For nearly a year and two, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has been groping in the dark. It has been frequently raising the repo and reverse repo rate to tighten money supply and giving a false impression to the nation as if it can rein in food inflation. The misguided experiment failed. As Ila Patnaik had suggested in one of her columns, RBI needs to conduct research to know whether its policy recommendations can make any impact on food inflation or not.
In its quarterly review of the economy report released last week, RBI recorded an 'almost 36 per cent dip' in inward FDI during the first half of the current fiscal (April-September 2010) and blamed in a way Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh's "environment sensitive policies" for the slowdown in FDI arrivals. This was rather an unfair statement and that too coming from RBI. I thought Jairam Ramesh was trying to see that the country's assets are not sold off-the-shelf (as is being done at present) and the RBI should have applauded it.
An RBI panel has now recommended that banks be allowed to relax loan repayment schedule to micro-finance institutions. This move will bring temporary respite to the MFIs struggling for dose of orygen supply to survive. As per newspaper reports, the panel suggests:
a) Loans to single single borrower to be capped at Rs 25,000 and minimum loan tenure of 1 to 2 yrs.
b) Interest rate to be capped at 10-12 per cent over cost, overall rate capped at 24 per cent.
c) Borrowers must be part of joint loan group.
d) Create separate category of MFI finance cos to be registered with RBI.
e) Recommendations should be implemented by Apr 1, '2011.
This again is unfair to the poor. I am aware that the RBI's primary job is to preserve the health of the banking structure, but this cannot be allowed over the hungry stomach. I would like to know when was it that Mr Y H Malegam, who chaired the RBI sub-committee that looked into the issues facing MFI sector, himself paid an interest of 24 per cent for the loans he ever took for himself or for members of his family? When did the RBI governor D Subbarao ever seek loan at 24 per cent (effectively turning out to be 36 per cent on weekly repayment schedule)? Being a bureaucrat, he in fact gets loans at a much lower rate of interest from the government for purchasing a car or for housing. Cheaper loans for himself, and demanding usurping interest rates for the poor. Double standards, isn't it?
It is therefore quite obvious that RBI has put blinkers over its eyes, and is making recommendations that acerbates rural distress and has led hundreds of poor borrowers to commit suicide. By bailing out MFIs who should have otherwise been hauled up for criminal lending procedures, RBI has shown that it too is part of the crime.
I would like to ask three simple questions:
1. As I wrote earlier, I fail to understand why can't the State governments, which have lowered cooperative interest rates to farmers for as low as 1 per cent interest (some have it for 3-4 per cent), provide micro-finance too at the same lending rates?
2. Why is that while the farmers get loans at 1 per cent (from the cooperative bank), his wife (who forms part of the village SHGs) gets loan at a killing rate of interest?
3. Why is that the RBI (and also the Finance Ministry) is keen to protect loan sharks? Why can't the nation stand up to a heinous crime being committed in the name of poverty eradication?
I am not expecting answers from the powers that be. But at least I expect more and more people who are sensitive to the ground realities to stand up and question. You just can't be reading and think you are doing away with. If you stand up and make yourself counted you will see the policy makers (and RBI) taking note and making the necessary changes. Otherwise you will go on hotly debating these issues over a cup of coffee and then come and sit in front of the TV to watch your daily soap.
Jan 30, 2011
The fiery onslaught on your food while you pretend to be sleeping
Well, only yesterday I wrote how the global food crisis is becoming an opportunity for business. I wasn't wrong. Read this press release from the World Economic Forum at Davos: A coalition business, governments and farmers today launched a strategy to significantly increase food production while conserving environmental resources and spurring economic growth. The approach is already being implemented in two countries, Tanzania and Vietnam. Led by 17 global companies, the strategy sets ambitious targets for collective action to increase production by 20 per cent, decrease greenhouse gas emissions per tonne by 20 per cent, and reduce rural poverty by 20 per cent, each decade.
Entitled “Realizing a New Vision for Agriculture: A Roadmap for Stakeholders”, this is backed by 17 multinationals -- including ADM, BASF, Bunge Limited, Cargill, Coca-Cola, DuPont, General Mills, Kraft Foods, Metro AG, Monsanto Company, Nestlé, PepsiCo, SABMiller, Syngenta, Unilever, Wal-Mart, and Yara International.
The path to hell, as I have often said, is paved with good intentions. But lately I am amazed how cleverly the market forces use 'good intentions' to make profits. Whether it is World Trade Organisation (WT), Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), Kyoto Protocol, UN Climate Convention, G-20 consultations, we hear as if the world has suddenly become so benevolent towards the poor and hungry. All these international treaties and conventions, if you read the preamble, have the welfare of the poor and marginalised as the topmost priority. And yet, the poor are getting further marginalised.
Hunger and poverty are on an upswing. The gulf between the rich and the poor is further widening. The poor are increasingly getting driven to the wall. Fed up with this planet (or having destroyed the planet), the rich are planning to set up an exclusive colony on the moon.
Public anger that pours on the streets of Cairo, Tunis, and Madagascar becomes another business opportunity. Keeping my fingers crossed, I know the day is not far away when people will storm the streets in Pakistan, India, China, Brazil, South Africa and Russia. Will it be too late by then? Will the world not realise before then the disastrous implications of the market-based pathway? Will we go on repeating the same mistakes again and again?
It is not like a bull in a China shop. It is like a mad horse that has bolted. Why can't we bolt the horse in the stable? Why have we become so weak?
No lessons were learnt from the unprecedented food crisis of 2008. Except for pumping in US $ 20 trillion as stimulus package, the economic meltdown of 2009 didn't make us sit back and think. Once again, food prices are spiralling. Once again, the market bubble is waiting to burst. How long will this go on? How long, I ask?
Why can't we start questioning the flawed system? Why can't we build up a socio-economic system based on equity, justice and sustainability, which looks beyond economic growth and GDP? Why can't we resurrect food and agriculture from the destructive controls of the industry? Is it because we are afraid to speak up against wrong? Is it because our mind is in perpetual fear?
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high, wrote Rabindranath Tagore in Gitanjali. He concluded by saying: Where the mind is led forward by thee into everwidening thoughts and action; Into the heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.
Oh father, let my country awake.
Entitled “Realizing a New Vision for Agriculture: A Roadmap for Stakeholders”, this is backed by 17 multinationals -- including ADM, BASF, Bunge Limited, Cargill, Coca-Cola, DuPont, General Mills, Kraft Foods, Metro AG, Monsanto Company, Nestlé, PepsiCo, SABMiller, Syngenta, Unilever, Wal-Mart, and Yara International.
The path to hell, as I have often said, is paved with good intentions. But lately I am amazed how cleverly the market forces use 'good intentions' to make profits. Whether it is World Trade Organisation (WT), Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), Kyoto Protocol, UN Climate Convention, G-20 consultations, we hear as if the world has suddenly become so benevolent towards the poor and hungry. All these international treaties and conventions, if you read the preamble, have the welfare of the poor and marginalised as the topmost priority. And yet, the poor are getting further marginalised.
Hunger and poverty are on an upswing. The gulf between the rich and the poor is further widening. The poor are increasingly getting driven to the wall. Fed up with this planet (or having destroyed the planet), the rich are planning to set up an exclusive colony on the moon.
Public anger that pours on the streets of Cairo, Tunis, and Madagascar becomes another business opportunity. Keeping my fingers crossed, I know the day is not far away when people will storm the streets in Pakistan, India, China, Brazil, South Africa and Russia. Will it be too late by then? Will the world not realise before then the disastrous implications of the market-based pathway? Will we go on repeating the same mistakes again and again?
It is not like a bull in a China shop. It is like a mad horse that has bolted. Why can't we bolt the horse in the stable? Why have we become so weak?
No lessons were learnt from the unprecedented food crisis of 2008. Except for pumping in US $ 20 trillion as stimulus package, the economic meltdown of 2009 didn't make us sit back and think. Once again, food prices are spiralling. Once again, the market bubble is waiting to burst. How long will this go on? How long, I ask?
Why can't we start questioning the flawed system? Why can't we build up a socio-economic system based on equity, justice and sustainability, which looks beyond economic growth and GDP? Why can't we resurrect food and agriculture from the destructive controls of the industry? Is it because we are afraid to speak up against wrong? Is it because our mind is in perpetual fear?
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high, wrote Rabindranath Tagore in Gitanjali. He concluded by saying: Where the mind is led forward by thee into everwidening thoughts and action; Into the heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.
Oh father, let my country awake.
Jan 29, 2011
Market-based solutions for food is leading to political upheavals
In the midst of the chaos being witnessed across the Arab world -- Tunisia, Algeria and now Egypt -- what is being missed out is the role food inflation has played in triggering these protests. Earlier, we have seen the collapse of Soviet Union also being triggered from a deep rooted food crisis. More recently, the world has managed to tide over the 2008 food crisis when 37 countries faced food riots. But once again, food inflation is showing its ugly head. According to FAO, the 2011 food index has already surpassed the peak achieved in 2008.
The warning is loud and clear, but is not being well read. At Davos, where the rich and the crooked are meeting this week, there is a talk of the rising global food prices but as usual the industry sees the crisis as a business opportunity. Agribusiness industry is projecting it as if it is because of production shortfall, and so there is immense business possibilities to sell patented seeds, fertiliser, equipment and so on. The supermarkets are stepping in asking for removal of all barriers to FDI in multi-brand retail.
Globally, there is no shortage of food. Against the average requirement fo 2,600 cal a day (you can even take the upper figure of 3,000 cal/day), what is available is 4,600 calories. Why should the world therefore be faced with recurring food crisis? It is only the trade which is creating the crisis, and making a windfall from the inequalities. Those political leaders who have conveniently ignored to read the signs of an impending but artificially created disaster (by the food majors) must get ready to face the public ire. They deserve it.
And who says hunger and poverty does not offer opportunities for business? Ask the Shylocks who have assembled at Davos.
Behind the chaos lies the volatility in prices. And it is here that the Shylocks remain quiet. Take for instance the steady rise in oil prices. In 2008 it had almost touched $ 140 a barrel, and we were told that it was because of rising demand from the emerging economies. The Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had at one time remarked that he wasn't sure whether the oil price rise was because of rise in demand or because of a shortfall in production. Both his assumptions were incorrect. It was simply because of speculation. By the end of 2008, the prices had began to drop. Ultimately oil prices came down to almost $ 35 a barrel. Did the global demand drop drastically at that time? The answer is no. So why the price volatility? Speculation. As simple as that.
Oil prices are now rising, have already crossed $ 90 a barrel.
I am also baffled at the frenzy being witnessed in gold prices. On a TV show the other day my views were sought on commodity trading. This was a one hour programme on future markets. I told the studio audience (which comprised of commodity traders) that you guys are primarily responsible for gold prices hitting the roof. There is no shortfall in production or a rise in the demand for gold. Just because a few of you are making money by speculating on prices, the masses are being made to pay through their nose.
With food being branded as a commodity, the futures market is exploiting the gullible masses. While people are feeling the heat and pain, the mainline media has very cleverly ignored the fundamental reasons behind the global food crisis. At the global level, neither the G-20 leaders not the World Economic Forum has had the courage to accept where the fault lies. In fact, both the political as well as the business leadership is looking at the business opportunities that the crisis offers. And I blame the mainline economists of actually fuelling the global food crisis with their textbook analysis. They have simply refused to think out of the box, and in my understanding they do not even have the capacity to think beyond the textbooks.
Timothy Wise is among the rare breed of economists who had time and again explained to us what and where have things gone wrong. I admire his analytical ability, and strongly feel that we need to encourage and spread such clear thoughts and analysis for the people in the streets to enable them to come to grips with the realities. I would like to share with you all his latest analysis of the price upheavals that is emerging as a major headache for several governments across the globe.
The day is not far away when India, China, Brazil, and South Africa too will feel the heat.
Food Price Volatility: Market fundamentals and commodity speculation
Timothy A. Wise
http://triplecrisis.com/food-price-volatility/#more-2474
January 27, 2011
As Jayati Ghosh explained in her recent post on the “Frenzy in Food Markets,” high food prices are back and market fundamentals do not adequately explain the price rise. Still, a wide range of analysts and commentators, from Paul Krugman to the International Food Policy Research Institute, dismiss the argument that a significant part of the 2006-8 food price surge was due to speculation. They are more dismissive now, two years further removed from the bursting bubbles of the housing and financial crises.
As Krugman put it in one of several recent blog posts, “I was and remain skeptical about the speculation story in 2007-2008, because of the lack of evidence of inventory accumulation.”
Krugman and others are missing the point, or at least missing the distinction between price manipulation and excessive speculation. If a big market player hoards in a scarce market, that’s manipulation. But you don’t need manipulation to have non-commercial investors overwhelm commodities markets. And it is hard to deny the market fundamentals of our brave new “financialized” – and still-deregulated – commodities markets.
Let’s review the basics. Some $9 trillion in trades take place in commodity derivatives, with 80-90% in over the counter (OTC) trading, outside of public scrutiny. Five banks control 96% of derivatives activity, giving a few players decisive market power. The ratio of non-commercial speculators to commercial hedgers (those with a commercial interest in the traded commodity) is by some estimates 4:1, roughly a reverse of the shares ten years ago when speculators accounted for 20% of the activity. Then, such speculators indeed provided liquidity to the markets without overwhelming them. That is no longer the case.
Commodity index funds are where the market fundamentals of speculation seem unarguable, particularly in relation to agricultural commodities. Index funds, which are typically baskets of twenty or more commodities, were created by Goldman Sachs and other financial players as a hedge against declining returns in other sectors, based on the observed tendency of commodity prices to hold their value as other assets lost theirs. Index funds generally bet “long,” on rising prices, and they hold their investments for a longer time than the typical commercial hedger. This has a tendency to push prices up, which attracts more speculative capital, which adds to the volatility.
Overall, the number of derivatives contracts increased more than six-fold between 2002 and mid-2008, as these investment vehicles became a safe haven from the subprime crisis and financial meltdown. According to Masters and White, index fund purchases from 2003-7 already were higher than the futures market purchases of physical hedgers and traditional speculators combined. Then they doubled in the first half of 2008.
It would be bad enough if speculative capital simply overwhelmed commercial hedging interests in these markets. But the speculation is actually more institutionally entrenched than that. Index funds rarely hold more than 30% of their value in agricultural commodities. In fact, in July 2008 the ratio for the S&P Goldman Sachs Commodity Index, by far the largest index fund with 63% of the market, held 75% energy futures and 10% grains futures, with the rest in minerals.
So the movement of the index funds is driven by the price of oil, itself a highly speculative market with some 70% of futures investments coming from non-commercial speculators. Under such institutionalized structures, the price of oil drives the movement of the index funds and pushes up the prices of agricultural commodities, no matter what is happening to the fundamentals of supply and demand for soybeans or corn. Worse, the index funds are mandated to keep the value of their commodities in strict proportion, so that when the prices and value of energy products go up the funds have to buy more corn and soybean futures to maintain the mandated proportions. This represents yet another institutional impetus to buying agricultural futures regardless of the market fundamentals.
What part of this picture don’t the speculation-deniers see? Finance capital now dominates commercial hedging in futures markets, index funds have become huge investment vehicles in uncertain economic times, and the index funds move with oil and minerals prices, dragging food prices along with them.
Fortunately, France, as the new chair of the G20, has made the issue a priority for 2011, and in May we’ll see the first-ever meeting of G20 agriculture ministers. Meanwhile the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is now in the process of issuing its proposed rules re-regulating derivatives markets, implementing some of the more promising provisions of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. As CFTC chairman Gary Gensler stated, “I believe that increased speculation in energy and agricultural products has hurt farmers and consumers.”
We should certainly study and debate how much of the recent price volatility owes to excessive speculation and what should be done about it. But we should stop debating whether it’s a problem. The market fundamentals of commodity market speculation seem painfully clear.
For some good overviews of the issue, see:
Food Commodities Speculation and Food Price Crises, Olivier de Schutter
Commodities Market Speculation: The Risk to Food Security and Agriculture, IATP
The Great Hunger Lottery, Tim Jones, World Development Movement
How Institutional Investors are Driving up Food and Energy Prices, Masters and White
Index Funds and the 206-8 Run-up in Agricultural Commodities Prices, Ray and Shaeffer
The State of Agricultural Commodities Markets, FAO
Reflections on the Global Food Crisis, IFPRI
The warning is loud and clear, but is not being well read. At Davos, where the rich and the crooked are meeting this week, there is a talk of the rising global food prices but as usual the industry sees the crisis as a business opportunity. Agribusiness industry is projecting it as if it is because of production shortfall, and so there is immense business possibilities to sell patented seeds, fertiliser, equipment and so on. The supermarkets are stepping in asking for removal of all barriers to FDI in multi-brand retail.
Globally, there is no shortage of food. Against the average requirement fo 2,600 cal a day (you can even take the upper figure of 3,000 cal/day), what is available is 4,600 calories. Why should the world therefore be faced with recurring food crisis? It is only the trade which is creating the crisis, and making a windfall from the inequalities. Those political leaders who have conveniently ignored to read the signs of an impending but artificially created disaster (by the food majors) must get ready to face the public ire. They deserve it.
And who says hunger and poverty does not offer opportunities for business? Ask the Shylocks who have assembled at Davos.
Behind the chaos lies the volatility in prices. And it is here that the Shylocks remain quiet. Take for instance the steady rise in oil prices. In 2008 it had almost touched $ 140 a barrel, and we were told that it was because of rising demand from the emerging economies. The Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had at one time remarked that he wasn't sure whether the oil price rise was because of rise in demand or because of a shortfall in production. Both his assumptions were incorrect. It was simply because of speculation. By the end of 2008, the prices had began to drop. Ultimately oil prices came down to almost $ 35 a barrel. Did the global demand drop drastically at that time? The answer is no. So why the price volatility? Speculation. As simple as that.
Oil prices are now rising, have already crossed $ 90 a barrel.
I am also baffled at the frenzy being witnessed in gold prices. On a TV show the other day my views were sought on commodity trading. This was a one hour programme on future markets. I told the studio audience (which comprised of commodity traders) that you guys are primarily responsible for gold prices hitting the roof. There is no shortfall in production or a rise in the demand for gold. Just because a few of you are making money by speculating on prices, the masses are being made to pay through their nose.
With food being branded as a commodity, the futures market is exploiting the gullible masses. While people are feeling the heat and pain, the mainline media has very cleverly ignored the fundamental reasons behind the global food crisis. At the global level, neither the G-20 leaders not the World Economic Forum has had the courage to accept where the fault lies. In fact, both the political as well as the business leadership is looking at the business opportunities that the crisis offers. And I blame the mainline economists of actually fuelling the global food crisis with their textbook analysis. They have simply refused to think out of the box, and in my understanding they do not even have the capacity to think beyond the textbooks.
Timothy Wise is among the rare breed of economists who had time and again explained to us what and where have things gone wrong. I admire his analytical ability, and strongly feel that we need to encourage and spread such clear thoughts and analysis for the people in the streets to enable them to come to grips with the realities. I would like to share with you all his latest analysis of the price upheavals that is emerging as a major headache for several governments across the globe.
The day is not far away when India, China, Brazil, and South Africa too will feel the heat.
Food Price Volatility: Market fundamentals and commodity speculation
Timothy A. Wise
http://triplecrisis.com/food-price-volatility/#more-2474
January 27, 2011
As Jayati Ghosh explained in her recent post on the “Frenzy in Food Markets,” high food prices are back and market fundamentals do not adequately explain the price rise. Still, a wide range of analysts and commentators, from Paul Krugman to the International Food Policy Research Institute, dismiss the argument that a significant part of the 2006-8 food price surge was due to speculation. They are more dismissive now, two years further removed from the bursting bubbles of the housing and financial crises.
As Krugman put it in one of several recent blog posts, “I was and remain skeptical about the speculation story in 2007-2008, because of the lack of evidence of inventory accumulation.”
Krugman and others are missing the point, or at least missing the distinction between price manipulation and excessive speculation. If a big market player hoards in a scarce market, that’s manipulation. But you don’t need manipulation to have non-commercial investors overwhelm commodities markets. And it is hard to deny the market fundamentals of our brave new “financialized” – and still-deregulated – commodities markets.
Let’s review the basics. Some $9 trillion in trades take place in commodity derivatives, with 80-90% in over the counter (OTC) trading, outside of public scrutiny. Five banks control 96% of derivatives activity, giving a few players decisive market power. The ratio of non-commercial speculators to commercial hedgers (those with a commercial interest in the traded commodity) is by some estimates 4:1, roughly a reverse of the shares ten years ago when speculators accounted for 20% of the activity. Then, such speculators indeed provided liquidity to the markets without overwhelming them. That is no longer the case.
Commodity index funds are where the market fundamentals of speculation seem unarguable, particularly in relation to agricultural commodities. Index funds, which are typically baskets of twenty or more commodities, were created by Goldman Sachs and other financial players as a hedge against declining returns in other sectors, based on the observed tendency of commodity prices to hold their value as other assets lost theirs. Index funds generally bet “long,” on rising prices, and they hold their investments for a longer time than the typical commercial hedger. This has a tendency to push prices up, which attracts more speculative capital, which adds to the volatility.
Overall, the number of derivatives contracts increased more than six-fold between 2002 and mid-2008, as these investment vehicles became a safe haven from the subprime crisis and financial meltdown. According to Masters and White, index fund purchases from 2003-7 already were higher than the futures market purchases of physical hedgers and traditional speculators combined. Then they doubled in the first half of 2008.
It would be bad enough if speculative capital simply overwhelmed commercial hedging interests in these markets. But the speculation is actually more institutionally entrenched than that. Index funds rarely hold more than 30% of their value in agricultural commodities. In fact, in July 2008 the ratio for the S&P Goldman Sachs Commodity Index, by far the largest index fund with 63% of the market, held 75% energy futures and 10% grains futures, with the rest in minerals.
So the movement of the index funds is driven by the price of oil, itself a highly speculative market with some 70% of futures investments coming from non-commercial speculators. Under such institutionalized structures, the price of oil drives the movement of the index funds and pushes up the prices of agricultural commodities, no matter what is happening to the fundamentals of supply and demand for soybeans or corn. Worse, the index funds are mandated to keep the value of their commodities in strict proportion, so that when the prices and value of energy products go up the funds have to buy more corn and soybean futures to maintain the mandated proportions. This represents yet another institutional impetus to buying agricultural futures regardless of the market fundamentals.
What part of this picture don’t the speculation-deniers see? Finance capital now dominates commercial hedging in futures markets, index funds have become huge investment vehicles in uncertain economic times, and the index funds move with oil and minerals prices, dragging food prices along with them.
Fortunately, France, as the new chair of the G20, has made the issue a priority for 2011, and in May we’ll see the first-ever meeting of G20 agriculture ministers. Meanwhile the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is now in the process of issuing its proposed rules re-regulating derivatives markets, implementing some of the more promising provisions of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. As CFTC chairman Gary Gensler stated, “I believe that increased speculation in energy and agricultural products has hurt farmers and consumers.”
We should certainly study and debate how much of the recent price volatility owes to excessive speculation and what should be done about it. But we should stop debating whether it’s a problem. The market fundamentals of commodity market speculation seem painfully clear.
For some good overviews of the issue, see:
Food Commodities Speculation and Food Price Crises, Olivier de Schutter
Commodities Market Speculation: The Risk to Food Security and Agriculture, IATP
The Great Hunger Lottery, Tim Jones, World Development Movement
How Institutional Investors are Driving up Food and Energy Prices, Masters and White
Index Funds and the 206-8 Run-up in Agricultural Commodities Prices, Ray and Shaeffer
The State of Agricultural Commodities Markets, FAO
Reflections on the Global Food Crisis, IFPRI
Jan 26, 2011
Food price speculation will deepen hunger in India
AUTHOR AND columnist Alex Preston wrote in New Statesman (13 August 2010): “I was a trader at ABN Amro in March 2007 when the bank launched the first product that allowed retail investors to speculate on rice prices. In 2008, at the height of the food crisis, a marketing email went out from ABN pointing out that rice inventories were at an alltime low. Now, we were told, was the moment to invest in one of the world’s most important food crops, before prices rose further. This at a time when streetchildren in Haiti were eating cakes made of mud and hundreds of millions across the globe were threatened with starvation.”
A few months later, global prices of rice, wheat and corn touched an all-time high. By early 2008, food riots had taken place in 37 countries. While Goldman Sachs was accused of profiteering as millions went hungry, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, categorically pointed to speculation in food prices as the main reason behind the surge in 2008 global food prices.
The government’s eight-point action plan reminds one of the dark days of the Bengal Famine.
In India, however, a five-member committee on future trading headed by Planning Commission member Abhijit Sen that submitted its report in April 2008, failed to link commodity trading to the rise in prices. The composition of the expert committee, all of them known to be sympathetic towards free markets, suggests that anything better could not have been expected. But two years later, following a steep hike in onion prices, futures trading is back in the news. And this is where I think the stern warning from the UN Special Rapporteur had been conveniently glossed over.
What is worrying is that the rise in vegetable prices is being used as an opportunity for business. Apart from the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), the Planning Commission and the Ministry of Commerce are bending backwards to bring in policies reminiscent of the Bengal Famine. Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia has called for freeing farmers from the Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) laws. He wants them to be allowed to sell their produce to the intermediary that will give a better price. The eight-point action plan that the government announced is also aimed at dismantling mandis (market yards) and thereby according control over farm trading to private companies. This is exactly what was in vogue during the time the Bengal Famine occurred.
Although this is what the corporate sector wants, it has grave implications for the country. In the past few weeks global prices have started rising again and have crossed the 2008 food index. Not because of APMC, but speculation. Secondly, futures trading in agriculture is being promoted under the premise that it helps farmers realise a fair price for their produce. In reality, it works the other way around. Doing away with mandis is the first step to destroying the food procurement system that has been responsible for not only ensuring food security but also keeping food prices under check.
For a country that has emerged only four decades ago from a ‘ship-tomouth’ existence and is home to one-third of the world’s one billion hungry, what Ahluwalia is suggesting is fraught with unforeseen dangers. Instead of dismantling what MS Swaminathan has referred to as a ‘famine-avoidance’ strategy, India needs to remove the aberrations in the food supply system and refrain from allowing private trade to take control. Otherwise, the time is not far when we too will be grappling with food riots.
From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 8, Issue 4, Dated Jan 29, 2011
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main48.asp?filename=Ne290111Proscons.asp
A few months later, global prices of rice, wheat and corn touched an all-time high. By early 2008, food riots had taken place in 37 countries. While Goldman Sachs was accused of profiteering as millions went hungry, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, categorically pointed to speculation in food prices as the main reason behind the surge in 2008 global food prices.
The government’s eight-point action plan reminds one of the dark days of the Bengal Famine.
In India, however, a five-member committee on future trading headed by Planning Commission member Abhijit Sen that submitted its report in April 2008, failed to link commodity trading to the rise in prices. The composition of the expert committee, all of them known to be sympathetic towards free markets, suggests that anything better could not have been expected. But two years later, following a steep hike in onion prices, futures trading is back in the news. And this is where I think the stern warning from the UN Special Rapporteur had been conveniently glossed over.
What is worrying is that the rise in vegetable prices is being used as an opportunity for business. Apart from the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), the Planning Commission and the Ministry of Commerce are bending backwards to bring in policies reminiscent of the Bengal Famine. Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia has called for freeing farmers from the Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) laws. He wants them to be allowed to sell their produce to the intermediary that will give a better price. The eight-point action plan that the government announced is also aimed at dismantling mandis (market yards) and thereby according control over farm trading to private companies. This is exactly what was in vogue during the time the Bengal Famine occurred.
Although this is what the corporate sector wants, it has grave implications for the country. In the past few weeks global prices have started rising again and have crossed the 2008 food index. Not because of APMC, but speculation. Secondly, futures trading in agriculture is being promoted under the premise that it helps farmers realise a fair price for their produce. In reality, it works the other way around. Doing away with mandis is the first step to destroying the food procurement system that has been responsible for not only ensuring food security but also keeping food prices under check.
For a country that has emerged only four decades ago from a ‘ship-tomouth’ existence and is home to one-third of the world’s one billion hungry, what Ahluwalia is suggesting is fraught with unforeseen dangers. Instead of dismantling what MS Swaminathan has referred to as a ‘famine-avoidance’ strategy, India needs to remove the aberrations in the food supply system and refrain from allowing private trade to take control. Otherwise, the time is not far when we too will be grappling with food riots.
From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 8, Issue 4, Dated Jan 29, 2011
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main48.asp?filename=Ne290111Proscons.asp
Jan 25, 2011
Global Food and Farming Futures report creates panic to push GM crops.
I sometimes wonder why public money is allowed to be spent on promoting private business interests. Why should the British tax payers be made to pay for a much hyped The Foresight project Global Food and Farming Futures report [You can read the full report here: http://bit.ly/fPk9LY]. I am told the report is a culmination of a two year study involving 400 experts from 35 countries.
At the end of it, the report simply says what the GM mafia has been telling us all along. Prof John Beddington, the Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK government, has been quoted emphasising that GM Crops are 'extremely important' to meet the growing food crisis, and of course he is clever enough to say that it is one of the tools that needs to be advocated.
Well, the fact of the matter is that if Prof Beddington had not come out openly in support of GM Crops he wouldn't have been made the Chief Scientific Advisor in the first instance. I am not being unkind to Prof Beddington, but whether we like it or not this remains a fact. You cannot hope to rise in your career if you do not express faith in the risky, harmful and unwanted regressive GM technology. If you dare to question the technology, you are hounded out. Such is the power and control the GM industry has.
Quoting from an official press release, the report states: "While many reports have expressed concerns about the ability of the food production system to cope with the world’s burgeoning population, the Foresight report is the first detailed study across a range of disciplines to have put such fears on a firm analytical footing.
According to the Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor, Professor Sir John Beddington, the study provides compelling evidence for governments to act now.
"We know in the next 20 years the world population will increase to something like 8.3 billion people We know that urbanisation is going to be a driver and that something of the order of 65-70 percent of the world's population will be living in cities at that time.
I thought the world already knew this. We are aware of the crisis that confronts us. Merely reiterating it again and again is not going to help unless you really want to take some radical steps. The report does say 'that the food production system will need to be radically changed not just to produce more food but to produce it sustainably', but when it comes to spelling out the radical changes required, it not only fails but fails miserably to come up with any proposal/recommendation that is not an extension of the industrial farming model that has created the crisis in the first place.
That is why I said over BBC World Service radio yesterday that the report is a very clever cover-up or camouflage to promote GM crops. I said the world "produces food for 11.5bn people... 40% is wasted... we don't have to create a panic like the UK report."
The report has been dressed up in such a way that the policy makers/planners have little option but to pour more public resources into research areas where private biotechnology industry can draw maximum profits. Public-Private Partnership is merely an euphemism for the exploitation of public resources, and I am sure the UK government would now feel pressurized to re-start GM research in the name of helping the poor and hungry in the developing countries.
Please don't be so kind to us. The last time you came to India to help the poor and hungry, we became a colony for 200 years.
Anyway, let us look at the report. The official release says: "The authors call for food and agriculture to move up the political agenda and be coordinated with efforts to tackle the impact of climate change, the supply of water and energy and the loss of farm land". Agreed. And it is here that I was expecting the distinguished team of scientists to come up with some viable solutions. This is where the political agenda has to be tuned to the desperate food security needs of the people, and this is where the report fails.
Farm land grab across the globe, and the land acquisitions that the World Bank has been promoting so as to shift the farming population to labour in the industry, remains the most serious concern in the battle to ensure food for all. Like the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), which we all know is a lobbying body for agribusiness, the Foresight project too remains conspicuously silent. IFPRI at least suggested a code of conduct for the companies grabbing land, this report too refrains from make any recommendation that would annoy the powers that be.
While the Global Food and Farming Futures report has talked about the need for radical changes, it calls for "protection of the poorest from sharp price increases through government intervention and greater liberalising of the trade in food to offset market volatility." This suggestion is contradictory to the problem of price volatility that it seems to address. Price volatility can be only effectively controlled if each country was to return to food sovereignty by investing in food self-sufficiency. Let us be very clear, India escaped the 2008 global food crisis because its agriculture was still not fully integrated with the global economy.
Price volatility that the world witnessed in 2008, leading to food riots in 37 countries, was the outcome of commodity trading and speculation. Corporates made tonnes of money when more people were going to bed hungry in 2008. I had expected the 400 distinguished scientists who wrote the report to demonstrate political courage by calling for an end to speculation in food, at least. Such a recommendation could have been called truly radical.
When it comes to production, keeping sustainability and economic viability in consideration, the report gives the impression as if 400 distinguished scientists were grappling in the dark, and have no idea about the ground realities. Like a frog in the well, they can only see what lies with the walls. So I am not surprised when it fails to come up with any thing meaningful and challenging. The only objective of this report therefore seems to be to oppose the findings of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Scientific and Technology for Development (IAASTD).
Don't get lost in the warnings that the report is trying to sound. In reality, the UK report is simply calling for business as usual. "Science-based solution" are nothing but industry prescriptions. If these prescriptions were so good, we wouldn't be faced with the monumental food and sustainability crisis that the world is confronted with. If the international community accepts this futuristic report, mark my words: Hunger will grow, and the world will become still more unsustainable acerbating the crisis we already have on water availability, shrinking land resources, poisoning soils and the rising temperatures.
The choice is yours.
At the end of it, the report simply says what the GM mafia has been telling us all along. Prof John Beddington, the Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK government, has been quoted emphasising that GM Crops are 'extremely important' to meet the growing food crisis, and of course he is clever enough to say that it is one of the tools that needs to be advocated.
Well, the fact of the matter is that if Prof Beddington had not come out openly in support of GM Crops he wouldn't have been made the Chief Scientific Advisor in the first instance. I am not being unkind to Prof Beddington, but whether we like it or not this remains a fact. You cannot hope to rise in your career if you do not express faith in the risky, harmful and unwanted regressive GM technology. If you dare to question the technology, you are hounded out. Such is the power and control the GM industry has.
Quoting from an official press release, the report states: "While many reports have expressed concerns about the ability of the food production system to cope with the world’s burgeoning population, the Foresight report is the first detailed study across a range of disciplines to have put such fears on a firm analytical footing.
According to the Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor, Professor Sir John Beddington, the study provides compelling evidence for governments to act now.
"We know in the next 20 years the world population will increase to something like 8.3 billion people We know that urbanisation is going to be a driver and that something of the order of 65-70 percent of the world's population will be living in cities at that time.
I thought the world already knew this. We are aware of the crisis that confronts us. Merely reiterating it again and again is not going to help unless you really want to take some radical steps. The report does say 'that the food production system will need to be radically changed not just to produce more food but to produce it sustainably', but when it comes to spelling out the radical changes required, it not only fails but fails miserably to come up with any proposal/recommendation that is not an extension of the industrial farming model that has created the crisis in the first place.
That is why I said over BBC World Service radio yesterday that the report is a very clever cover-up or camouflage to promote GM crops. I said the world "produces food for 11.5bn people... 40% is wasted... we don't have to create a panic like the UK report."
The report has been dressed up in such a way that the policy makers/planners have little option but to pour more public resources into research areas where private biotechnology industry can draw maximum profits. Public-Private Partnership is merely an euphemism for the exploitation of public resources, and I am sure the UK government would now feel pressurized to re-start GM research in the name of helping the poor and hungry in the developing countries.
Please don't be so kind to us. The last time you came to India to help the poor and hungry, we became a colony for 200 years.
Anyway, let us look at the report. The official release says: "The authors call for food and agriculture to move up the political agenda and be coordinated with efforts to tackle the impact of climate change, the supply of water and energy and the loss of farm land". Agreed. And it is here that I was expecting the distinguished team of scientists to come up with some viable solutions. This is where the political agenda has to be tuned to the desperate food security needs of the people, and this is where the report fails.
Farm land grab across the globe, and the land acquisitions that the World Bank has been promoting so as to shift the farming population to labour in the industry, remains the most serious concern in the battle to ensure food for all. Like the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), which we all know is a lobbying body for agribusiness, the Foresight project too remains conspicuously silent. IFPRI at least suggested a code of conduct for the companies grabbing land, this report too refrains from make any recommendation that would annoy the powers that be.
While the Global Food and Farming Futures report has talked about the need for radical changes, it calls for "protection of the poorest from sharp price increases through government intervention and greater liberalising of the trade in food to offset market volatility." This suggestion is contradictory to the problem of price volatility that it seems to address. Price volatility can be only effectively controlled if each country was to return to food sovereignty by investing in food self-sufficiency. Let us be very clear, India escaped the 2008 global food crisis because its agriculture was still not fully integrated with the global economy.
Price volatility that the world witnessed in 2008, leading to food riots in 37 countries, was the outcome of commodity trading and speculation. Corporates made tonnes of money when more people were going to bed hungry in 2008. I had expected the 400 distinguished scientists who wrote the report to demonstrate political courage by calling for an end to speculation in food, at least. Such a recommendation could have been called truly radical.
When it comes to production, keeping sustainability and economic viability in consideration, the report gives the impression as if 400 distinguished scientists were grappling in the dark, and have no idea about the ground realities. Like a frog in the well, they can only see what lies with the walls. So I am not surprised when it fails to come up with any thing meaningful and challenging. The only objective of this report therefore seems to be to oppose the findings of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Scientific and Technology for Development (IAASTD).
Don't get lost in the warnings that the report is trying to sound. In reality, the UK report is simply calling for business as usual. "Science-based solution" are nothing but industry prescriptions. If these prescriptions were so good, we wouldn't be faced with the monumental food and sustainability crisis that the world is confronted with. If the international community accepts this futuristic report, mark my words: Hunger will grow, and the world will become still more unsustainable acerbating the crisis we already have on water availability, shrinking land resources, poisoning soils and the rising temperatures.
The choice is yours.
Jan 20, 2011
India keen to dismantle its vast agricultural mandi network putting food security at stake.
I can understand the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) demanding it. But when the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia starts speaking the language of an industry lobbyist there is reason to be alarmed. I am talking of Montek's interview in the Hindustan Times (Jan 18, 2011) wherein he called for removing horticultural products -- vegetables and fruits -- from the ambit of the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Act.
In the news report, Ahluwalia was quoted as saying: "the APMC laws must be amended to free farmers from the markets controlled by a few people and provide them access to consumer markets directly. Ahluwalia said all horticulture products such as onions, apples and vegetables should be exempted from APMC laws and the state governments should help farmers in better marketing of their produce."
He also said: the APMC laws in most states make it mandatory for farmers to sell their produce through local committees. Licences for participating wholesale buyers — who are required to pay a transaction or mandi tax — are concentrated in a few hands. In the present scenario, these markets are not a free buyer-seller platform. But any change in the APMC law is sensitive as powerful people control these committees at the local level." [Read the full report at: http://bit.ly/eQV2dJ]
There is no denying that over time some aberrations have come up in the way the mandis (as the public markets in India are known) operate. The APMC laws have the provisions to effectively regulate these mandis. But rarely has the government ever stepped in, and in fact it is because of the political cover to the powerful middlemen coterie that the entire mess has generated.
But to take away horticultural produce from the purview of the mandis, and that too after the 2005 amendment in the APMC Act had allowed the private buyers to bypass the mandis and purchase wheat and rice directly from the farmers, is primarily aimed at killing the procurement system. In other words, Mr Ahluwalia is very cleverly suggesting destruction of the very foundations of food self-sufficiency built so assiduously over the past four decades.
The 8-point plan that the government had spelled out some days back to control inflation too says the same. I don't know how many people could grasp the real meaning of what is cleverly hidden in the garb of steps needed to control inflation. In reality, food inflation is being used to justify the dismantling the very foundations of food security. It is actually passing on the control of food into the hands of a few big players, who can then manipulate the prices at will. The nation needs to understand the dangerous game being played.
I would like to flag a few points for your consideration.
1. It is completely wrong to blame the APMC Laws for food inflation. If this is true, than why did the domestic food prices in India remain low in 2008 when the world food prices had hit the roof, resulting in food riots in 37 countries? In any case why has food inflation remained below the double-digit mark for much of the past 40 years if APMC Act was so detrimental?
2. Even now, global food prices are on an upswing especially that of sugar and oilseed crops. Why are the global prices rising when internationally APMC Act does not apply (or exist) in any of the major food exporting country?
3. In 2006-07, after the APMC Act was amended, companies like Rallis, Hindustan Lever, ITC, Australian Wheat Board and Cargill had purchased wheat directly from farmers. This happened at a time when there was no shortfall in domestic production. But because the companies purchased directly from farmers, the government godowns remained empty. To fill up the empty godowns (for meeting PDS needs) India had imported roughly 8 million tonnes of wheat at almost double the price.
4. Imported wheat came at a price that was much higher than the domestic prices. Ministry of Agriculture subsequently warned the private players to stay away from making direct purchases from farmers. After 2007, private trade has refrained buying wheat and rice directly from farmers. If the direct purchase was so good, why did the Ministry of Agriculture issue a dictat forbidding it?
5. Buyers in the mandis have to pay on an average of 10 per cent as the mandi transaction tax. This may be a little higher for some vegetables and fruits. The tax collection helps in the maintenance of the mandis. For instance, 70 per cent of the total expenditure of the Punjab government on its mandis comes from the tax collections. Taking out wheat, rice, vegetables and fruits from the mandi purview means that the mandis will collapse.
6. Prior to the Green Revolution, and before the Agricultural Prices Commission was set up, farmers were free to sell their produce to anyone who offered them good prices. It was known to be an exploitative system wherein the trade squeezed the profit margin of farmers at the time of harvest. It was only when procurement prices were introduced that farmers got an assured price for their produce, and that is what encouraged them to produce more. Procurement prices helps farmers realise a fair and better price for their produce. This system needs to be improved and strengthened, not dismantled.
7. What Mr Ahluwalia is suggesting is what exactly existed at the time Bengal Famine happened.
In the news report, Ahluwalia was quoted as saying: "the APMC laws must be amended to free farmers from the markets controlled by a few people and provide them access to consumer markets directly. Ahluwalia said all horticulture products such as onions, apples and vegetables should be exempted from APMC laws and the state governments should help farmers in better marketing of their produce."
He also said: the APMC laws in most states make it mandatory for farmers to sell their produce through local committees. Licences for participating wholesale buyers — who are required to pay a transaction or mandi tax — are concentrated in a few hands. In the present scenario, these markets are not a free buyer-seller platform. But any change in the APMC law is sensitive as powerful people control these committees at the local level." [Read the full report at: http://bit.ly/eQV2dJ]
There is no denying that over time some aberrations have come up in the way the mandis (as the public markets in India are known) operate. The APMC laws have the provisions to effectively regulate these mandis. But rarely has the government ever stepped in, and in fact it is because of the political cover to the powerful middlemen coterie that the entire mess has generated.
But to take away horticultural produce from the purview of the mandis, and that too after the 2005 amendment in the APMC Act had allowed the private buyers to bypass the mandis and purchase wheat and rice directly from the farmers, is primarily aimed at killing the procurement system. In other words, Mr Ahluwalia is very cleverly suggesting destruction of the very foundations of food self-sufficiency built so assiduously over the past four decades.
The 8-point plan that the government had spelled out some days back to control inflation too says the same. I don't know how many people could grasp the real meaning of what is cleverly hidden in the garb of steps needed to control inflation. In reality, food inflation is being used to justify the dismantling the very foundations of food security. It is actually passing on the control of food into the hands of a few big players, who can then manipulate the prices at will. The nation needs to understand the dangerous game being played.
I would like to flag a few points for your consideration.
1. It is completely wrong to blame the APMC Laws for food inflation. If this is true, than why did the domestic food prices in India remain low in 2008 when the world food prices had hit the roof, resulting in food riots in 37 countries? In any case why has food inflation remained below the double-digit mark for much of the past 40 years if APMC Act was so detrimental?
2. Even now, global food prices are on an upswing especially that of sugar and oilseed crops. Why are the global prices rising when internationally APMC Act does not apply (or exist) in any of the major food exporting country?
3. In 2006-07, after the APMC Act was amended, companies like Rallis, Hindustan Lever, ITC, Australian Wheat Board and Cargill had purchased wheat directly from farmers. This happened at a time when there was no shortfall in domestic production. But because the companies purchased directly from farmers, the government godowns remained empty. To fill up the empty godowns (for meeting PDS needs) India had imported roughly 8 million tonnes of wheat at almost double the price.
4. Imported wheat came at a price that was much higher than the domestic prices. Ministry of Agriculture subsequently warned the private players to stay away from making direct purchases from farmers. After 2007, private trade has refrained buying wheat and rice directly from farmers. If the direct purchase was so good, why did the Ministry of Agriculture issue a dictat forbidding it?
5. Buyers in the mandis have to pay on an average of 10 per cent as the mandi transaction tax. This may be a little higher for some vegetables and fruits. The tax collection helps in the maintenance of the mandis. For instance, 70 per cent of the total expenditure of the Punjab government on its mandis comes from the tax collections. Taking out wheat, rice, vegetables and fruits from the mandi purview means that the mandis will collapse.
6. Prior to the Green Revolution, and before the Agricultural Prices Commission was set up, farmers were free to sell their produce to anyone who offered them good prices. It was known to be an exploitative system wherein the trade squeezed the profit margin of farmers at the time of harvest. It was only when procurement prices were introduced that farmers got an assured price for their produce, and that is what encouraged them to produce more. Procurement prices helps farmers realise a fair and better price for their produce. This system needs to be improved and strengthened, not dismantled.
7. What Mr Ahluwalia is suggesting is what exactly existed at the time Bengal Famine happened.
Jan 19, 2011
Killer technologies will not increase our food production
Genetically modified (GM) crops are once again in the eye of a storm. With the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPM] taking a complete U-turn in its stated policy approach and now publicly supporting GM crops, the debate is heating up. National president of the All India Kisan Sabha, the farmers’ wing of the CPM, SR Pillai, has recently called those who oppose GM crops as being ‘superstitious’.
At the recently concluded 98th Indian Science Congress, industry lobbyists had made a strong pitch for GM crops. Ironically, while the Indian Science Congress has always refrained from discussing farmer suicides, it offered a platform to the biotech industry for promoting a risky and unstable technology.
This, however, doesn’t come as a surprise. In Europe, as the BBC reports, the GM controversy is back on the political radar. Politically incorrect efforts have been on for quite some time to re-energise the debate. Wikileaks tells us how the US embassy in Paris had, in 2007, urged Washington to start a military-style trade war against EU for opposing GM crops.
A year later, in 2008, the US and Spain had plotted to raise food prices in Europe to justify the need for introducing GM foods. With Europe still not accepting GM crops, India remains the prime target. Wikileaks informs that even India’s National Security Advisor, Shiv Shankar Menon, talked about the possibility of opening up to GM crops.
After Union environment minister Jairam Ramesh had imposed a moratorium on the commercialisation of Bt brinjal in early 2010, diplomatic and political pressure from the US has been increasing relentlessly. The multinational seed industry moved fast, first by taking a large number of journalists on an ‘educational’ trip to the US, and also within India, thereby shifting some of the media’s opinion in favour of GM crops.
At the same time, American multinational giants began the exercise to sway political opinion in favour of GM crops. The turnaround by CPM seems to be an outcome of one such approach. Nevertheless, it is important to explain some of the hotly debated aspects, which is lost in the hype being generated to push GM crops.
The first and foremost argument is that GM crops are important for a country that has more than 1 billion people to feed. It will ensure food security. The fact is there is no GM crop in the world that increases productivity. In fact, most of the GM crops under cultivation actually reduce productivity. The US Department of Agriculture admits that the productivity of GM corn and GM soya is less than that of normal varieties, and that makes me wonder how our politicians are suggesting GM crops for ensuring food security.
Furthermore, there is no shortage of food in the world. We have 6.5 billion people on Earth, and we produce food for 11.5 billion people. If more than 1 billion people go to bed hungry globally, it is because of the faulty distribution process rather than the unavailability of food. The same holds true for India, where one-third of the population cannot afford to buy food, but huge quantities of food is allowed to rot.
Almost all the GM crops that have been developed so far are for killing insects. Bt cotton, for instance, is supposed to kill sucking pests like pink bollworm, thereby reducing pesticides consumption. This, however, does not hold true for long. In China, cotton farmers growing Bt cotton are now reported to be spraying 10% more pesticides and thereby incurring losses.
In India too, as far as pesticides consumption on Bt cotton is concerned, its cultivation has, in reality, increased the application of pesticides. The Central Cotton Research Institute estimates that in 2006, pesticides worth Rs640 crore were sprayed on cotton. In 2008, it had increased to over Rs800 crore. Even in the US, where GM crops are widely cultivated, the usage of herbicides has increased by $300 million.
GM crops also create super weeds, which cannot be controlled by any chemicals so far. In the US, almost 15 million acres have become infested with super weeds. Georgia, for instance, has been turned into a wasteland due to infestation of super weeds. So far, at least 30 super weeds have been indentified in North America.
Numerous experiments all over the world have shown that GM crops pose tremendous health risks. Even Monsanto’s own studies on rats in Europe have demonstrated that the animals have problems with their body organs, and use of GM crops can also result in serious diseases and allergies. Some studies in Austria have shown that GM crops also lead to infertility.
Interestingly, all the scientists who dared to question the human safety aspect were hounded out of their jobs.
Already farmers are committing suicide because of the faulty technologies imposed on them. How many more farmers do we want killed before we stop using such killer technologies?
Source: Daily News & Views, Mumbai/Bangalore/Ahmedabad/Pune/Jaipur
http://bit.ly/ic9M46
At the recently concluded 98th Indian Science Congress, industry lobbyists had made a strong pitch for GM crops. Ironically, while the Indian Science Congress has always refrained from discussing farmer suicides, it offered a platform to the biotech industry for promoting a risky and unstable technology.
This, however, doesn’t come as a surprise. In Europe, as the BBC reports, the GM controversy is back on the political radar. Politically incorrect efforts have been on for quite some time to re-energise the debate. Wikileaks tells us how the US embassy in Paris had, in 2007, urged Washington to start a military-style trade war against EU for opposing GM crops.
A year later, in 2008, the US and Spain had plotted to raise food prices in Europe to justify the need for introducing GM foods. With Europe still not accepting GM crops, India remains the prime target. Wikileaks informs that even India’s National Security Advisor, Shiv Shankar Menon, talked about the possibility of opening up to GM crops.
After Union environment minister Jairam Ramesh had imposed a moratorium on the commercialisation of Bt brinjal in early 2010, diplomatic and political pressure from the US has been increasing relentlessly. The multinational seed industry moved fast, first by taking a large number of journalists on an ‘educational’ trip to the US, and also within India, thereby shifting some of the media’s opinion in favour of GM crops.
At the same time, American multinational giants began the exercise to sway political opinion in favour of GM crops. The turnaround by CPM seems to be an outcome of one such approach. Nevertheless, it is important to explain some of the hotly debated aspects, which is lost in the hype being generated to push GM crops.
The first and foremost argument is that GM crops are important for a country that has more than 1 billion people to feed. It will ensure food security. The fact is there is no GM crop in the world that increases productivity. In fact, most of the GM crops under cultivation actually reduce productivity. The US Department of Agriculture admits that the productivity of GM corn and GM soya is less than that of normal varieties, and that makes me wonder how our politicians are suggesting GM crops for ensuring food security.
Furthermore, there is no shortage of food in the world. We have 6.5 billion people on Earth, and we produce food for 11.5 billion people. If more than 1 billion people go to bed hungry globally, it is because of the faulty distribution process rather than the unavailability of food. The same holds true for India, where one-third of the population cannot afford to buy food, but huge quantities of food is allowed to rot.
Almost all the GM crops that have been developed so far are for killing insects. Bt cotton, for instance, is supposed to kill sucking pests like pink bollworm, thereby reducing pesticides consumption. This, however, does not hold true for long. In China, cotton farmers growing Bt cotton are now reported to be spraying 10% more pesticides and thereby incurring losses.
In India too, as far as pesticides consumption on Bt cotton is concerned, its cultivation has, in reality, increased the application of pesticides. The Central Cotton Research Institute estimates that in 2006, pesticides worth Rs640 crore were sprayed on cotton. In 2008, it had increased to over Rs800 crore. Even in the US, where GM crops are widely cultivated, the usage of herbicides has increased by $300 million.
GM crops also create super weeds, which cannot be controlled by any chemicals so far. In the US, almost 15 million acres have become infested with super weeds. Georgia, for instance, has been turned into a wasteland due to infestation of super weeds. So far, at least 30 super weeds have been indentified in North America.
Numerous experiments all over the world have shown that GM crops pose tremendous health risks. Even Monsanto’s own studies on rats in Europe have demonstrated that the animals have problems with their body organs, and use of GM crops can also result in serious diseases and allergies. Some studies in Austria have shown that GM crops also lead to infertility.
Interestingly, all the scientists who dared to question the human safety aspect were hounded out of their jobs.
Already farmers are committing suicide because of the faulty technologies imposed on them. How many more farmers do we want killed before we stop using such killer technologies?
Source: Daily News & Views, Mumbai/Bangalore/Ahmedabad/Pune/Jaipur
http://bit.ly/ic9M46
Jan 16, 2011
If farmers can be given loans at one per cent interest, why not small borrowers? MFIs can then be directed to close operations.
At a time when the Micro-finance Institutes (MFIs) are charging anything between 24 to 36 per cent (and sometimes more) as the annual rate of interest, Madhya Pradesh government's decision to provide farmers with loans at one per cent interest from the cooperative banks from the next financial year, comes as a big sigh of relief. And as Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan claimed MP is the first State to lower the interest rate to as low as one percent.
Karnataka is also planning to lower interest rate for farmers to one percent. PTI reports: "The government intends to examine the feasibility of extending farm loans under the cooperative sector at a lower interest rate of one percent," Governor H R Bhardwaj said in his address to the winter session of the State assembly. Karnataka is at present extending term loans to farmers, weavers and fishermen at three percent interest rate through cooperative credit societies.
Over the years, India has systematically reduced the interest rate for farmers. As former Finance Minister P Chidambaram had said sometimes back: "10 percent interest was charged for farm loan when the UPA government assumed office in its first term (in 2004)". When he was the Finance Minister it was reduced to 7 percent gradually. Subsequently, farmers could get 2 percent subsidy out of 7 percent interest on farm loan if they repay the loan without default, which means for all practical purposes the effective rate of interest came down to five per cent.
The catch here is that while the nationalised banks provide crop loans at 7 per cent (subsidised to 5 per cent if repayed in time), it is through the cooperative banks that the State governments have managed to extend loans at a much lower rate of interest. This is certainly laudable, and I hope in 2011 Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee directs nationalised banks to further lower the rate of interest to 3 per cent (if not one per cent).
Although the Government had fixed a target to extend agricultural loan to the tune of Rs.3.75 lakh crore in 2010-11, much of this loan is actually going to agribusiness,warehousing and related activities. Farmers are still in the lurch, largely depending upon the money lenders.
This makes me wonder that if farmers can be provided with loans at such a low rate of interest why is that we need to encourage the new organised breed of money-lenders, and I am talking of the MFIs, be allowed to charge an exorbitantly high interest ranging between 24 to 36 per cent from the poorest of the poor in the same village? Why is that while the farmer gets crop loan from cooperative banks at one per cent, his wife if she happens to be a member of a self-help group or for that matter a farm worker who also works on the same farm, be obliged to take loan from an MFI?
Why can't the government extend credit to small borrowers also at the same rate of interest as the farmers? If the farmers can avail of the Kisan Credit Card, why can't the artisans, weavers, fishermen, and agricultural workers too get similar cards?
This brings me to what Muhammed Yunus writes in New York Times (Jan 14, 2011) "Sacrificing Microcredit for Megaprofits" (here is the link: www.nytimes.com/2011/01/15/opinion/15yunus.html?partner=rss&emc=rss): "The maximum interest rate should not exceed the cost of the fund — meaning the cost that is incurred by the bank to procure the money to lend — plus 15 percent of the fund. That 15 percent goes to cover operational costs and contribute to profit. In the case of Grameen Bank, the cost of fund is 10 percent. So, the maximum interest rate could be 25 percent. However, we charge 20 percent to the borrowers. The ideal “spread” between the cost of the fund and the lending rate should be close to 10 percent.
Yunus admits that he is also charging an interest of 20 per cent from the small borrowers. Agreeing that strict regulations should help in enforcing discipline, he says: "To enforce such a cap, every country where microloans are made needs a microcredit regulatory authority. Bangladesh, which has the most microcredit borrowers per square mile in the world, has had such an authority for several years, and it is devoted to ensuring transparency in lending and prevented excessive interest rates and collection practices. In the future, it may be able to accredit microfinance banks. India, with its burgeoning microcredit sector, is most in need of a similar agency."
I am afraid I do not buy the argument forwarded by Yunus. Although he blames the recent crisis that erupted in India and Latin America as the cause behind the mistrust in MFIs when he writes: "Troubles with microcredit began around 2005, when many lenders started looking for ways to make a profit on the loans by shifting from their status as nonprofit organizations to commercial enterprises. In 2007, Compartamos, a Mexican bank, became Latin America’s first microcredit bank to go public. And this past August, SKS Microfinance, the largest bank of its kind in India, raised $358 million in an initial public offering," I think he is very cleverly trying to deflect attention from the real cause.
Yunus writes: "In 1983, I founded Grameen Bank to provide small loans that people, especially poor women, could use to bring themselves out of poverty. At that time, I never imagined that one day microcredit would give rise to its own breed of loan sharks." Well, the problem actually began in 1983. Yunus did exactly what the loan sharks are doing now. The only difference being that while the loan sharks are charging 24 to 36 per cent and above (some even charging 100 per cent and still cite several case studies where poor have gained), Yunus was charging a little less.
If only people like Yunus (and those who swear in the name of the poor, and have in turn built Empires) forced the governments to provide cheaper credit to small borrowers like what is being made available to farmers I am sure a large population of the poor would have been above the poverty line by now. That is why I am convinced that MFIs are basically a crime against humanity. Tough legislation is not the answer to stem the rot. These MFIs need to be shut down, and several of those whom Yunus refers to as 'loan sharks' need to be put behind bars.
The poorest of the poor also need to be provided with cooperative loans, and Kisan Credit Cards like the farmers get. If such schemes can be implemented for farnmers who live in unreachable areas, I am sure the same provisions can be extended to other members of his family. What is needed is a political will to make this happen, and it will happen.
Till then , MFIs will continue to loot the poor.
Karnataka is also planning to lower interest rate for farmers to one percent. PTI reports: "The government intends to examine the feasibility of extending farm loans under the cooperative sector at a lower interest rate of one percent," Governor H R Bhardwaj said in his address to the winter session of the State assembly. Karnataka is at present extending term loans to farmers, weavers and fishermen at three percent interest rate through cooperative credit societies.
Over the years, India has systematically reduced the interest rate for farmers. As former Finance Minister P Chidambaram had said sometimes back: "10 percent interest was charged for farm loan when the UPA government assumed office in its first term (in 2004)". When he was the Finance Minister it was reduced to 7 percent gradually. Subsequently, farmers could get 2 percent subsidy out of 7 percent interest on farm loan if they repay the loan without default, which means for all practical purposes the effective rate of interest came down to five per cent.
The catch here is that while the nationalised banks provide crop loans at 7 per cent (subsidised to 5 per cent if repayed in time), it is through the cooperative banks that the State governments have managed to extend loans at a much lower rate of interest. This is certainly laudable, and I hope in 2011 Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee directs nationalised banks to further lower the rate of interest to 3 per cent (if not one per cent).
Although the Government had fixed a target to extend agricultural loan to the tune of Rs.3.75 lakh crore in 2010-11, much of this loan is actually going to agribusiness,warehousing and related activities. Farmers are still in the lurch, largely depending upon the money lenders.
This makes me wonder that if farmers can be provided with loans at such a low rate of interest why is that we need to encourage the new organised breed of money-lenders, and I am talking of the MFIs, be allowed to charge an exorbitantly high interest ranging between 24 to 36 per cent from the poorest of the poor in the same village? Why is that while the farmer gets crop loan from cooperative banks at one per cent, his wife if she happens to be a member of a self-help group or for that matter a farm worker who also works on the same farm, be obliged to take loan from an MFI?
Why can't the government extend credit to small borrowers also at the same rate of interest as the farmers? If the farmers can avail of the Kisan Credit Card, why can't the artisans, weavers, fishermen, and agricultural workers too get similar cards?
This brings me to what Muhammed Yunus writes in New York Times (Jan 14, 2011) "Sacrificing Microcredit for Megaprofits" (here is the link: www.nytimes.com/2011/01/15/opinion/15yunus.html?partner=rss&emc=rss): "The maximum interest rate should not exceed the cost of the fund — meaning the cost that is incurred by the bank to procure the money to lend — plus 15 percent of the fund. That 15 percent goes to cover operational costs and contribute to profit. In the case of Grameen Bank, the cost of fund is 10 percent. So, the maximum interest rate could be 25 percent. However, we charge 20 percent to the borrowers. The ideal “spread” between the cost of the fund and the lending rate should be close to 10 percent.
Yunus admits that he is also charging an interest of 20 per cent from the small borrowers. Agreeing that strict regulations should help in enforcing discipline, he says: "To enforce such a cap, every country where microloans are made needs a microcredit regulatory authority. Bangladesh, which has the most microcredit borrowers per square mile in the world, has had such an authority for several years, and it is devoted to ensuring transparency in lending and prevented excessive interest rates and collection practices. In the future, it may be able to accredit microfinance banks. India, with its burgeoning microcredit sector, is most in need of a similar agency."
I am afraid I do not buy the argument forwarded by Yunus. Although he blames the recent crisis that erupted in India and Latin America as the cause behind the mistrust in MFIs when he writes: "Troubles with microcredit began around 2005, when many lenders started looking for ways to make a profit on the loans by shifting from their status as nonprofit organizations to commercial enterprises. In 2007, Compartamos, a Mexican bank, became Latin America’s first microcredit bank to go public. And this past August, SKS Microfinance, the largest bank of its kind in India, raised $358 million in an initial public offering," I think he is very cleverly trying to deflect attention from the real cause.
Yunus writes: "In 1983, I founded Grameen Bank to provide small loans that people, especially poor women, could use to bring themselves out of poverty. At that time, I never imagined that one day microcredit would give rise to its own breed of loan sharks." Well, the problem actually began in 1983. Yunus did exactly what the loan sharks are doing now. The only difference being that while the loan sharks are charging 24 to 36 per cent and above (some even charging 100 per cent and still cite several case studies where poor have gained), Yunus was charging a little less.
If only people like Yunus (and those who swear in the name of the poor, and have in turn built Empires) forced the governments to provide cheaper credit to small borrowers like what is being made available to farmers I am sure a large population of the poor would have been above the poverty line by now. That is why I am convinced that MFIs are basically a crime against humanity. Tough legislation is not the answer to stem the rot. These MFIs need to be shut down, and several of those whom Yunus refers to as 'loan sharks' need to be put behind bars.
The poorest of the poor also need to be provided with cooperative loans, and Kisan Credit Cards like the farmers get. If such schemes can be implemented for farnmers who live in unreachable areas, I am sure the same provisions can be extended to other members of his family. What is needed is a political will to make this happen, and it will happen.
Till then , MFIs will continue to loot the poor.
Jan 15, 2011
GM crops: Backing Disaster (in Hindi)
तबाही की तरफदारी
दविंदर शर्मा
जैव संविर्द्धत (जीएम) फसलें एक बार फिर चर्चा में है। मार्क्सवादी कम्युनिस्ट पार्टी (माकपा) ने अपनी पूर्ववर्ती नीति से पलटी मारकर अब सार्वजनिक रूप से जीएम फसलों को समर्थन देना शुरू कर दिया है। बहस गरमा रही है। यह उसी लाइन पर जा रही है, जिस पर शरद पवार जोर दे रहे है। इसमें हैरत की बात नहीं है। मैं देर-सबेर इसकी उम्मीद कर रहा था। आखिरकार, विकिलीक्स पहले ही खुलासा कर चुका है कि भारत के राष्ट्रीय सुरक्षा सलाहकार शिवशंकर मेनन जीएम फसलों के पक्ष में राय व्यक्त कर चुके है। विकिलीक्स के एक और खुलासे में, पेरिस में अमेरिकी दूतावास ने जीएम फसलों का विरोध कर रहे यूरोप के खिलाफ वाशिंगटन को सैन्य व्यापार युद्ध छेड़ने की सलाह दी थी।
2008 में अमेरिका और स्पेन ने यूरोप में खाद्यान्न की कीमतें बढ़ने पर जीएम खाद्यान्न फसलों की आवश्यकता को उचित ठहराया था।?यूरोप अब भी जीएम फसलों को स्वीकार नहीं कर रहा है, ऐसे में केवल भारत ही निशाने पर है। 2010 के शुरू में भारत के पर्यावरण मंत्री जयराम रमेश ने बीटी बैंगन के व्यावसायीकरण को स्थगित कर दिया था। इसके बाद भारत पर अमेरिका ने कूटनीतिक और राजनीतिक दबाव बढ़ा दिया था। बहुराष्ट्रीय बीज उद्योग ने तेजी से कदम उठाते हुए बड़ी संख्या में पत्रकारों को अमेरिका की 'शैक्षिक' यात्रा कराई और भारत में भी जीएम फसलों के पक्ष में मीडिया अभियान छेड़ दिया। उसी समय, विशाल बहुराष्ट्रीय कंपनियों ने जीएम फसलों के पक्ष में राजनीतिक दृष्टिकोण को प्रभावित करने के प्रयास तेज कर दिए थे। माकपा के दृष्टिकोण में बदलाव इन्हीं प्रयासों का नतीजा है। हमें कुछ ऐसे मुद्दों की पड़ताल करना बेहद जरूरी है, जो जीएम फसलों को बढ़ावा देने के शोरशराबे में गुम हो गए है।
पहली और सबसे महत्वपूर्ण दलील यह दी जाती है कि एक अरब से अधिक की आबादी वाले देश का पेट जीएम फसलें ही भर सकती है। इससे खाद्य सुरक्षा सुनिश्चित होगी। सच्चाई इसके उलटी है। विश्व में कोई ऐसी जीएम फसल नहीं है, जो उत्पादकता को बढ़ा सके। वास्तव में, अधिकांश जीएम फसलों ने असलियत में उत्पादकता को घटाया ही है। अमेरिकी कृषि विभाग भी स्वीकार करता है कि जीएम मक्का और जीएम सोया की उत्पादकता सामान्य प्रजातियों से कम है। अगर जीएम फसलों की उत्पादकता सामान्य फसलों से भी कम है तो आश्चर्य है कि हमारे राजनेता जीएम फसलों से खाद्य सुरक्षा बढ़ने की बात क्यों कर रहे है! सच्चाई यह है कि विश्व में खाद्यान्न की कमी ही नहीं है। पृथ्वी पर 6.5 अरब लोग रहते है, जबकि खाद्यान्न का उत्पादन 11.5 अरब लोगों के लिए हो रहा है। अगर विश्व में रोजाना एक अरब से अधिक लोग भूखे पेट सोने को मजबूर है तो इसका कारण खाद्यान्न की अनुपलब्धता न होकर दोषपूर्ण वितरण प्रणाली है। यही बात भारत पर भी लागू होती है, जहां एक-तिहाई आबादी उपलब्ध भोजन खरीदने की स्थिति में नहीं है, जिसे गोदामों में चूहे चट कर रहे है।
अब तक विकसित करीब सभी जीएम फसलों की विशेषता कीटरोधी होना बताया जाता है। उदाहरण के लिए बीटी कॉटन पिंक बॉलवर्म जैसे कीटों के मारने के लिए विकसित की गई, जिससे कीटनाशकों का इस्तेमाल घट जाए। यह लंबे समय तक सही सिद्ध नहीं हुआ। चीन में, बीटी कॉटन उगाने वाले किसान अब दस फीसदी अधिक कीटनाशकों का इस्तेमाल कर रहे है।
भारत में भी, बीटी कॉटन की पैदावार में अधिक कीटनाशकों का इस्तेमाल होने लगा है। सेंट्रल इंस्टीट्यूट ऑफ कॉटन रिसर्च, नागपुर की रिपोर्ट के अनुसार, 2006 में, 640 करोड़ रुपये के कीटनाशकों का कॉटन पर छिड़काव किया गया। 2008 में यह राशि 800 करोड़ से अधिक हो गई। यहां तक कि अमेरिका में भी, जहां जीएम फसलों का बड़े पैमाने पर इस्तेमाल हो रहा है, कीटनाशकों पर खर्च 30 करोड़ डॉलर बढ़ गया है।
जीएम फसलें अपनी जड़ों के माध्यम से मिट्टी में जहरीले तत्व छोड़ती है। भारतीय कृषि अनुसंधान संस्थान के शोध के अनुसार इससे मिट्टी के लिए लाभदायक माइक्रोफ्लोरा को नुकसान पहुंचता है। किसानों की शिकायतें बढ़ती जा रही है कि बीटी कॉटन की हर अगली पैदावार पहले से कम हो रही है। इसके अलावा आंध्र प्रदेश और हरियाणा में बीटी फसल की पत्तियां खाने से पशु मर रहे है। आंध्र प्रदेश पशुपालन विभाग ने किसानों को चेतावनी जारी की है कि वे पशुओं को बीटी कॉटन के खेत में न चरने दें।
जीएम फसल कुछ ऐसे कीट भी पैदा करती है, जो किसी भी कीटनाशक से नहीं मरते। अमेरिका में, 1.5 करोड़ एकड़ जमीन पर सुपरकीट फैल चुके है। इन कीटों के फैलने से अमेरिका का जार्जिया प्रांत तेजी से बंजर होता जा रहा है। उत्तरी अमेरिका में कम से कम 30 सुपरकीट विकसित हो गए है, जो किसी भी रसायन से खत्म नहीं होते। दुनिया भर में अनेक उदाहरण है जिनसे पता चलता है कि जीएम फसल स्वास्थ्य के लिए हानिकारक है। यहां तक कि बहुराष्ट्रीय कंपनी मोंसेंटो के खुद के अध्ययन भी बताते है कि इसके कारण यूरोप में चूहों को किडनी, लिवर, पैंक्रियाज और खून की गंभीर बीमारियां हो गई है। ऑस्ट्रिया में कुछ हालिया अध्ययनों से पता चला है कि जीएम फसलों से नपुंसकता भी होती है। जिन भी वैज्ञानिकों ने जीएम फसलों के मानव शरीर पर पड़ने वाले प्रभाव पर सवाल उठाने की हिम्मत दिखाई है, उन्हें जीएम उद्योग के इशारे पर नौकरी से निकाल दिया गया।
अगर हम लोगों के हाथ में नुकसानदायक प्रौद्योगिकी सौंप देंगे तो देर-सबेर विश्व की अप्राकृतिक मौत हो जाएगी। उदाहरण के लिए सिगरेट के हर पैकेट पर स्वास्थ्य के लिए खतरनाक होने की चेतावनी छपी रहती है, फिर भी इसकी बिक्री बढ़ रही है। चूंकि यह स्वास्थ्य के लिए खतरनाक है इसलिए सरकार ने सार्वजनिक स्थानों पर इसके इस्तेमाल को प्रतिबंधित कर दिया है। क्या यह गलत फैसला है? इसी प्रकार जीएम फसलों के इस्तेमाल करने या न करने का फैसला किसानों पर नहीं छोड़ा जा सकता। किसान ताकतवर कंपनियों के आक्रामक मार्केटिंग हथकंडों के जाल में फंस जाते है। पूरा सरकारी तंत्र, कृषि विश्वविद्यालय, कंपनियां और मीडिया का एक बड़ा हिस्सा जीएम फसलों को प्रोत्साहन देने में जुटा है। किसान इनका मुकाबला नहीं कर सकते। किसानों पर दोषपूर्ण प्रौद्योगिकियां थोपने पर वे पहले ही आत्महत्या कर रहे है। हत्यारी प्रौद्योगिकियों का इस्तेमाल न रोक कर हम और कितने किसानों की हत्या करना चाहते है?
[दविंदर शर्मा: लेखक कृषि नीतियों के विश्लेषक है] http://in.jagran.yahoo.com/news/opinion/general/6_3_7168718.html
Jan 8, 2011
Another India is possible
A view of the main plenary session of the Bharat Vikas Sangam organised at Gulbarga in Karnataka from Dec 23, 2010 to Jan 1, 2011.
It was in the last week of December that I travelled to Gulbarga in Karnataka to partake in a 10-day conclave organised by Bharat Vikas Sangam. Called 'Kalburgi Kampu', the conclave aimed at bringing together "good thought and good action".
The 10-day conclave began on Dec 23 and ended on Jan 1. You can read more about what Bharat Vikas Sangam is all about at http://www.bharatvikassangam.com/?p=113
Steered by K N Govindacharya, the 10-day event daily attracted on an average between 70,000 to 100,000 people. The enthusiasm, commitment and the expectation that was amply displayed by the massive representation from all parts of the country certainly gives hope, but at the same time throws up challenges. How well we are able to utilise the swell in human energy towards equity and justice, towards sustainability and social transformation, and thereby bring about a change in mindset and attitudes will determine the future. But what seems amply clear is that the masses are keen and desperately looking for an honest leadership that can provide a viable roadmap.
In many ways, the Bharat Vikas Sangam conclave did provide an insight into what the other India looks like, what are its aspirations, and what it clamours for. To me, more than anything else, it showed that another India is possible.
It isn't easy to hold on to such large crowds. Each day, since it was divided into thematic sessions, a few thousand would pour in, while an equal number would depart after their participation. To manage this motley crowd, making suitable arrangements not only for their stay but also food was in itself a mammoth task. Every day, on an average, some 50,000 to 70,000 people were served food, and at no time did I see any brawls over food resulting from shortages, quality or simple indiscipline. Since I had earlier been at the World Social Forum in Mumbai some years back, I must say that the organisers of the WSF have a lesson or two to learn from Bharat Vikas Sangam.
Anyway, the thematic session on agriculture and rural development too was attended by thousands of people from across the country. After the main plenary, parallel sessions were held covering various aspects of farming and development. Among those who spoke and addressed the workshops were Subhash Palekar, Sangita Sharma, and Narayan Reddy.
Addressing the main plenary, I spoke about the prevailing agrarian crisis and the need to understand the reasons behind it. At a time when over 2,00,000 farmers have taken the fatal route to escape the humiliation that comes along with growing indebtedness there is a need to look into the role agricultural science and technology has played to hasten the demise of the farm. Farmers as well as the civil society therefore need to question what is promoted in the name of science, and it is only through public pressure can we force the agricultural universities and the Krishi Vigyan Kendras to change.
Farmers are also to be blamed for the present crisis. They have blindly accepted what has been told to them. In the process they have poisoned their soils, mined the underground water and contaminated the food chain by excessive use of chemical pesticides. My suggestion was that farmers need to look inwards and adopt sustainable technologies that can enhance their incomes. They need to learn from the likes of a fellow farmer Subhash Sharma who farms in the Vidharba region of Maharashtra. While hundreds farmers in his neighbourhood have committed suicide, Subhash Sharma ends up providing annual bonus and leave travel concession to his workers.
His Holiness Swami Raghvendra from Shimoga very nicely summed up the session with his brief explanation about how a greedy society is usurping the natural resources.
What kindles hope is that the message was just not lost. I was delighted to find that the audience was keen to forge linkages to not only create a wider awareness but also work out strategies for change. Across various age groups and economic levels, the urge to come together and work collectively certainly provides a lot of excitement. I am sure the organisers are aware that the hope generated by Bharat Vikas Sangam has now to be translated into a meaningful action.
The words of an agitated and visibly restless activist still haunts me: "We have come here in thousands. We have shown our solidarity. But what next?"
Jan 6, 2011
Why you should be worried of Enviropig
There is more trouble brewing on the farm front. This time it is going to hit you too. Scientists at the University of Guelph in Canada claim to have developed a genetically modified pig, very cleverly named as "Enviropig", which actually has been designed to reduce the cost of production for the industrial pig farms.
BBC explains: "Ordinarily, pigs cannot easily digest chemicals called phosphates. That means that the stuff that comes out of the back end can be toxic and damaging to the environment. The phosphates are easily washed into waterways, where they can produce a hugely fertile environment for plants. But the plants grow so rapidly that they choke the stream or river and cause huge damage to the ecosystem.
The genetic modification enables these pigs to digest phosphates, which means they are less polluting and cheaper to feed."
Basically, what it means is that scientists have ensured that GM pigs excrete less phosphorous in their feces. Two genes have been inserted into the pig genome for the purpose. One is from mice and other from E.coli bacteria. [Read the full BBC report at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12113859]
Although it is too early to predict whether the Canadian government regulators will approve the GM pig for human consumption, but knowing the way the regulatory system works worldwide and for that matter in Canada, it may be much sooner than you probably would expect. After all, the multi-million dollar hog industry needs it.
Excess phosphorous is a problem of the industrial pig farms wherein thousands of pigs are reared. So on the first hand you create a problem, and then you ask scientists to solve the problem, and in turn create hitherto unknown problems for the environment and the consumers. This is how modern science progresses. In the name of constructive application of science, it actually ends up creating more destruction in the long run.
Like Lucy Sharratt of the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network, I too am worried. I think you too should be worried if you want your children to remain healthy, wealthy and wise.
Already, if you are living in North America, you probably don't even realise that you are part of the sickest society in the rich industrialised world. More people die every year from eating food in the US for instance than anywhere else in the OECD countries. Living in times of a fast food culture, US population has been quietly been turned addictive to junk foods and carbonated drinks. The result: over 400,000 people die every year from obesity and related ailments, all resulting from contaminated foods.
Although the GM food industry has ensured that the regulatory system does not study the health impacts in a manner that can bring out the flaws, there is no evidence which shows that the stupendous rise in allergies, dementia, obesity, diabetes, heart-attacks, cancer, and you name it, is not linked to genetic modification. In fact, in the absence of a medical protocol or a medical assay you will never know if an alien gene in your food is responsible for the ailment/disease you carry.
The rise in child obesity has already made Michelle Obama launch a campaign against junk foods.
To know more about why you need to be worried, and how scientists have worked to address the problem being encountered by the pig industry, which essentially is aimed at escaping the tough environmental regulations, I suggest you read this report: 'Genetically Engineering Pigs to Support Industrial Hog Production' [available at http://bit.ly/f6iffL]. Also, here is another interesting analysis, entitled: Why the Enviropig is Full of Shit [http://bit.ly/hPgSJy].
BBC explains: "Ordinarily, pigs cannot easily digest chemicals called phosphates. That means that the stuff that comes out of the back end can be toxic and damaging to the environment. The phosphates are easily washed into waterways, where they can produce a hugely fertile environment for plants. But the plants grow so rapidly that they choke the stream or river and cause huge damage to the ecosystem.
The genetic modification enables these pigs to digest phosphates, which means they are less polluting and cheaper to feed."
Basically, what it means is that scientists have ensured that GM pigs excrete less phosphorous in their feces. Two genes have been inserted into the pig genome for the purpose. One is from mice and other from E.coli bacteria. [Read the full BBC report at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12113859]
Although it is too early to predict whether the Canadian government regulators will approve the GM pig for human consumption, but knowing the way the regulatory system works worldwide and for that matter in Canada, it may be much sooner than you probably would expect. After all, the multi-million dollar hog industry needs it.
Excess phosphorous is a problem of the industrial pig farms wherein thousands of pigs are reared. So on the first hand you create a problem, and then you ask scientists to solve the problem, and in turn create hitherto unknown problems for the environment and the consumers. This is how modern science progresses. In the name of constructive application of science, it actually ends up creating more destruction in the long run.
Like Lucy Sharratt of the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network, I too am worried. I think you too should be worried if you want your children to remain healthy, wealthy and wise.
Already, if you are living in North America, you probably don't even realise that you are part of the sickest society in the rich industrialised world. More people die every year from eating food in the US for instance than anywhere else in the OECD countries. Living in times of a fast food culture, US population has been quietly been turned addictive to junk foods and carbonated drinks. The result: over 400,000 people die every year from obesity and related ailments, all resulting from contaminated foods.
Although the GM food industry has ensured that the regulatory system does not study the health impacts in a manner that can bring out the flaws, there is no evidence which shows that the stupendous rise in allergies, dementia, obesity, diabetes, heart-attacks, cancer, and you name it, is not linked to genetic modification. In fact, in the absence of a medical protocol or a medical assay you will never know if an alien gene in your food is responsible for the ailment/disease you carry.
The rise in child obesity has already made Michelle Obama launch a campaign against junk foods.
To know more about why you need to be worried, and how scientists have worked to address the problem being encountered by the pig industry, which essentially is aimed at escaping the tough environmental regulations, I suggest you read this report: 'Genetically Engineering Pigs to Support Industrial Hog Production' [available at http://bit.ly/f6iffL]. Also, here is another interesting analysis, entitled: Why the Enviropig is Full of Shit [http://bit.ly/hPgSJy].
Jan 5, 2011
Indian Science Congress remains quiet on farmer suicides; Scientists refrain from taking responsibility
The annual science jamboree began at Katankulathur, about 40 kms from Chennai, on January 3. Yes, I am talking of the 98th Indian Science Congress which will last five days. Inaugurating the conference, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh cautioned the nation against tendencies of putting the products of science to illiberal uses.
I don't know what exactly he implied when he warned against using scientific products in an 'illiberal' manner but I for once thought the Prime Minister should have drawn the attention of the science clan to the biggest human tragedy that the country is faced with. I am talking of the great tragedy on the farm, which has already taken a mammoth human toll of over 2,15,000 farmers in the past 15 years, and the nation is still counting.
Even if the Prime Minister had not mentioned it, I strongly feel the Indian Science Congress Association (which organises this annual ritual) should have on its own focused on the national tragedy. After all, scientists cannot absolve themselves of their role in the serial death dance the countryside has been witnessing for long.
Manmohan Singh did count the breeding of new crop varieties and the advancement of agro-chemicals and pharmaceuticals as the scientific knowledge applied for constructive purposes. But what he forgot to say was that if all these were benevolent technologies than why is that a large number of farmers who have been using them over a long period have been driven to bankruptcy and mounting indebtedness. As a result hundreds of thousands of farmers have preferred to end their lives drinking the same agro-chemicals.
Agricultural scientists have refrained from not only talking but even remotely making a mention of farmer suicides. I can understand why. After all, the needle of suspicion points to them. But why should the Indian Science Congress refrain from talking about farmer suicides remains unclear. Have scientists got so disconnected with the society that they can merrily ignore the killings that go on in the name of agricultural development?
A few days before the Indian Science Congress began, I was addressing thousands of farmers and activists at the third Bharat Vikas Sangam event that concluded at Gulbarga in Karnataka on Jan 1. In my address, I did say that the 2,15,000 farmers who have killed themselves actually are victims of the faulty agricultural growth model that has been promoted for the past four decades. This is no collateral damage. Scientists have to take responsibility and must find out where have they gone wrong.
Science has to be accountable to society.
At the Indian Science Congress, it is heartening to read Nobel laureate Venkataraman Ramakrishnan acknowledge that although science is an international enterprise where the traffic should be both ways, and at present the flow from the West to India is more (The Hindu, Jan 5). No where else is the dominance of western science and technology more apparent than in the field of agriculture. And it is here that the country is faced with an unprecedented farm crisis.
Let us face it. Green Revolution has already run out of steam, and with agrarian distress visible all around, I think at least for once the Indian Science Congress would have done itself justice by focusing on the great farm disaster in the country. By doing so, they would have demonstrated what is meant by the term 'value-based application' of science.
In many ways, farmers are dying because of technology failure. The growing indebtedness in farming, is the result of unwanted technologies being forced upon small and marginal farmers. As a result soils have been poisoned, groundwater is being continuously mined, pesticides have contaminated the food chain and the environment, forcing the farmers to the gallows. When will scientists find time to deliberate on the biggest tragedy that has hit India since Independence? Is it because of the fear that the finger might point to farm scientists that the Indian Science Congress invariably refrains from launching a scientific inquest into farmer suicides?
I don't know what exactly he implied when he warned against using scientific products in an 'illiberal' manner but I for once thought the Prime Minister should have drawn the attention of the science clan to the biggest human tragedy that the country is faced with. I am talking of the great tragedy on the farm, which has already taken a mammoth human toll of over 2,15,000 farmers in the past 15 years, and the nation is still counting.
Even if the Prime Minister had not mentioned it, I strongly feel the Indian Science Congress Association (which organises this annual ritual) should have on its own focused on the national tragedy. After all, scientists cannot absolve themselves of their role in the serial death dance the countryside has been witnessing for long.
Manmohan Singh did count the breeding of new crop varieties and the advancement of agro-chemicals and pharmaceuticals as the scientific knowledge applied for constructive purposes. But what he forgot to say was that if all these were benevolent technologies than why is that a large number of farmers who have been using them over a long period have been driven to bankruptcy and mounting indebtedness. As a result hundreds of thousands of farmers have preferred to end their lives drinking the same agro-chemicals.
Agricultural scientists have refrained from not only talking but even remotely making a mention of farmer suicides. I can understand why. After all, the needle of suspicion points to them. But why should the Indian Science Congress refrain from talking about farmer suicides remains unclear. Have scientists got so disconnected with the society that they can merrily ignore the killings that go on in the name of agricultural development?
A few days before the Indian Science Congress began, I was addressing thousands of farmers and activists at the third Bharat Vikas Sangam event that concluded at Gulbarga in Karnataka on Jan 1. In my address, I did say that the 2,15,000 farmers who have killed themselves actually are victims of the faulty agricultural growth model that has been promoted for the past four decades. This is no collateral damage. Scientists have to take responsibility and must find out where have they gone wrong.
Science has to be accountable to society.
At the Indian Science Congress, it is heartening to read Nobel laureate Venkataraman Ramakrishnan acknowledge that although science is an international enterprise where the traffic should be both ways, and at present the flow from the West to India is more (The Hindu, Jan 5). No where else is the dominance of western science and technology more apparent than in the field of agriculture. And it is here that the country is faced with an unprecedented farm crisis.
Let us face it. Green Revolution has already run out of steam, and with agrarian distress visible all around, I think at least for once the Indian Science Congress would have done itself justice by focusing on the great farm disaster in the country. By doing so, they would have demonstrated what is meant by the term 'value-based application' of science.
In many ways, farmers are dying because of technology failure. The growing indebtedness in farming, is the result of unwanted technologies being forced upon small and marginal farmers. As a result soils have been poisoned, groundwater is being continuously mined, pesticides have contaminated the food chain and the environment, forcing the farmers to the gallows. When will scientists find time to deliberate on the biggest tragedy that has hit India since Independence? Is it because of the fear that the finger might point to farm scientists that the Indian Science Congress invariably refrains from launching a scientific inquest into farmer suicides?
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