Will you include Bt Brinjal in your diet?

On October 14, 2009 the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) has cleared Bt Brinjal for entry as first GM food in our country. Read the report here.

But Mr. Jairam Ramesh, the Union Minister for Environment and Forests, has decided to hold a series of public consultations before finalizing the decision on release of Bt-brinjal. Read the full article here.

Sunita Narain, Director, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), has demanded that the government should not clear edible GM crops until there is a labelling regime for genetically modified foods.

Damodar Rout, Agriculture minister of Orissa said that the Orissa government does not favour genetically modified crop in the state. He added that the interest of farmers is more important than the interest of capitalists. Read the report here.

Devinder Sharma has pointed out serious failures in the report of the Expert Committee-II, in his article Bt brinjal — India’s first poisonous food crop.

He has called the report of the Expert Committee-II a scientific scandal and challenged Mr Raju Barwale, Managing Director of the Maharashtra Hybrid Seed Company (Mahyco) for a public debate on the veracity of his scientific claims.

We all have read/heard from the proponents of GM foods that the GM foods are absolutely essential to increase food production. But Devinder Sharma states that their claim is factually incorrect and that there is no GM crop in the world that increases productivity.

We the members of the struggling Bharat, have one question to GEAC members and all those who agree with GEAC approval of Bt Brinjal,

Will you (or your spouse) include Bt Brinjal in your or your children’s or grand children’s diet?

We are sure that the answer, if you do not lie, will be an emphatic NO. Then, why do you impose this poison upon the poor members of the struggling Bharath. We are not ready to be the lab rats or guinea pigs for the greedy corporations.

Will 9 percent growth rate solve the problems in Bharat?

Dr. Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister of India, in his Independence Day address at the Red Fort, has indicated that “Restoring our growth rate to 9 percent is the greatest challenge we face”.

He is right in one sense. Growth rate is the greatest concern for the so called “India”, a minority (less than 10%) of the population — the India of the elite, which they call to be shining. But this is not at all true for the struggling Bharat — the other side of India, to which the majority of the population belongs to.

Is not the Prime Minister aware about the livelihood issues of a considerable section of the population? Is “Poverty” eradicated? Do the people of our country have adequate “Shelter”, access to “safe water” and access to “health services”?

Even Barack Obama, the President of USA, has given more importance to health care and education. That country is considered to be a “developed” nation, and the Indian elites are looking up on that country as their “Promised Land”, with which they compare every aspects/issues in India.

According to government statistics itself, more than 25% of the pupulation are living below the poverty line. ie one in four people of the country is living in abject, unacceptably obscene levels of poverty. Can the Prime Minister of a democratic country close his/her eyes to this grave reality and boasts that restoring growth rate is the greatest challenge that the country faces?

Will poverty increase with GDP?

Poverty in India has increased considerably in the recent past, mainly due to the neo-liberal economic policies implemented by the national and the state governments.

Utsa Patnaik, Professor of Economics, Jawaharlal Nehru University who specialises particularly in the agrarian economy has said,

“Even if I take the lower nutritional norm of 2,200 calories, not the official norm, 70 per cent of the people are below the poverty line; if I take the actual nutritional norm of 2,400 calories, then 87 per cent are below the poverty line. There is a huge increase in poverty as compared with 1993-94.”

Read the full article No mechanism to protect the poor here

Harsh Mander noted social worker and writer and a former member of the Indian Administrative Service (who has resigned in 2002 after the Gujarat riots), said, in an article in the magazine “Himal Southasian – October 2008″

The capacities of governments seem acutely limited in their ability to see, and then list and measure, such issues as hunger, deprivation and want, and then to identify those who chronically live at the edge of starvation. There is, in fact, no dearth of professional knowledge and resources available to public authorities. What is lacking is integrity and compassion.

Read the full article Poverty the eye cannot see here.