INDIA Balance Food Security Bill by pushing GM crops

Balance Food Security Bill by pushing GM crops

UPA's calculation that no party would dare to really oppose the populist food security Bill in Parliament has proved correct. The Opposition has bent over backwards to demand that the reach of the Bill be extended! This is despite reams of data showing that the Bill fails the country on two critical counts: alleviating the fiscal deficit and winning the war against malnutrition. Having taken us all back to the 1970s with its vision (wherein satisfaction's lies in subsidised cereals) in the food security Bill, it behoves the UPA to strike a balance by pushing some forward-looking measures for agriculture as well.

Sharad Pawar has been strongly pitching GM crops recently. The agriculture minister's advocacy stands out against an unfortunately hostile backdrop. Since the then environment minister announced a moratorium on the commercial release of Bt brinjal despite the unequivocal approval it had received from the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee, even field trials of transgenic crops have been in limbo. But what all the scientists backing Pawar, including many from government institutions like Indian Agricultural Research Institute and Indian Council of Agricultural Research, are emphasising is that genetic engineering will be key for India to achieve comprehensive and nutritional security through home-grown foods.

Global strides are well-known. Not only are around 90% of American maize and soybean GM, the US Food and Drug Administration has categorically dec-lared that foods developed by bioengineering techniques do not entail greater safety concerns than those developed by traditional plant breeding. Not only does China`s dining table already boast GM papaya, tomato and bell peppers but GM poplar is now supplying it timber on a commercial scale! In India, Bt cotton has transformed the country from an importer into an exporter. Sure, there are challenges. But our first Green Revolution was not without its opponents and downsides either. Solutions lie in research, testing and betterment, rather than in bans on science.

Another obvious progressive solution lies in scrapping or amending the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee Act, which makes farmers reliant on middlemen instead of leaving them free to sell their produce to consumers directly. Leakages from the public distribution system, which are estimated at a horrifying high of 40%, are also in urgent need of plugging. Bottom line is that if the UPA has stuck the country with an inefficient and expensive food security Bill in economically challenging times, it must also compensate by facilitating improvements in food production and distribution. Times