📰 A blinkered understanding of migration
The draft emigration Bill is more about managing the export of human resources than being a humanitarian framework
•India has been home to one of the longest and largest episodes of emigration in the world, from the Second Century BC, when Alexander the Great took back Indians to Central Asia and Europe, to the present times where Indians, moving out on their own volition, form one of the world’s largest populations of emigrants. This population is also diverse in every aspect, from its geographical presence and skill sets to their purposes for migration and migration strategies.
•A large emigrant population has many benefits for India: the much-discussed international remittances (which touched $80 billion in 2018), and also a positive impact on foreign direct investments, trade and foreign relations. The Indian diaspora also provides much needed philanthropic activities in health and education to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Of course, they do fund political parties of their choice during the elections.
•There is another side to the Indian emigration story, which is characterised by information and power asymmetries in the global labour markets to include exploitation, inhuman living conditions, violence and human rights violations.
Lost focus
•Since Independence, a steadily increasing number of low-skilled emigrants moved to destinations in West Asia. In order to safeguard their rights and welfare, the government enacted the Emigration Act, 1983. Perhaps it was an Act that was ‘formulated with the mindset of the 19th century, enacted in the 20th century and implemented in the 21st century’.
•In the last 35 years, to cite the government, “the nature, pattern, directions, and volume of migration have undergone a paradigm shift”. So, in an effort to update and upgrade this framework, a draft Emigration Bill, 2019 was released. Almost a decade in the making, it aims to move from the regulation of emigration to its management.
•Unfortunately, its provisions fail to match the ambitions of its objectives. They continue the post-1983 ad hoc approach towards emigration, relying on the regulation of recruiting agents/employers and the discretion of the government. In fact, the bulk of it focusses on establishing new statutory bodies and giving them broad and vaguely defined duties.
Crucial exclusions
•What is most positive about the draft Bill is the inclusion of all students and migrant workers within its purview and the abolishment of the two passports (emigration clearance required and emigration clearance not required, or ECR and ECNR) regime based on a person’s educational qualifications. This will significantly improve the collection of migration flow data when compared to the current system, which excludes most migrants leaving India. Despite these developments, most trajectories of migration from India continue to be excluded.
•For instance, Indians reuniting with family members abroad (who can be Indian emigrants, non-resident Indians and/or foreign nationals) constitute a major chunk of out-migration from India. Studies show that each member of emigrant families often contributes towards remittances sent back home. Many family migrants often convert their immigration status and become workers, which is a factor not given thought in the 2019 draft Bill.
•In an increasingly hostile political environment for migrants globally, these “dependent migrants” have increasingly little economic or political freedom at their destinations, an example being the recent attempt by the Trump administration in the U.S. to repeal the employment eligibility of spouses of high-skilled H1B immigrants (a majority are from India). Also alarming are numerous instances of Indian spouses being ‘lured’ abroad in marriage and then stranded or exploited. Between January 2015 and November 2017, the government received 3,328 such complaints.
•Another excluded category is that of undocumented migrants. The perception is that undocumented migrants are those persons who leave India through informal channels, but most migrants become irregular on account of expired visas/permits. In West Asia, when migrant workers flee their employers to escape exploitation, a single police complaint can make them ‘undocumented’ for no fault of theirs. Data from the U.S. and Europe reveal a dramatic rise in the number of Indians being apprehended for immigration-related crimes. These migrants live in incredibly precarious situations, with many living in poverty.
•Family migrants and irregular migrants abroad are as vulnerable, if not more, as workers and students and warrant at least equivalent protection and promotion of their welfare.
Regulation of intermediaries
•The draft Bill incorporates many already established ad hoc regulations and obligations for recruiting agents. It also includes subagents (often a relative or friend of the potential emigrant) and student enrolment agencies into its regulatory purview. These intermediaries play an instrumental role in minimising information asymmetries and migration costs. Thus, any regulatory framework needs to balance strong disincentives for migrant welfare-destroying practices with the efficient supply of affordable intermediary services for prospective workers and students.
•However, in the past decade, while emigration from India to West Asia has been decreasing, emigration from Bangladesh to this region has increased in the same period, which is attributed to a more liberal emigration policy. This suggests that the prescribed regulatory process in India has inadvertently created barriers to migration — for instance, nurses can be recruited only through government recruitment agencies — and increased the cost of emigration.
•Further, given that student enrolment agencies have a different business model and a completely different customer base, i.e. students applying overseas, it is unclear why they are prescribed the same regulations as recruitment agents.
•What about return migrants? To effectively ensure their welfare, any emigration policy framework needs to be considerate of the complete migration cycle: the pre-departure, journey, destination and return. The 2019 draft Bill addresses only the first three parts of the cycle while completely ignoring return migration. Globally, one in four migrants today is a return migrant. In fact, most Indian migrants in West Asia return home — the current estimate of return migration in Kerala alone ranges between 1.2 and 1.5 million according to the Kerala Migration Surveys conducted by the Centre for Development Studies since 1998.
Rights-based approach for all
•Many of the oversights in the draft Bill reiterate the government’s restricted understanding of migration from India; there is no complete database number of Indian migrants abroad. There is also an erroneous assumption that Indian migrants in a developed destination country have sufficient protection and welfare. The draft Bill personifies the government’s primary view of emigration policy as a means for managing the export of human resources rather than a humanitarian framework to safeguard Indian migrants overseas.
•Migration is a complex and highly dynamic process with constantly evolving profiles of migrants and their destinations. Only an ex ante-migrant rights-based approach that is inclusive of all Indian migrants abroad can be considerate of this and provide them adequate security and welfare. There are a whole host of multilateral migration-related treaties and conventions which can provide the necessary guidance for a truly visionary and future-proof Indian emigration policy framework.
•Without drastic changes to the draft Bill’s approach, we will miss the opportunity to fulfil the hard-fought shared objectives of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration.
India could learn from the U.K.’s model of City Deals
•The Global Metro Monitor 2018 reports that 36% of employment growth and 67% of GDP growth were contributed by the 300 largest global metros, with those in emerging economies outperforming those in advanced economies. Metropolitan areas concentrate and accelerate wealth as these are agglomerations of scale that concentrate higher-level economic functions. Nine Indian metros feature in the top 150 ranks of the economic performance index. By 2030, India will have 71 metropolitan cities, of which seven would have a population of more than 10 million. Clearly metropolises are going to be a key feature of India’s urbanisation and will play a crucial role in fuelling growth.
A fragmented architecture
•Article 243P(c) of the Constitution defines ‘metropolitan areas’ as those having “population of ten lakhs [a million] or more, comprised in one or more districts and consisting of two or more municipalities/panchayats/ other contiguous areas, specified by the governor through public notification to be a metropolitan area”. It recognises metropolitan areas as multi-municipal and multi-district entities. It mandates the formation of a Metropolitan Planning Committee (MPC) for preparing draft development plans, considering common interests between local authorities, objectives and priorities set by Central and State governments, and investments likely to be made in the area by various agencies. To ensure the democratic character of the MPC, it is mandated that at least two-thirds of the members of the committee must be elected by and from among the elected members of the municipalities and chairpersons of the panchayats in the metropolitan area, proportionate to the ratio of their respective populations. The size and manner of filling such seats are left to the State’s discretion.
•MPCs were expected to lay frameworks for metropolitan governance, but on the ground they do not exist in most cases. Janaagraha’s Annual Survey of India’s City-Systems (ASICS) 2018 found that only nine out of 18 cities mandated to form MPCs have constituted them. Where constituted, their functionality is questionable, with the limited role of local elected representatives raising further questions on democratic decentralisation. Thus, the provision for an MPC has not introduced robust governance of metropolises, as the metropolises continue to be a collection of parastatals and local bodies in an entirely fragmented architecture.
•The U.K. has rolled out ‘City Deals’, an agreement between the Union government and a city economic region, modelled on a ‘competition policy style’ approach. The city economic region is represented by a ‘combined authority’. This is a statutory body set up through national legislation that enables a group of two or more councils to collaborate decisions, and which is steered by a directly elected Mayor. This is to further democratise and incentivise local authorities to collaborate and reduce fragmented governance, drive economic prosperity, job growth, etc. ‘City Deals’ move from budget silos and promote ‘economic growth budget’ across regions. The U.K. has established nine such combined authorities. Australia adopted a regional governance model along these lines in 2016 and has signed four City Deals till date. Meanwhile, China is envisioning 19 seamlessly connected super city clusters.
•India, however, is yet to begin the discourse on a governance framework for the future of its metropolises. It is yet to recognise that disaster management, mobility, housing, climate change, etc. transcend municipal boundaries and require regional-level solutions. The World Bank notes that despite the emergence of smaller towns, the underlying character of India’s urbanisation is “metropolitan”, with towns emerging within the proximity of existing cities.
Way forward
•It is time India envisions the opportunities and challenges from a ‘city’ level to ‘city-region’ level. The Central government must create a platform to build consensus among State governments. Perhaps, the Greater Bengaluru Governance Bill, 2018, drafted by the Expert Committee for Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike Restructuring, could offer direction. It proposes for a Greater Bengaluru Authority headed by a directly elected Mayor, responsible for the overall planning of Greater Bengaluru with powers for inter-agency coordination and administration of major infrastructural projects across the urban local bodies within the area. However, this Bill is yet to see the light of day.
📰 Iran to breach uranium stockpile limit
•Iran said on Monday that it would surpass from June 27 its uranium stockpile limit set under the nuclear deal with world powers, turning up the pressure after the U.S. walked away from the pact last year.
•“Today, the countdown to pass the 300-kg reserve of enriched uranium has started and in 10 days time..., we will pass this limit,” atomic energy organisation spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi said. The decision “will be reversed once other parties live up to their commitments,” he said.
📰 India to actively curb ‘conflict’ diamonds
Hosts first ever Kimberley meet
•India has committed to play an active role to curb the circulation of ‘conflict diamonds’ or ‘blood diamonds’ in the international market by further strengthening the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS).
•“Even a single conflict diamond is one too many. India will play an active role in the evolution and transformation of the Kimberley Process (KP) and in the transition from conflict diamonds to peace diamonds,” Alok Vardhan Chaturvedi, India KP Chair and Director General, Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), said at the opening session of the Kimberley Process Intersessional Meeting 2019, here on Monday.
•“The 4Cs [cut, clarity, colour and carat] of diamond may soon be expanded to 5Cs with the fifth C being ‘conflict-free’. And the 5Ps of diamond marketing [precious, popular, prestige, priceless] will include ‘peace’ diamonds,” Mr. Chaturvedi said. KPCS Intersessional Meeting is an annual mid-year event of KPCS, which unites administrations, civil societies and diamond industry to reduce the flow of conflict diamonds used to finance wars against governments around the world, mostly in African countries. India is the KP chair for 2019.
•Fifty-five members representating 82 countries, including the U.S., Russia, European Union, Africa, Canada, China, Israel, Japan, Singapore, Australia, UAE, New Zealand and South Africa, are participating in the four-day conference to deliberate on the issue and find a way forward. India, supported by the Gem and Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC), is hosting this event for the first time.
•Mr. Chaturvedi said that ‘blood’ or ‘conflict’ diamonds had been almost excluded from global trade and now account for only 2%. Every rough diamond is accompanied by a certificate confirming its non-conflict origin, and export-import procedures in most of the countries are now subject to rigorous control.
•Noting that the Kimberley Process (KP) had improved the lives of most people dependent on the industry, he said that India was committed to making this process stronger.
📰 China's President Xi to visit North Korea this week
Visit to be first by a Chinese leader since Hu Jintao in 2005
•Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit North Korea on Thursday for two days, State media in both countries reported on Monday, making him the first Chinese leader to visit the reclusive country in 14 years.
•Neighbouring China is North Korea's lone major ally, and the visit comes amid renewed tensions between the United States and North Korea over efforts to persuade Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons.
•“Both sides will exchange views on the (Korean) peninsula situation, and push for new progress in the political resolution of the peninsula issue,” China's official CCTV broadcaster said in a lengthy report that led the evening broadcast.
•North Korea's KCNA news agency said that the invitation was made by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
•Following a failed summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korea's Kim in Hanoi earlier this year, Pyongyang has resumed some weapons tests and warned of “truly undesired consequences” if the United States is not more flexible.
•Mr. Xi's visit to North Korea kicks off a flurry of high-level diplomatic activity around the Korean peninsula, with Mr. Trump set to visit ally South Korea after the G20 summit later this month in Osaka, Japan.
•South Korea's Presidential Blue House said on Monday that South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Mr. Xi would hold a summit during the G20.
•Mr. Kim has made four visits to China since March 2018, CCTV reported. The first was a dramatic and secretive rail journey that was his first known trip abroad since assuming power in June 2011.
•A visit by Mr. Xi to Pyongyang had long been expected within diplomatic circles.
•This year marks the 70th year since China and North Korea established diplomatic ties, CCTV noted.
Complete denuclearisation
•Mr. Kim and Mr. Trump held a summit last year in Singapore and one in Hanoi this year, but hopes among observers over imminent progress towards denuclearisation have since faded.
•The United States demands that North Korea makes verifiable progress toward giving up its nuclear weapons before any sanctions are eased, while North Korea says the United States has done nothing to reward steps already taken.
•Mr. Kim has met with his South Korean counterpart Mr. Moon three times, most recently in September 2018, and the Blue House issued a statement in support of Mr. Xi's visit to the North.
•“We expect the upcoming trip will contribute to an early restart of negotiations aimed at achieving complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula and to establishing lasting peace,” said Blue House spokeswoman Ko Min-jung.
•North Korea and U.S-supported South Korea have been locked in an armed standoff since their 1950-53 war ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.
•The last Chinese leader to visit North Korea was Hu Jintao in 2005.
📰 India to host UN meet on land degradation in September
5,000 delegates from nearly 197 countries to take part
•India for the first time will host the 14th session of the Conference of Parties (COP-14) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in September.
•It will see participation from at least 5,000 delegates from nearly 197 countries and will be held between September 2 and 14 in Delhi, Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said.
•Ahead of the COP-14, Mr. Javadekar launched a flagship project, part of a larger international initiative called the Bonn Challenge, to enhance India’s capacity for forest landscape restoration (FLR).
Building capacity
•It will be implemented during a pilot phase of three-and-a-half years in Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Nagaland and Karnataka. The project will aim to develop and adapt the best practices and monitoring protocols for the country, and build capacity within the five pilot States.
•This will eventually be scaled up across the country, Saibal Dasgupta, a senior official in the Forest Division of the Union Environment Ministry, told The Hindu.
•India faces a severe problem of land degradation, or soil becoming unfit for cultivation. A 2016 report by the Indian Space Research Organisation found that about 29% of India’s land (in 2011-13) was degraded, this being a 0.57% increase from 2003-05.
•At the previous edition of the COP, India had committed to restore 13 million hectares of degraded and deforested land by the year 2020, and an additional 8 million hectares by 2030.
•The Bonn Challenge is a global effort to bring 150 million hectares of the world’s deforested and degraded land under restoration by 2020, and 350 million hectares by 2030.
•The United Nations has three major Conventions: the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). Established in 1994, the UNCCD is the only legally binding international agreement linking environment and development issues to the land agenda.
📰 Bitcoin use causing huge CO2 emissions: Study
Bitcoin mining has increased rapidly in recent years, raising the question of whether it is imposing an additional burden on the climate.
•The use of Bitcoin — a popular virtual currency — emits over 22 megatonnes of carbon dioxide annually, comparable to the total emissions of cities such as Las Vegas and Vienna, a study has found.
•Researchers from Technical University of Munich (TUM) in Germany carried out a detailed calculation of the carbon footprint of the Bitcoin system.
•For a Bitcoin transfer to be executed and validated, a mathematical puzzle must be solved by an arbitrary computer in the global Bitcoin network.The network, which anyone can join, rewards the puzzle solvers in Bitcoin.
•The computing capacity used in this process — known as Bitcoin mining — has increased rapidly in recent years. Statistics show that it quadrupled in 2018 alone.
•Consequently, the Bitcoin boom raises the question of whether the cryptocurrency is imposing an additional burden on the climate.
•Several studies have attempted to quantify the CO2 emissions caused by Bitcoin mining.
•“These studies are based on a number of approximations, however,” said Christian Stoll, who conducts the research at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
•The team began by calculating the power consumption of the network. This depends primarily on the hardware used for Bitcoin mining. The researchers determined the annual electricity consumption by Bitcoin, as of November 2018, to be about 46 TWh.
•Live tracking data from the mining pools provided the decisive information on how much energy is emitted by carbon dioxide is emitted with the use of this energy. The IP addresses in the statistics published by the two biggest pools showed that miners tend to join pools in or near their home countries.
•Based on these data, the team was able to localise 68% of the Bitcoin network computing power in Asian countries, 17% in European countries, and 15% in North America.
•The researchers also cross-checked this conclusion against the results of another method by localising the IP addresses of individual miners using an internet of things search engine. They then combined their results with statistics on the carbon intensity of power generation in the various countries.
•The Bitcoin system has a carbon footprint of between 22 and 22.9 megatonnes per year. That is comparable to the footprint of such cities as Hamburg, Vienna or Las Vegas.
•“Naturally there are bigger factors contributing to climate change. However, the carbon footprint is big enough to make it worth discussing the possibility of regulating cryptocurrency mining in regions where power generation is especially carbon-intensive,” said Stoll.
•“To improve the ecological balance, one possibility might be to link more mining farms to additional renewable generating capacity,” he said.
📰 Facebook to unveil new cryptocurrency
Facebook is setting up a consortium called Libra, which has been joined by more than a dozen companies including Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Uber.
•Facebook is set to unveil a bid to bring cryptocurrency payments into the mainstream, reportedly with the endorsement of governments and financial giants.
•The world's biggest social network is expected to outline details of a virtual currency launching next year that it hopes will avoid the rollercoaster volatility of “blockchain” technologies such as bitcoin.
•Facebook is setting up a consortium called “Libra” which, according to the Wall Street Journal, has been joined by more than a dozen companies including Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Uber.
•The companies along with venture capitalists and telecommunications firms will reportedly invest around $10 million each into the consortium.
•Facebook has been trying to ward off hostile regulatory scrutiny after a series of privacy abuses and the spread of fake news.
•The consortium will be managed externally and will seek to build trust among consumers by pegging the virtual coin to a basket of currencies including the dollar and euro, the Journal said.
•Facebook has already sought blessings from the US Treasury and the Bank of England, the BBC reported last month.
•Regulators have been reticent about cryptocurrencies, not only due to potential abuse by criminals but the wild swings in their value harming consumers.
•With more than two billion users across its platforms, which include WhatsApp and Instagram, Facebook could have the clout to bring cryptocurrency out of the fringes and emulate the likes of WeChat in China, where the US site is banned.
•WeChat allows its users to chat, shop and play games without leaving its platform, generating more revenue by offering a one-stop portal.
•Buffeted by the privacy storms, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has promised a new direction for Facebook built around smaller groups, private messaging and payments.
•But it will need to overcome questions of trust and privacy, not least over how financial data will be stored. Some analysts are betting that the heavyweight Libra consortium will help to do that.
•Facebook's crypto initiative could facilitate shopping, applications and gaming, and would leverage its broad user base in Asia, RBC analyst Mark Mahaney said in a research note last week.
•It “may prove to be one of the most important initiatives in the history of the company to unlock new engagement and revenue streams”, he wrote.
📰 ‘Financial stability is a key theme for monetary policy’
Price stability, the explicit mandate of monetary policy, may not be sufficient for financial stability: Das
•With the liquidity crisis of non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) threatening to spillover to other sectors, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Shaktikanta Das has highlighted the importance of the central bank’s role to maintain financial stability.
•Speaking at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie, Mr. Das said while there is no explicit mandate of the monetary policy to maintain financial stability, that is the underlying theme.
•He further said price stability, which is the explicit mandate of the RBI’s monetary policy, may not be sufficient for financial stability.
•“Post the global financial crisis, it has been recognised that price stability may not be sufficient for financial stability and therefore financial stability has emerged as another key consideration for monetary policy, though the jury is still out as to whether it should be added as an explicit objective of monetary policy,” he said.
•“The fact remains that though the focus of monetary policy is mainly on inflation and growth, the underlying theme has always been financial stability.”
•Referring to the challenges faced by the shadow banks, Mr. Das reiterated that the RBI would not hesitate to take the required steps to maintain financial stability.
•Commenting on the ‘primary objective of the monetary policy’ as per the amendment in the RBI Act in May 2016, Mr. Das said, “In a flexible inflation targeting framework, a delicate balance needs to be maintained between inflation and growth objectives.”
•He said the endeavour of RBI is to ensure price stability under the flexible inflation targeting regime and simultaneously focus on growth when inflation is under control. In 2019, the RBI reduced the key interest rate, or repo rate, by 75 bps to 5.75% to boost economic growth, which fell to 5.8% in the January-March 2019 quarter, dragging down the full year growth to a five-year low of 6.8%.
•He observed that in the recent period, there had been a loss of speed in the second half of 2018-19 as some drivers of growth, notably investment and exports, had slowed down. “On the supply side, activity in agriculture and manufacturing moderated sharply,” he added.
📰 Modi likely to meet bank chiefs to discuss roadmap for PSBs
Meeting comes in the backdrop of slowing GDP growth
•Amid a slowing economy and a crisis in the shadow banking sector, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to meet chief executives of Indian banks on June 21 to chalk out a blueprint for the banking sector for the next five years.
•According to the bankers, they have been informed about the meeting, though a formal communication is yet to be received. The meeting assumes significance as the country’s GDP growth slowed to 5.8% in the January-March 2019 quarter, dragging down the full-year growth to a 5-year low of 6.8%. Credit flow to productive sectors of the economy has been impacted.
•The interaction with Mr. Modi, who assumed the office of the Prime Minister for a second term last month, was indicated during a meeting with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman last week. The Finance Ministry has been holding discussions with bank chiefs on improving lending to micro, small and medium enterprises, agriculture and other productive sectors of the economy, and also on ease of doing business.
•The Ministry has also held discussions with banks on the ongoing crisis in non-banking financial sectors as NBFCs are facing liquidity crunch following the debt default by IL&FS. Bankers said the meeting could discuss the road map for public sector banks (PSBs) for the next five years in terms of growth and consolidation.
•In its first term ended May 2019, the NDA government oversaw the merger of Dena Bank and Vijaya Bank with Bank of Baroda, as also the associate banks of State Bank of India with the latter.
•There could be more consolidation among PSBs going ahead with the objective of creating size, bankers said.
📰 Serious concerns over Bt brinjal
There is no evidence that genetically modified brinjal will benefit farmers
•A month ago, Bt brinjal genetically modified (GM) to resist the brinjal fruit and shoot borer (an insect), was found growing illegally in Haryana. This was a different Bt brinjal from the one developed by the Indian company, Mahyco, in which Monsanto has a 26% stake. Mahyco’s Bt brinjal has been under a moratorium since 2010. Even as the government clamped down on the illegal GM crop, some farmer groups have demanded the release of Mahyco’s Bt brinjal and other GM crops in the regulatory pipeline. It is true that the moratorium was imposed by the then Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, despite being cleared by the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), the apex regulatory body for GM crops. But is Bt brinjal actually ready for release?
The impacts
•Before imposing the moratorium, Mr. Ramesh had sought comments from a range of experts and concerned groups on environmental impacts and implications for consumers and farmers. Despite demands from activists and social scientists, the Ministry of Agriculture has not offered evidence that Bt brinjal will benefit farmers. Ironically, the National Institute of Agricultural Economics and Policy Research anticipates that if Bt brinjal performs as Mahyco proposes, brinjal output will increase and retail prices will fall, benefiting consumers far more than farmers. The report ignores the scenario that companies might charge premium prices for Bt brinjal seeds, in which case farmers may not benefit at all.
•On biosafety issues, scientific opinion is divided down the middle. While some scientists such as Deepak Pental of Delhi University were in favour of releasing Bt brinjal, others such as the late Pushpa Bhargava, entomologist David Andow of the U.S., and the then Vice-Chancellors of the Acharya N.G. Ranga Agricultural University and the Dr. Y.S.R. Horticultural University highlighted crucial deficiencies in the characterisation of Bt brinjal, and in the environmental impacts assessment. The ecologist, Madhav Gadgil, warned of contamination of India’s diverse brinjal varieties. Biodiversity is critical for nutrition and sustainability, and the government’s own task force on biotechnology (2004) had recommended that no GM crop be allowed in biodiversity-rich areas.
•Further, a majority of the technical expert committee appointed by the Supreme Court (in the public interest litigations over GM crops), recommended a ban on genetically modifying those crops for which India is a centre of origin or diversity. Brinjal happens to be such a crop.
Nutrition issues
•In terms of nutrition, there seem to be some significant differences between Bt and ordinary brinjal. Many health researchers and professionals, and scientists such as immunologist David Schubert of the Salk Institute, U.S. and Suman Sahai of Gene Campaign have argued that Bt brinjal poses risks to human health. M.S. Swaminathan and V.M. Katoch, then the Director General of the Indian Council of Medical Research, asked for long-term (chronic) toxicity studies, before taking any decision on Bt brinjal. Further, they asked that these be conducted independently, instead of relying exclusively on Mahyco for data.
•Bt brinjal found no support from State governments. Kerala and Uttarakhand asked for a ban on GM crops. States with substantial brinjal cultivation, i.e. West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar opposed the release pending rigorous, extensive testing. As did Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, and undivided Andhra Pradesh. These States were ruled by parties across the political spectrum. In 2012 and 2017, respectively, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture and the Committee on Science & Technology, Environment and Forests assessed the GM controversy. Both committees expressed grave concerns about lapses in the regulatory system. In fact, the Committee on Agriculture was so alarmed by the irregularities in the assessment of Bt brinjal, that it recommended “a thorough probe by a team of eminent independent scientists and environmentalists”, which never happened. Further, both committees endorsed labelling GM foods to protect a consumer’s right to know. However, since retailing is largely unorganised, enforcing truthful labelling is a logistical nightmare, and the Ministry of Agriculture believes it is impractical. The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India has only recently begun putting labelling rules into place.
No scientific consensus
•In sum, there is a moratorium on Bt brinjal because there is no scientific consensus on its safety and efficacy, and because the States and Parliament have profound misgivings about the regulatory system. In recent years, pests have developed resistance to Bt cotton, forcing farmers to spray lethal pesticides. This led to over 50 deaths by pesticide-poisoning in Vidarbha in 2017. A GM-based strategy of pest control is unsustainable, all the more so since farmers, already pressed for land, ignore the government’s recommendation to plant refuge crops.
•We cannot wish all these concerns away simply because some farmers want to try Bt brinjal, or farmers in Bangladesh have been cultivating Bt brinjal since 2013. Farmers do not and cannot assess long-term impacts on ecology and health, which needs more rigorous and sensitive studies than those conducted so far. Yet, in the nine years since the moratorium, there has hardly been any progress toward addressing these issues. If anything, the problem of sustainable, remunerative farming has become more acute, and alternative strategies such as organic and zero budget natural farming, which do not allow GM seeds, are gaining ground.
•At the very least, the government must detail the steps it has taken since 2010 to address the scientific lacunae, clarify precisely how Bt brinjal will benefit farmers, put the infrastructure to ensure labelling into place, and demonstrate how Bt brinjal fits in with sustainable farming and biodiversity conservation. As things stand, Bt brinjal runs counter to the framework for agricultural development and farmers’ well-being devised by parliamentary panels and the government’s own task forces and expert committees.
