A proposed legislation to fast-track clearances for genetically modified crop cultivation in the country ignores the apprehensions of both farmers and environmental activists who believe the modified versions endanger health and prove disastrous for the cultivators
The Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI) Bill that seeks to give a single-window clearance to all genetically engineered crops in the country is an attempt to brush under the carpet the public resistance and concerns about GM crops, and to deny the State Governments their constitutional authority over matters of agriculture and health. To make matters worse, the Bill shuts out public intervention through the Right to Information Act.
Transgenics or Genetically Modified (GM) crops are one of the oft-used tools of modern biotechnology, deployed in our food and farming systems, which are created unnaturally by inserting genes, taken usually from alien organisms like bacteria, viruses, animals and other unrelated plants.
However, this technology is fraught with imprecision and unpredictability. Moreover, since this is a living technology — seeds have life and once released into the environment, will grow and propagate on their own — it is uncontrollable and irreversible. Insertion of new genes using the technologies used for genetic engineering results in a lot of unpredictable changes in the existing DNA of an organism and induces instability in the genome. Individual genes as well as the genetic engineering process are known to create a lot of adverse health and environmental impacts, as documented in scientific studies all over the world.
Given the fact that this is a controversial technology whose safety is not yet established conclusively, even as there is growing evidence of the lack of safety, a majority of the countries around the world have not opted to go in for this technology in their agriculture and to this day, more than 15 years after the first GM crop was introduced for commercial cultivation in the USA, nearly 75 per cent of GM crop cultivation happens in just three countries (USA, Brazil and Argentina) even as an overwhelming majority of countries around the world have shunned this so-called gene revolution path for agri-cultural development.
In India, only one GM crop has been allowed for commercial cultivation — BT cotton, that too after it was discovered to have spread illegally on thousands of hectares in 2001. At the end of nearly a decade of BT cotton cultivation, which was brought in on the claims of reduced insecticide usage in cotton crop in India, the value of insecticides used in cotton in the country has actually increased to levels (Rs 880.40 crore in 2010) that are more than in 2002 (Rs 597 crore), when BT cotton was first approved. Suicides in regions like Vidarbha have not come down after the advent of BT cotton, but have actually increased due to the crop’s failure.
In India, unlike in many other countries, there is no express statutory regulatory regime governing the regulation of transgenic. The Environment Protection Act’s 1989 Rules govern the regulation as of today, and since there is no separate statute it is often found that major changes in the regulatory systems are being made at the so-called regulator’s level. The regulatory bodies are also infamous for their lack of independence and scientificity, and generally lack credibility in the eyes of the public as the BT brinjal debate has shown.
It is pertinent to point out that at the time the Bill is being sought to be introduced, at least seven states have rejected the GM crop trials in their states — these include Bihar, West Bengal, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka and Kerala. Meanwhile, hundreds of villages across the country are also declaring themselves GM-free.
The livelihoods of millions of farmers will depend on the claims being made about GM crops and the actual reality of these new seeds and plants in the growing conditions and socio-economic milieu of our smallholders and others. Any degradation of the environmental resources and serious changes in crop ecology because of GM crops will have a direct impact on their livelihoods since livelihoods are intrinsically linked to the state of these resources.
The BRAI mechanism makes the regulatory system even weaker than the existing Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) mechanism. As the nation remembers, the BT brinjal public hearings process saw State Governments, farmer organisations, scientists, environmentalists, health experts and rest of civil society come out with huge concerns about GM crops, and the Government through its moratorium decision admitted the failure of GEAC regulatory mechanism and promised to strengthen the regulatory system. How can the same Government bring in a regulatory mechanism which is actually much weaker than GEAC and which overrides the State Governments, local Governments and public inputs?
The fundamental basis of regulation of modern biotechnology lies in the risks associated with modern biotechnology. Therefore, there should only be one primary mandate or objective to this statute: To prevent risks to the health and safety of people of India, its environment and its biological diversity in particular, from the development, handling, transport, use, transfer and release of any living modified organisms. Given such a mandate, this Bill should be introduced not by the Union Ministry of Science and Technology but by the Union Ministry of Health or the Union Ministry of Environment & Forests.
This Bill, despite the enormous criticism being heaped on the current regulatory regime for its opaque functioning, does not have any pro-active measures and mechanisms to institutionalise a transparent regulatory regime. It does not pro-actively propose that data at various stages of decision-making would be put out in the public domain for independent scrutiny, for instance. Worse yet, this Bill, through Section 28, expressly seeks to classify some information as ‘Confidential Commercial Information’ and leaves it to the discretion of officials of the Authority to share or not share this information.
This Bill has an expediency clause in the very first chapter (Section (2)) which seeks to keep the regulatory control in the hands of Union Government, in the name of “public interest”. This statute proposes to take away from the Constitutional authority that State Governments have over their Agriculture and Health in the Indian federal structure. The proposed Bill envisages only an advisory role for the State Governments in the form of “State Biotechnology Regulatory Advisory Committees” with no decision-making powers.
It is ironic that when there is so much debate and strongly expressed need exists for public disclosure and scrutiny of approval processes, the BRAI Bill and the process it prescribes, presents no scope for this.
The Bill has been courting controversy ever since the Government tried to formulate a proposal for a new regulatory body, allegedly to create a single window clearance system for Genetically Modified (GM) crops in the country. The new authority is proposed to be based within the Union Ministry of Science and Technology which also has the mandate to promote Genetically Modified crops. The Bill also reserves the State Governments’ role in permitting open air field trials.
