March Of Development: Biotechnology offers a promising pathway to higher productivity

March 23, 2010 - PRLog -- Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh’s moratorium on the introduction of Bt brinjal cleared last October by the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) of his own ministry is disappointing. In responding to ‘popular sentiment’ in a matter of “no overriding urgency or food security” and waiting for “independent scientific studies” to restore “public confidence and trust,” he was more populist than persuasive.  

Three of his cabinet colleagues — Sharad Pawar, Kapil Sibal and Prithviraj Chauhan — have disagreed maintaining that sentiment cannot rule science. To hand a veto to sundry dissenters is to disregard reason.

And to hint that private research is somehow less reliable than public or public-private research (presumably on account of the profit motive) is contrary to fact. Public institutions were substantively involved in the Bt brinjal trials and the DG CSIR, heads of agricultural universities and scientific departments within state universities, and the PM’s economic advisory council have expressed their disquiet.

Senior scientists have charged that the public hearings were rigged and that they were shouted down or kept out by protesters. Surely the issue must be debated and settled scientifically. Further, stagnant agricultural production and rising food prices render it urgent to make farming more profitable and productive through better seeds and higher returns per unit of land and water. Bt cotton has greatly enhanced yields with lower doses of fertiliser and pesticides. These are tangible gains that should not be denied or delayed.

Maybe the answer now lies in quick passage of the pending Bill to establish a National Biodiversity Regulatory Authority, with a wider remit than the present GEAC. Once in place, this body should review the Bt brinjal impasse and take a decision on Bt research based on the best science available.

The country has a fixed stock of land on which increasing demands are being made on account of mounting population and development pressures. Present day agriculture can no longer sustain the farm population with shrinking land-man ratios and current first green revolution technologies.

We must move to higher productivity levels for which biotechnology offers a promising pathway. Further, the country must annually create 12 million jobs to absorb the growing labour force, quite apart from coping with those currently under-employed and unemployed, including those increasingly moving off the land.

Whole hierarchies of new employment are required and there is no way large and mega infrastructure and industrial projects can be avoided to exploit economies of scale in a highly competitive, globalised world. It is also necessary to sustain 8-10 per cent growth that could eliminate poverty within the next decade, but with a smaller carbon footprint. Poverty is the worst polluter and human rights offender.


Future benefits

Urban and industrial expansion necessarily entails land acquisition with its concomitant environmental impacts and displacement. One cannot argue that past shortcomings presage future default. That would be a counsel of despair. It ignores the new awareness, stronger legal frameworks, stricter conditionalities, greater public auditing and increasingly better R&D, compensation and alternative livelihood packages, including participation in the future benefits for those affected.

Vedanta’s Niyamgiri-Orissa Mining Corporation joint venture bauxite mine in Kalahandi-Rayagada in Orissa, awaits final clearance while the adjacent Lanjigarh aluminium refinery 3 km away, that it is intended to feed, has commenced partial production based on ore brought from other mines.

The case against the mine is that the Niyamgiri range is said to be sacred to the Dogaria Kandha, a primitive tribe, who will be displaced and suffer environmental hardship and a depleting water table. However, the Niyam Raja inhabits the entire 250 sq km range and is not confined to the 3.5 sq km mining location at an elevation of 1,300 m which is capped by an impermeable  laterite crust and is hence bare and uninhabited.

Given removal of the laterite overburden to win the underlying bauxite, the refilled hilltop will become permeable and forested. This will augment the aquifer below and enhance the environment. The facts challenge the prevailing fiction.

There will be no displacement at Niyamgiri while the 120 families displaced at Lanjigarh have already been resettled and are being trained for industrial jobs and other avocations. Additionally, under a supreme court directive, Vedanta is to provide five per cent of its net profit or Rs 10 crore per annum, whichever is more, in perpetuity for wider community development over a 15 sq km area.

This does not seem like vandalising tribal life. Yet, the benefits and multiplier from the larger 5 mtpa aluminium project and related investments are being needlessly delayed by misplaced opposition.

Tata’s six mtpa steel plant at Kalinganagar, long delayed, may move forward this year while its related deep sea Dhamra port will soon be operational in collaboration with Larsen & Tubro. Posco’s 12 mtpa steel plant and related captive port in Jagatsinghpur district is also held up by betel vine, cashew and prawn farm encroachers on the government-owned land allotted to the company. What is being defended by the Posco Pratirodh Sangharsh Samiti is the existing livelihood pattern and way of life.

Can Orissa afford further delay and risk losing the bigger prize and huge opportunity for safeguarded development within its grasp?

Source: http://www.deccanherald.com/content/54272/march-developme...