Developing appropriate technology: Africa and China
Suicide seeds? biotechnology meets the developmental state
Why farmers in India are making their own decisions on biotechnology
Authors:
R. Herring
Publisher:
Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania, 2008
This article examines the biotechnology debate in India focusing on transgenic seeds. The author presents the rifts and battles in this sector, highlighting the influence of farmers, journalists, environmental activists, government officials, and the international community.
Biotechnology is presented within national policy as capable of combatting diseases and nutritional deficiencies, increase agricultural production, and protect the environment. The main question posed in this article is why would a developing state promote a technology that well-respected Indian activists call 'suicidal' - destructive of farmers and agriculture, the very aspects it claims to encourage and preserve?
The author observes that farmers, the primary stakeholders in the agricultural sector, have been left out of the biotechnology debate. The article points out, based on the transgenic cottons case study, that whatever the discourse on biotechnology, Indian farmers are making their own decisions. Even if transgenic seeds are bureaucratically restricted or too expensive, farmers are starting to develop, trade, and save their own stealth seeds.
The article concludes that Delhi has fallen far short of the broad aspirations implied by the government’s vision on biotechnology and recommends that India will have to find a more active, creative and effective developmental state that has been in place so far.
