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A letter to Lula (Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2003 -- CropChoice guest commentary) --
New Delhi, September 27, 2003
Mr. President of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
Your Excellency,
There was a lot of expectation from you when you took over as President
of Brazil. Soon after you took over, and by that time the promises you
made during your election campaigns were still afresh in your mind, you
launched the 'Zero Hunger' Programme. Brazil appreciated that. The world
applauded your vision.
But the complete turn around that you have taken to support the
cultivation of genetically modified crops clearly demonstrates that no
political leader has the moral courage to stand up to the power of
money. You have not only succumbed to the pressure of the rich and the
powerful, you have also undone the so-called 'great' task that you
launched -- to eradicate hunger.
Genetically modified crops only add to hunger. These crops do not
eradicate hunger. If you have time, please do take a look at my enclosed
article that analyses the grave implications of genetically modified
crops.
Every head of State, for reasons that are obvious, spares no effort to
mingle with the industry and the pro-industry scientists. British Prime
Minister Tony Blair leads that trail. The same leaders have no time to
meet the poor, in fact they hate to be with the poor. You are no
exception. The Indian Prime Minister, whom you can see every other day
with the industrialists, has not even once visited a single village in
the country in the past five years. India, as you know is a country that
is essentially a conglomeration of villages -- more than 80 per cent of
the country's population lives in some 600,000 villages!
You too have forgotten your villages, and your people. The road map
after you ascend the country's highest office does not face the
villages. You followed the dictum. And so you hobnobbed with the
industrialists and transgenic supporters to unleash a new battle for the
average citizen -- surviving against the onslaught and exploitation of
the multinational seed and biotechnology companies. In the bargain, you
have sown the seeds of despair. You have brought in a recipe for
exacerbating hunger.
Mr President, the world is being clearly divided into two parts -- the
rich and industrialised will produce staple foods, and countries like
yours (and mine) will produce crops like strawberries, melons, cut
flowers to meet the luxury requirement of the bold and beautiful.
Multinational food and agribusiness companies are therefore making an
all out effort to destroy the strong foundations of food
self-sufficiency. We are fast heading towards a stage wherein farmers
have become the most endangered species, and you are aware of the
efforts that the WTO is making in this direction.
History still gives you an opportunity to rectify your mistake. You can
surely make an effort to talk to your people, in an equalitarian and
democratic way, to understand what is good for your country. You can
surely have faith on the wisdom of your own people. This is exactly what
Mahatma Gandhi stood for. This is what you too need to acknowledge.
You should know, Mr President, that there are no studies at all that
prove the safety of those organisms genetically modified in any country
both for the consumers' health and for the environment, and that an
eventual liberation would pose a serious threat over the food
sovereignty of the Brazilians and against the economy of this country,
that has been reaching successive superavits of exportations due exactly
to the fact that Brazil is widely recognized in the global markets as a
genetically modified free country.
Brazil will surely remember you. But for reasons that are just the
opposite for what you stood for at the time of elections.
Thanking you.
Sincerely yours,
Devinder Sharma
New Delhi, India.
cc:
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Attachment with the letter:
From: Hindu Business Line, July 31, 2001
UNDP's Human Development Report 2001
By Devinder Sharma
India's former Prime Minister, the late Mr Morarji Desai, strictly
followed an unwritten principle. He would not inaugurate any conference,
whether national or international, which did not focus on rural
development. It so happened that it was during his tenure that the
aircraft industry had planned a conference in New Delhi. For the
aircraft industry, the inauguration of the international conference by
anyone other than the Prime Minister was not palatable and for obvious
reasons.
Knowing well that the Prime Minister would not make an exception, the
aircraft industry came out with an imaginative title for the conference:
"Aerodynamics and rural development"!
The global community - market forces and its supporters - too are
following Morarji Desai's prescription. Agricultural biotechnology
advances are being desperately promoted in the name of eradicating
hunger and poverty. The misguided belief that the biotechnological
silver bullet can "solve" hunger, malnutrition and real poverty has
prompted the industry and the development community, political masters
and the policy makers, agricultural scientists and the economists to
chant the mantra of "harnessing technology to address specific problems
facing poor people" And in the bargain, what is being very conveniently
overlooked is the fact that what the world's 840 million hungry need is
just food, which is abundantly available.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) annual Human Development
Report 2001, entitled "Making New Technologies Work for Human
Development" is yet another biotechnology industry-sponsored study that
categorically mentions on the one hand that "technology is created in
response to market pressures - not the needs of poor people, who have
little purchasing power," and yet, goes on unabashedly to eulogies the
virtues of an untested technology in the laboratories of the North,
which are being pushed onto the gullible resource-poor communities of
the South and that too in the name of eradicating hunger and poverty.
The report states that emerging centres of excellence throughout the
developing world are already providing hard evidence of the potential
for harnessing cutting-edge science and technology (as biotechnology is
fondly called) to tackle centuries-old problems of human poverty. But
what the report does not mention is the fact that the biggest challenge
facing the global community is increasing hunger and poverty in the
developing countries, which need to be tackled by a social and political
commitment rather than a market-driven technological agenda.
To say "if the developing community turns its back on the explosion of
technological innovation in food, medicine and information, it risks
marginalising itself." is in reality a desperate effort to ensure that
the American economic interests are not sacrificed at the altar of
development. Such is the growing desperation at the growing isolation of
the United States in the global food market because of its "transgenic'
food that all kinds of permutations and combinations, including
increased food aid to Africa's school-going children, are being
attempted. The deft manipulation of the prestigious UNDP's Human
Development Report (HDR) to push forth the American farm interests,
however, will cast an ominous shadow over the credibility of the future
UN programmes for human development.
In agriculture, the HDR cites plant breeding promises to generate higher
yields and resistance to drought, pests and diseases. Biotechnology
offers the only or the best 'tool of choice' for marginal ecological
zones - left behind by the green revolution but home to more than half
the world's poorest people, dependent on agriculture and livestock. It
is true that green revolution left behind the small and marginal farmers
living in some of the world's most inhospitable areas. But the way the
tools of the cutting-edge technology are being applied and are being
blindly promoted, biotechnology will certainly bypass the world's hungry
and marginalised.
A third of the world's hungry and marginalised live in India. And if
India alone were to launch a frontal attack on poverty eradication and
feeding its 320 million hungry, much of the world's hunger problem would
be resolved.
Never before in contemporary history has the mankind been witness to
such a glaring and shameful 'paradox of plenty'. In India alone, more
than 60 million tonnes of foodgrains are stacked, bulk of it in the
open, while some 320 million go to bed hungry every night. In
neighbouring Bangladesh and Pakistan too, food silos are bursting. And
yet, these three countries are home to nearly half the world's
population of hungry and the marginalised. While none of these countries
has shown the political courage to use the mountains of foodgrain
surplus to address the age-old problem of hunger, the international
scientific and development community too is equally guilty by turning a
blind eye to the biggest human folly of the 21st century.
After all, science and technology is aimed at removing hunger. The green
revolution was aimed at addressing the problem of hunger, and did a
remarkable job within its limitation. And now, when we have stockpiles
of food surpluses, the global community appears reluctant to make the
food available to the marginalised communities who cannot afford to buy
the rotting stocks. No aid agency, including the so-called philanthropic
ones: Ford, Rockefeller, ActionAid, Christian Aid, Oxfam, British BFID
and the likes are willing to take the bull by the horn. The Food and
Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), which works for
reducing hunger, too has shied away from this Herculean task. It has
instead convened a meeting of the Heads of State at Rome in November,
five years after the World Food Summit, to reiterate its promise of
halving world's hunger by the year 2015.
The reality of hunger and malnutrition is too harsh to be even properly
understood. Hunger cannot be removed by producing transgenic crops with
genes for Vitamin A. Hunger cannot be addressed by providing mobile
phones to the rural communities. Nor can it be eradicated by providing
the poor and hungry with an 'informed choice' of novel foods. Somehow,
the authors of the HDR have missed the ground realities, missed the
realities from the commercial interests of the biotechnology industries.
In their over-enthusiasm to promote an expensive technology at the cost
of the poor, they have forgotten that biotechnology has the potential to
further the great divide between the haves and have-nots. No policy
directive can help in bridging this monumental gap. The twin engines of
economic growth - the technological revolution and globalisation - will
only widen the existing gap. Biotechnology will, in reality, push more
people in the hunger trap. With public attention and resources being
diverted from the ground realities, hunger will only grow in the years
to come.
It does not, however, mean that this writer is against technology. The
wheels of technological development are essential for every society but
have to be used in a way that helps promote human development.
Technology cannot be blindly promoted, as the UNDP report does, in an
obvious effort to bolster the industry's interests. Ignoring food
security in the name of ensuring 'profit security' for the private
companies, can further marginalise the gains, if any. And herein lies a
grave danger.
While the political leadership and the development community is
postponing till the year 2015 the task to halve the number of the
world's hungry, the scientific community too has found an easy escape
route. At almost all the genetic engineering laboratories, whether in
the North or in the South, the focus of research is on crops which will
produce edible vaccines, address the problems of malnutrition or 'hidden
hunger' by incorporating genes for Vit A, iron, and other
micro-nutrients. But what is not being realised is that if the global
scientific and development community were to aim at eradicating hunger
at the first place, there would be no 'hidden hunger'.
Take, for instance, the much-touted 'golden rice', the rice which
contains the genes for Vit A. It is true that there are 12 million
people in India alone who suffer from Vit A deficiency. To say that
'golden rice' would provide the poor with a choice of such 'novel foods'
is to ignore the realities. It is also known that almost the entire Vit
A deficient population in India lives in marginalised areas and comprise
people who cannot or who do not have access to two square meals a day.
If only these hungry people were to get their adequate dietary intake or
the two square meals a day, they would not suffer from Vit A deficiency
or for that matter any other micro-nutrient deficiency. If these poor
people cannot afford to buy their normal dietary requirement of rice for
a day, how do we propose to make available 'golden rice' to them is
something that has been deliberately left unanswered.
And this reminds me of what exactly another former Indian Prime
Minister, the late Mrs Indira Gandhi, used to do when it came to
addressing problems. If the ethnic crisis confronting the northeast
Indian State of Assam becomes unmanageable and goes out of her hands,
she would create another problem in northwestern Punjab. In simple
words, the national attention gets diverted to the fresh crisis
confronting Punjab, and the country would forget Assam. And when
terrorism in Punjab goes out control, create another problem in down
south, in Tamil Nadu. And slowly, people would forget about Punjab. For
political leaders, Mrs Gandhi's proven mantra does provide an easy
escape route. And this is exactly what they intend to do when the Heads
of State of 170-odd countries would gather at the World Food Summit Plus
Five in Rome in November.
Scientists, development agencies and the policy makers (and now of
course the United Nations) too seem to have derived their futuristic
vision from the political sagacity of Mrs Indira Gandhi. After all, the
only way to divert the attention of international community from the
more pressing and immediate problems of abject hunger and poverty is to
either postpone the priorities for removal of hunger (and that too by
only a half) to the year 2015 as the FAO has done or is to talk of the
virtues and potentials of biotechnology for eradicating 'hidden hunger'
and malnutrition in the next two decades.
Who will take on the biggest challenge of all times - the elimination of
hunger - which forms the root cause of real poverty and the lopsided
human development is an issue no one is willing to stick his neck out
for. With even the UNDP buckling under industrial pressure, the
monumental task to feed the hungry - and that too at a time when food
grains are rotting - may eventually be left to the market forces. The
underlying message is very clear: the poor and hungry will have to live
on hope. #
(Devinder Sharma is a New Delhi-based food and trade policy analyst.
Among his recent works include two books: GATT to WTO: Seeds of Despair
and In the Famine Trap. His email contact is: dsharma@ndf.vsnl.net.in)
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