Samrat Mukherjee / CSE

With rice exporters weighing i

ON the surface, it was a typical fortnight in India’s debate on genetically modified (gm) crops. Right after the International Rice Congress in Delhi promoted the benefits of transgenic rice, a plot of Bt rice was burnt in Haryana amid biosafety fears, and a complaint was registered in eastern Uttar Pradesh (see box: Nailing GM). Burning of trial gm crops is not new in India, be it activists burning ‘legal’ Bt cotton trial plots in Karnataka in 1998 or regulatory authorities ordering the burning of fields growing ‘illegal’ Bt cotton crop in Gujarat in 2001.

But recent events point to three major differences in India’s gm debate. One, the crop involved is rice, a staple food; international agribusinesses haven’t been as successful in pushing through gm food crops as they have in pushing cash crops such as cotton and soyabean.

•  Nailing GM  •  In public domain

Two, it isn’t just anti-gm activists at the centre of the opposition to gm crops. India’s rice exporters, who are a powerful lobby, have come out against gm rice. They fear losing the lucrative European market, where consumer movements are part of the anti-gm struggle.

Three, the anti-gm activists are using the Right to Information Act to get government records that were beyond reach (see box: In public domain; and map: Location disclosed).

Bt rice has a built-in resistance to the leaf folder and stem borer, two of the most serious pests of the rice crop. But it has not been approved for cultivation anywhere in the world. In India, the crop is at an advanced stage of trials at the behest of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute and Mahyco, India’s largest seed company. “There is neither environmental assessment, nor human food safety assessment available for Bt rice. Proper precautions must be taken,” says Robert Zeigler, director-general of the Manila-based International Rice Research Institute. Bt rice is much more important than Bt cotton, the only gm crop released for commercial cultivation in India, because rice is a food crop.

On October 28, activists of the Bharat Kisan Union (bku) stormed a gm rice plot in Rampura village of Karnal district’s Indri block in Haryana. They were led by Rakesh Tikait, son of Mahendra Tikait, a leading farmer leader from Uttar Pradesh. “The way gm trials are done in the country plays with the ignorance of the farmers, as this case shows. Given the unreliable track record of the company and regulators in preventing contamination from the trial plots into the supply chain, we are here to ensure that such a thing doesn’t happen,” he says. “This drastic step was taken to prevent contamination from the rice plot; it was also intended to contain the breach of department of biotechnology’s biosafety guidelines for gm crops,” added Gurnam Singh, bku’s Haryana chief. Rajesh Krishnan, head of Greenpeace’s anti- gm campaign in India, expressed fears of environmental impacts of such trials, when it is known that regulations are not followed.

Paramjit Singh, the rich farmer who had leased out his land to Mahyco for trials of gm rice, is bewildered. “I don’t understand the difference between gm and non-gm; or what this contamination entails,” he said. Mahyco maintained an official silence. But a senior company official confirmed to Down To Earth (DTE) that the burnt crop was indeed gm rice.