Opinion Get down to weeding
Some proposals in the seeds bill need further deliberation.
A new seeds bill should ideally work with three objectives. One,since the farmer is now working in a fast-growing economy with rapidly expanding demand,there should be access to available technologies in a wide range of crops. Grain demand may grow only by around a third of 1 per cent when poor families have more income and it may even be less for non-poor families. But the demand for many other food items grow by up to double the rate of income growth. Since irrigation is not expanding much,most of this growth has to come from seeds and other inputs. Two,there should be control on spurious seeds that are sold to farmers. This would include unregistered Bt seeds. Three,the farmer should be given compensation if he is sold rotten seeds that dont give the promised returns. There is a technological and an economic aspect to the problem.
The draft seeds bill is fairly comprehensive on technological aspects. It would have been better if it had been synchronised with the new regulatory mechanisms that are proposed for biotechnology,since in this aspect it is now coordinated with the existing legislation,which the earlier environment minister had treated with scant respect in his otherwise great innings. However,one suspects this coordination will take place later. As the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission,Montek Singh Ahluwalia,said,the government works in silos. For technology,the bill relies on the department of agriculture and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research. The agricultural production commissioner and the ICARs deputy director-general for seeds are all very respected functionaries and can be relied upon to perform their role well in the mandated committee in the new legislation. But they also have to plan for production,export and import and so on. These are not technological but economic issues.
On technological aspects,the answer should be yes or no. The draft bill,however,also allows them to say maybe and,worse,say yes now but maybe and possibly no in the future. I worry myself sick when sarkar gets this kind of discretionary powers. For one thing,unscrupulous elements can take advantage of them. For another,they encourage procrastination in matters that are terribly important to the nation. And what is better than maybe for a committee to take as a decision?
A dangerous aspect is the possibility of a group of very distinguished technologists making assessments of economic profitability,about how much to produce and supply when a decision is taken on import and export. They can and must make certain decisions for instance,they can point out that if a certain variety of seed is used,it could enter the food chain in a dangerous way and therefore its use must be prohibited. Such issues are too serious to be left to bureaucrats or businesspeople,or to busybody NGOs. But once technologists green-light something,the market and not they should decide how much and when. They dont have the skills to take decisions on the economic aspect. The farmer knows how much he needs and will push the market and trade accordingly.
The other troubling aspect is the gargantuan bureaucracy that the bill,if legislated in this form,could spawn at the Centre,the states and lower down the rung for registration and control. Now,I really dont know the solution to this one. It is true that the Bt cotton bit was a disaster. A Gujarati technologist-businessman had produced the first seed. It caught like wildfire in Gujarat,Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh and about 1.5 million farmers were his customers. It was not contraband then. In fact,Gujarats cotton cooperatives propagated it. It became a huge problem later although he still swears that the seed was modified,not genetically engineered. In those days,I argued that we should have a consortium between the big boys and the small operators since the latter are many in number and the big companies only about a score. We could and should control the development and first introduction of seeds by the big names,who would franchise the others. The system could work like controllers of pesticide,fertiliser or drug. But the government seems intent to permit,monitor and control everything.
The bill is good at protecting farmers rights,but does little to give them access to technological progress. Anyway,we should look forward to the Lok Sabha discussing and solving a real problem. It is of great concern to Indias future.
The writer,a former Union minister,is chairman,Institute of Rural Management,Anand
express@expressindia.com
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