by VANDANA SHIVA
In an interview to the journal Science, the Indian Prime Minister Dr. Man Mohan Singh, chose to focus on two hazardous technologies – genetically engineered seeds and crops in agriculture and nuclear power – as vital to the progress of science in India, and the “salvation for finding new development pathways for developing our economy”.
He also identified NGO’s as blocking this “development”, and involved the foreign hand.
The Prime Minister’s interview saddened me. It saddened me because the Prime Minister seems out of touch with science, as well as the people of India whose will he is supposed to represent in a democracy. To label the democratic voices of the citizens of India as “foreign” and as “unthinking” is an insult to democracy, to the people of India, and to the part of the scientific community which is dedicated to science in the public interest and to understanding the safety aspects of hazardous technologies like nuclear and genetic engineering. The Prime Minister’s statement is also a trivialization of the regulatory framework for biosafety and nuclear safety.
It is because these technologies have safety implications in the context of the environment and public health, we have national and international laws on Biosafety in the context of GMO’s, and nuclear safety in the context of nuclear power. The Prime Minister should be legally bound by these frameworks. The debate on safety is vital to our science, our democracy and our ecological security, food security and health security.
The Prime Minister is misleading the nation by making it appear that the only voices raising caution in the context of these hazardous technologies are “foreign funded NGO’s”. The most significant voice on Biosafety is Dr. Pushpa Bhargava who is the father of molecular biology in India and is the Supreme Court Appointee on the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee which is the Statutory Body which regulates GMO’s for Biosafety under the 1989 rules of the Environment Protection Act. Dr. Bhargava was also on the National Knowledge Commission.
The most important voice for nuclear safety is Dr. A Gopalakrishnan, the former Atomic Energy Regulatory Board Chairman.
The Prime Minister should be listening to these eminent experts for the development of a responsible and democratic science, not creating a bogey of the “foreign hand” and starting a witch hunt of public interest groups and social movements who are the very life blood of a democracy.
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