Biotechnology : To improve the breeding process

Do Indian farmers need help from outside?

Jagannath:    I think Bill and Melinda Gates have entered India to help the rice farmers. How do you view this?

Debal: I came to know about this initiative only from Living Farms, that is, your organisation. What I gathered from the information you sent me and also from the discussion I had with you and others here at our centre that they are trying to promote some hi-tech seeds as a part of this India Exchange program. It will be a philanthropic initiative. Essentially the assumption behind such initiative is that Indian farmers need some sort of help which is impossible to come by from within. Therefore Indian farmers need an external help and of course this help should consist in some kind of high sophisticated technology, without which the food security problem of India may not be overcome. As an individual citizen of a sovereign country, the gut reaction is to oppose this kind of mindset, that we don’t really need that kind of highly sophisticated technology from without, from outside the country in order to get rid of our internal problems. Secondly, if the problem that is assumed to be besetting the Indian farmer is food security then it is of course a part of the global market paradigm. I mean it’s not just a production problem. It is also distributional and marketing problem. Food scarcity is also orchestrated by market disorders and bureaqucratic corruption, in which case it is certainly not going to be solved by any external aid nor any technology. No technology can solve the market inequalities and social inequities. If it is a problem of production which is more basic, then I think all technologies which are already within the country and within access of the farmers themselves should be addressed first, and then, only when all these will have failed can we think of some external agency to help with a better or more efficient technology. But no modern technology has proved to be more useful or more efficient or more intelligent to solve any of the local problems which we have faced so far. They have only served to create more problems than solving the old ones. More fertilizers, more toxic pesticids and more efficient water pumps have devastated the ecosystems, poisoned our soil, water and food, and depleted the ground water stock to a point of no redemption. So inherently, this attitude of helping Indian farmers by external technological help, and especially when that  technology is beyond control by the farmer, it is inherently unsustainable, and to some extent it is undermining the sovereignty of the country itself.

Jagannath: Do you have a doubt as to why this Bill and Milinda Gates Foundation has been set up ?

Debal: (laughs) I do not know the ulterior motive, but prima facie it is a philanthropic organization, like Ford Foundation or any other foundation which were founded originally with the professed objective of helping  humanity at large. I don’t find any wrong in that, if a part of their profit is going to help other people. And I don’t find it wrong that some people get some benefit, especially the poor to get some benefits at times of crisis. It’s fine. But if the attitude is that they are coming as the savior to the country’s food security, and that farmers must take this saviour’s blessings to get over their food crisis, then I would like to oppose this because it certainly would imply that the country has no resources and the farmers are not resourceful enough to cope with  the production problem. That attitude is objectionable.

Jagannath: It has been said in an article in The Lancet that Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation follows the mandate of the G8 nations, and in case of help, they abide by the directives of the so-called H8 including WTO and other bodies. How do you like to view their foray into agriculture in view of this information?

Debal:  If you remember Bill Gates himself is a technological goliath with an enormous market potential and market outreach all over the world, it is not at all surprising that he would be using some kind of sophisticated technology to help out people. Bill Gates or for that matter, anyone, who is pro-development within the globalisation principle has to endorse and legitimize what we call technological fix. Here the assumption is that for every problem of humanity there is a technological fix, whether it is food security problem or food production problem or political problem or even one’s belief in God or marital mismatch, - all can be solved by technological fixes. So by that token he is not to be blamed. Nor is he to be blamed for this mandate he has to follow from G8 and WTO, his headquarters being in one of the G8 countries. WTO mandate for any kind of commercialization or globalization of technology he has to follow and to his own benefit. But even if we assume that the foundation is not going to make any profit out of this – it is a pure donation and a humanitarian aid sort of thing, even then the mentality, what I call “developmentality” of presenting technological aid and technological fixes to local problems, is something which is not tenable from the perspective of reality. Because first of all, all the technological problems that we are facing in terms of production and distribution cannot be solved by further technology. Some of the problems of technology were deepened by technology in the process of solving it. And the more technology tries to solve a problem, the more it creates some new problems which are unprecedented. The Green Revolution, in the attempt to solve the food production problem, has created a plethora of new problems – social inequities, marginal farmers’ displacement, environmental disasters leading to prolific greenhouse gas emission, and health problems from agrochemicals.

Jagannath: Is it possible to change the situation?

Debal: From the beginning of 20th century it was assumed that Indian agriculture cannot be rescued without the help of western scientists, and agricultural technology. Sir Albert Howard was sent to India as an imperial botanist to help Indian agriculture. And after coming to India and conducting a widespread survey on Indian soil and farming practices he was of the opinion that Indian farmers had a lot to teach the western scientists than the other way round. And then in his An Agricultural Testament, he extolled the traditional Indian farmers, their innovative practices, their potential productivity and different kind of genetic materials they used. Unfortunately, although he was the first President of the Indian Science Congress, none of his advices about Indian agriculture was ever paid heed to by Indian agriculturists themselves. The result is that the Indian agriculturists are being trained by books written by western experts who have never seen even a fraction of the biodiversity that the Indian farmers deal with everyday.

The European and American experts cannot even imagine the processes of soil fertility recycling, and the species diversity and the taxic diversity that reside in the rich tropical soil. And these are the people who are advising our farmers how to use agro-chemicals to enrich their soil and so on, without an iota of knowledge of the indigenous techniques and the natural process of revitalizing the earth, revitalizing the soil, recycling the water and nutrient content. This was the academic mindset, which had always been instrumental in influencing policymakers. And policymaking institutions in India have always been dominated by technocrats, who are essentially more science politicians than research scientists. The result is that the science politicians or technocrats who derived more dividends from a kind of technological milieu and technological infrastructure than scientific research per se. They have dominated and advised the agricultural institutions to follow their own prescriptions. The result is that we have already been denuded of our crop genetic diversity and the traditional agricultural practices and the motive of scientists and farmers to explore into possibilities of improving those techniques, or even examining why it is more efficient or less efficient than some other practices. That is why we are forced to be tied to this kind of external dependency and aid both in terms of financial loan and import of knowledge. Today’s agricultural policy is weighted on this India-Euro initiative or US-India initiative, and so on, based on exchange of knowledge. The presumption is that knowledge is there, material is ours. So these experts will come here to teach us. And in exchange there is possibility that we’ll have to give over to them all the vital materials that they need including the genetic diversity. Were it not for the Bio-Diversity Act and Plant Variety Protection and Farmers’ Rights Act in place, we would have completely opened to the West all the floodgates of bio-piracy.

Now about your question – whether it is possible. Of course it is possible, but for that we need a super-structural change, not just infrastructural change. Superstructural change in terms of ideology. A change in what I would say a slavish resignation: That we have nothing to offer, no wealth in terms of knowledge and material. We all have to learn everything from the West or the North. If that attitude does not change, I don’t think there’s any possibility of changing the infrastructure.

Jagannath: There have been almost futile attempts of farmers getting together to influence policy decisions. How do you think this movement can be shaped to bring in some kind of change?

Debal: I am hopeful. Democracy anywhere involves practice and participation by the people. Unfortunately, in our democracy it is practiced according to law and the law is drafted by people who have hardly any contact with the soil. The result is that many of these legal positions have no practical implications when it is going to be implemented or even if it is very practical and very benign and decidedly beneficial to the local farmer or to the local people, prima facie it is almost impossible to implement because of the lack of infrastructure, lack of the machinery itself -- legal machinery or even the democratic tools and institutions. And then the people who are responsible for executing those things are not simply aware of this. Take for example this PVPFRA – Plant Variety Protection and Farmer Rights Act, Bio-Diversity Act and even some good policies which are simply not known to the people, and even if it is known to some public institutions, they see that common people do not know about this. For example the new Forest Rights Act – it is a completely pro-people legal machinery but the forest department and the environmental department officials make it a point that the people don’t know about this even after the passage of the law several years back. And exactly that way the Bio-Diversity Act stipulates that the farmer should be involved in bio-diversity register preparation in every village, but in most of the eastern Indian states, not even the district-level bio-diversity committees have been formed, let alone the village-level committees. So the Biodiversity Management Committees who should have been the basic pillars of this bio-diversity registration and the kind of shield against bio-piracy do not exist, certainly because the administrators do not care. And secondly because those who care, take special care that the people don’t know, because they lose much of their managerial power over people’s resources and livelihoods. So these are the fallacies of bureaucratic democracy, but at the same time we’ll have to see also the very drafting of the Biodiversity Act and the drafting of PVPFRA have taken a very new course which was not done before in Indian history. When the PVPFR Bill was placed then there was a country-wide debate. I myself was involved in that particular debate for a long time and we had recommended several points for change which very happily for us – the activists – were considered. Maybe we’re not happy with 100% of it, but at least 80% of it is an outcome of the debate and recommendations, and now it is much better than what it was in the form of a bill before it was placed before the parliament. So there is hope that people’s active participation, conscious participation in this kind of debate is possible.

The other option in a different context may be shown as an example. Although the Indian Penal Code and other things have not changed some of the conservative, prejudicial moral codes, the Supreme Court has given a very positive and modernistic verdict about homosexuality without changing the law itself. And everybody can sense that a change in the law is coming up following this. That means the people’s involvement and change in people’s attitude may force some of the lawmakers, some of the policymakers to take action. And in some cases if the process of democracy is vibrant and forceful, if it does not flop after one step of change, then it is likely to move ahead. In different regions democratic apparatuses are not strong, there is always suppression, legal diversions – and as Amartya Sen and Jean Dréze had once commented that even in the absence of any corruption and legal diversion of any democratic right, “ richer people have access to better lawyers”, and therefore they can go scot free after doing any kind of social crime. So these are the deficits of democracy. These are the fallacies of parliamentary democracy which has already happened in USA. Even Bush could be re-elected times over. Everybody knows that. But despite that, there are also certain mechanisms, certain pillars of democracy which if structured by the people and if appropriated by the people, will prevent misappropriation by the rulers in power. That is the only hope. It has nothing to do with science or technology. It has nothing to do with industrial power or foreign aid or foreign expertise. It has to be again a case of political resistance and social awareness.

Jagannath: We are facing a lot of difficulty in bringing the farmers forward to put up this kind of resistance. Is this because they have compromised their positions as recipients of instructions or is it any fault on our part that we have not been able to educate them?

Debal: It’s a complex question. It is very difficult to answer because there are so many layers of complications and contributory factors. And none of these is sufficiently responsible for this change. But I think the most important factor that motivate the farmers to become proactive and to take an active role in demanding their rights is that they themselves have to bear the first brunt of economic deficiency and economic inequality. When we talk about the insecurity of food production, first of all it is the food insecurity of the farmer household itself. And then it might magnify to national food insecurity. But even then the food production is not lagging. Food production level is more than what the average farmer had expected. Even the govt. record says that there were bumper crop productions in some years. Even then we find that there is unnecessary import of food crops – sometimes the same crop which was overproduced. Like in  around 2001 and 2002 rice from Singapore was imported when it was absolutely unnecessary; and this actually had spelt doom for the farmers’ rice market, because Singapore rice was extremely cheap, much cheaper than the rice that was available on market in India – the domestic market. Therefore everybody was buying Singapore rice despite the fact that there was an over-production of rice, so many farmers had sold off their lands because it was no longer productive and no longer profitable. The profit went to the hoarders – the middlemen who actually held enormous stock in their storehouses. The farmers have learnt this. The farmers also learned that despite an enormous production in potato, many of the potato farmers had committed suicide, because they were not able to sell out their products, they could not get any space in the cold storages, and the sale price was way below the production cost, and the govt had failed to give the support price several times over. This is the market mechanism, but even otherwise in some cases the farmers had no means to produce at all, especially in the case of disasters when there is drought or flood. This year the cyclone Aila struck the Sundarban farmers. About 8 blocks of Sundarban farmers are suffering from their farmlands going out of production because of inundation by sea water -- totally salinated. Now they realize that their own ancestors had developed more than a dozen varieties of rice and other crops which were capable of growing in the saline soil that could withstand up to 46 ppt of salt. Now they are completely lost. The result is that now they are becoming aware of the value of that lost genetic diversity or crop diversity. So in this way awareness about the market fluctuations, awareness of the instability of the prices, awareness about the food insecurity due to reasons which are always beyond their own control, and then the factors which are completely isolated from the production front.

Finally, the farmers now think that they are no longer the most important factors in production, their own survival is at stake. Rather farming itself is seen as a secondary occupation – secondary, marginalized and non-profitble occupation in the first place. Rather Tata’s car factory or shit factory and all these would be more profitable, for the govt. would give land almost for free and all kind of amenities – electricity, water etc.-- and  tax relief for decades.  On the other hand, the poor farmer cannot even get a bank loan or a real subsidy at all. This is the dichotomy that the Indian farmer have never seen before. Until 30 years back Indian farming was a prestigious occupation. It was profitable and at least it was supported by some Govt. subsidy, whether it was fertilizer or electricity or water. Now I’m not going into the detail of how judicious that was, because that kind of subsidy of agro-chemicals itself also spelt doom to Indian agriculture. But that was at least a gesture of giving importance to farming as an occupation. Today even that is gone. And the farmer is coaxed into selling off their land at whatever price the govt. offers or the industry offers and the explicit statement is that industry is better and most progressive, the most profitable occupation and the farmers should abandon their own occupation and they should join this sector as the labour force. The peasantry is now the fodder to the guns of industrialization. And it is mega industrialization. That has changed the whole perception of the farmer community. A majority of farmers feel that farming is not profitable, it’s not even prestigious and that’s why they inculcate this sense into their offspring so that they abandon this occupation altogether and move out. The farmer who has no option to abandon farming, are cornered. Now they have to turn back. This is exactly what has happened in the Punjab and in Andhra Pradesh. In Punjab after the Green Revolution, there was hardly any marginal farmer or small farmer. All the farmers in Punjab are big farmers. And if you compare with the average landholding in Bengal or Orissa or Bihar, the Punjab farmers are 100 times wealthier in terms of landholding. The poorest of them could be the owner of several hundred acres of land. These farmers are now committing suicide. These farmers find that their own land spanning over hundreds of acres are barren. They are salinated sand dunes. Nothing can be produced out of it. And they cannot be turned into industrial properties either, because they cannot get an labour to run the industry, for most of the agricultural labourers and peasants and marginal farmers have already migrated to other parts of the country – Delhi, Kolkata and all other State capitals for livelihood. So the farmers can neither develop their land for any profitable production nor can they convert it into industrial land. Therefore the only option left for them is either to commit suicide or to revolt. Now this revolt has started. We’ve seen that they gheraoed the agricultural minister. Few years back they have been committing suicide in Bhatinda district. Resistance is the only option that they have now. And they are aware of this. In some cases the awareness is ephemeral. In some cases, the consciousness is not complete. In some cases their demand is very short-sighted and actually exacerbates their problem in the long run. But at least this is the beginning of this explosion of some demands which were not placed before.

But at the same time you should also notice that this resistance is not in the form of a farmer rebellion. They are still in the form of some kind of protest demanding some kind of benefits, like the price of the inputs should be lowered; support price should be given and so on and so forth. In other words, they are asking for some kind of support. It’s like a plea to the govt. and not in the form of peasant’s revolt as we have seen in the past century. But probably that is likely to come by too, if this situation continues and if no change can be brought about in the lives of the farmers, especially the marginal farmers.

To be continue....