that.

The treaty is a partnership between two unequal partners. American
agriculture is highly mechanised and organised, energy intensive and
market centric. Indian agriculture, in contrast, has been for
millennia, a way of life for a vast majority of people in the country.

This is the main reason why former agriculture minister, Nitish Kumar
insisted on a "livelihood box" in the World Trade Organization's
negotiations on opening up our agricultural sector. This would have
given us an option to deny import of food items from the developed
countries and protect the livelihoods of their farmers and the poor.

And then former commerce minister, Murasoli Maran, also did a
magnificent job of pushing for the livelihood box at the World Trade
Organization's negotiations in Doha in 2003.

But, nothing has ever been heard about this protective clause ever
since. It is only the farm subsidies and tariff walls that are doing
the rounds. The developing word did gain some minor concessions at the
recent WTO ministerial in Hong Kong. But, it will not be until 2013
that the developed countries will have to phase out their agricultural
export subsidies.

One thing is very clear. What the US wants is a captive market for its
farm goods.

What better way then to achieve it than getting into the web of our
own research and developmental activities? Indian farmers certainly
deserve a much better deal.

But, will it come out of the American purse?
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"Our ideal is not the spirituality that withdraws from life but the conquest of life by the power of the spirit." -  Aurobindo.

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