The World Economic Forum 2010 at Davos, Switzerland had delegates as wide ranging as the topics of global interest they deliberated on. The use of Biotechnology, for instance, was discussed to tackle issues of starvation all over the world. Biotechnology is not a new process. It has been utilized globally for centuries. Indeed, life would have been bland without bread, cheese, yoghurt, wines and other alcoholic beverages!
GM (genetic manipulation) techniques are said to take the process further to improve taste and nutritional values of food yields. Scientists who have created them believe that they are the ‘miracle’ answer to worldwide hunger, malnutrition and disease. Such bio-foods are sources rich in fibre, minerals, vitamins, and many with new or enhanced medicinal qualities.
India is a ready market for the miracle workers, with a quarter of its population under the poverty line. Yet the many multinational biotechnological companies pushing their products in India are intensely frustrated with their minimal headway. Since 2002, only one product type, three species of Bt cotton, has been allowed cultivation. The Government’s most recent move has been to allow the entry of processed products. That is, foods that, as end-products, no longer contain living micro-organisms able to “propagate or reproduce”.
Theorists have put forth several explanations for this: biophilia or the lack of political will. The problem could be the technology itself, with discomfort in agrarian India over new-fangled techniques. With an eye on elections, governments may also be unwilling to upset the traditional practices of the vote-banks.
However, history does not quite support the explanations. Fact is, the “green revolution” actually started in India in the 1960s in response to the deteriorating food situation in places hit by prolonged drought. Scientist M.S. Swaminathan imported the technique developed by Norwegian-American agronomist Norman Borlaug of cross breeding plant species to make specific hybrid grain seeds - rice, wheat and corn. This completely transformed agricultural practice.
Author Doyle writes,
It was so successful in terms of production increases that it defied the gloomy Malthusian predictions of the 1960s, which said hundreds of millions would starve as population outstripped farm output.
The people of India are pro rather than anti-technology. In other technological applications like computers or telecommunications, they compete on the world stage. Regarding the new agricultural process, not only did subsequent governments welcome the process, farmers more importantly, gladly adopted the new techniques in place of traditional practices. The success has been attributed to the size of the hybrid plants. They were far shorter than the indigenous variety. The changed physical structure maximises photosynthesis, because the plant stalks take up less energy. The process, so readily accepted in India, was then applied in other parts of Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.
In the picture author Hazell paints,
Instead of widespread famine, cereal and calorie availability per person increased by nearly 30 percent, and wheat and rice became cheaper …led to sizable increases in returns to land, and hence raised farmers’ incomes… stimulated the rural non-farm economy, which in turn grew and generated significant new income and employment of its own.
Poverty and malnutrition are severe challenges to the world in general, and in particular to Indian aspiration of becoming a “superpower”. As the largest democracy, it is obvious that the country desperately needs the benefits of technology to ensure food for the teeming millions - hardy crops, biofortifications and enhanced productions.
A survey study conducted in 2008, reported findings that GM vegetables would have a majority (60%) acceptance in India. Even the minority who have reservations about the potential risks are open to purchasing them at discounts. Why then did a resistance to bio-foods arise within four decades of the ‘green revolution’? Clearly there is need to dig deeper for reasons to explain the turnoff.
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