Saying no to BT-VANGI BATH

BENGALURU: It is green and round with white stripes, and has small spines on the stalk. The story has it that saint Vadiraja gave the seeds of this plain-looking brinjal variety to impoverished villagers of Mattu to help them find a livelihood other than fishing. Now, Mattu gulla (brinjal) grown only in this Udupi village is exported, and sought after by homesick Kannadigas.
Back home in Mattu, certain traditions remain.For close to 500 years, the first harvest is presented to Udupi Sri Krishna temple via the nearby Sode Vadiraja Matha. From there it goes into making gulla sambar for hungry pilgrims as part of the daily free meals at the temple. “Apparently there are old records instructing how many brinjals to use, say if there are 100 people to eat. It was part of Vadiraja’s management,” says Udaya Kumar Saralattaya, pandit at the Matha.
Such living traditions are not enough for farmers like Lakshman Mattu from the village. “We researched the history and got the GI (Geographical Indications) tag saying that this brinjal grows only here. Next year we will put stickers with our trademark to prevent duplicates from being sold as Mattu gulla,” he says.
Lakshman is not being paranoid. When genetically modified Bt brinjal was approved for commercial production in 2009, Mattu gulla was one of the varieties that were set to be transformed and made ‘pesticide-free’ by the insertion of a gene from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis. “If Bt brinjal had come out, we would’ve had to go to corporates for seeds. I am not sure about the health issues from eating such brinjals,” says Lakshman, articulating some of the well-known concerns about genetically modified (GM) food and proprietary ownership of seeds by biotech giants.
GREEN WORRIES
There were other, lesser-known concerns. Leo Saldanha and Bhargavi Rao of Environment Support Group and organic farmers Vivek and Juli Cariappa realized that farmers like Lakshman, considered owners of local varieties, had no clue about how their crop was being put to use. Bt brinjal was India’s first GM food crop that got approval for commercialization. “Sixteen farmers’ varieties, all popular ones, were accessed by seed company Mahyco with three Indian institutes to be modified, tested and commoditized since 2003-04. These varieties are sovereign property of the local communities and if you are accessing them, you need to take permission according to the Biological Diversity Act,” says Saldanha. Their complaints and interventions, eventually led to the filing of the first bio-piracy case by the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA).
Back in 2009, bio-piracy wasn’t a hot topic though India had by then fought off US corporate patents claiming Basmati rice and neem. The GM debate, which started with the introduction of Bt cotton by a joint venture of Mahyco and US agritech-giant Monsanto in 2002, centred around health, environment and seed ownership. Once the news of Bt brinjal commercialization came out, the war of words started again and the then environment minister Jairam Ramesh decided to hold public consultations.
TIMELY ALERT
Saldanha and his colleagues were preparing for the last such consultation to be held in Bengaluru in 2010 when Cariappa alerted them about trials involving local brinjal varieties. Cariappa was part of the Organic Farming Mission of the Karnataka government then, and in one of the meetings the vice-chancellor of the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS), Dharwad, talked about the Bt brinjal trials. UAS, along with Tamil Nadu Agriculture University, and Indian Institute of Vegetable Research got the Bt technology for free from Mahyco under a public-private partnership, and used it on local brinjal varieties in their possession. “I asked him how the university can use the seeds without permission, the vice-chancellor kept talking about the university being an autonomous body. The minister wasn’t saying much,” recalls Cariappa from his farm in HD Kote near Mysuru. Since he knew Saldanha, he called him up and alerted him.
“It was a scam because everyone knew that using the seeds without permission was in violation of the Biological Diversity Act,” says Saldanha. The activists wrote to the universities seeking information about whether they took permission from the state biodiversity board and NBA to use the seeds. “We spoke to the chairman of NBA and confirmed that none of these institutions complied with this provision,” says Saldanha, who had by then verified the minutes of the meeting of the NBA to see whether this matter had come to them for clearance.
The activists say they have been on the lookout ever since Bt cotton got approved by the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee. “Within a year, there was a lot of concern as the proprietary control of seeds was to the advantage of the company. A foreign company like Monsanto has 26 percent stake in Mahyco whereas the Biodiversity Act mandates that any foreign participation in accessing India’s biodiversity has to be done after taking permission. We raised all these concerns and wrote a complaint to the state biodiversity board,” says Saldanha. But the going wasn’t easy. “There was resistance from the government side to launch a criminal prosecution on grounds of bio-piracy for more than two years. It ended only after we filed a PIL in the High Court,” he says.
WHEELS IN MOTION
After some persuasion and explanation of the relatively new Biological Diversity Act, the state board took up the complaint. By the time KS Sugara, now additional principal chief conservator of forests, became head of the state board, he wanted to make a watertight case. Investigations were conducted, evidence gathered and finally, they were ready to start prosecution in 2012. “The Act was nascent at that time, and not many in judicial circles knew about it. It took us three hours to convince the judicial magistrate first class at Dharwad to convince that such an act was there and get the complaint admitted against Mahyco, UAS and Sathguru Consultants,” says Sugara.
Adithya Sondhi, senior advocate and additional advocate general to the Karnataka government, was the lawyer consulting for NBA. “On review of the case papers we found that there was prima facie some basis to pursue the matter as the prior approval of the NBA had not been taken by the parties concerned to implement agreements that provided for genetic modification of local brinjal varieties,” writes Sondhi in an email interview.
The case was unique to these seasoned officers of law and officials. “It was unique because it not only applied a new statute but sought to prosecute both private persons and a state university and its vice-chancellor. The challenge was to ensure that the appropriate officers filed the complaint and the accused were duly arrayed since the offences were by corporate entities and a university,” says Sondhi.
That was indeed a challenge as Sugara found out that two of these officers were transferred right before the complaint was to be filed at the Dharwad court. He says there was no political pressure but “these were powerful men who were named in the complaint. Finally I didn’t release the officers and filed the case,” says Sugara.
There have been several legal interventions in this case. “UAS challenged the proceedings before the Dharwad bench of the high court. Ultimately, the high court dismissed UAS's petition and permitted the magistrate to continue with the trial,” says Sondhi.
It is against this order that UAS has approached the Supreme Court. Noticing that this is a ‘first of its kind’ case, the Supreme Court has directed expedited hearing of the appeal, says Sondhi.
The moratorium on Bt brinjal imposed by the environment ministry continues. “We are awaiting details regarding further studies to be conducted from the regulatory authority,” says a Mahyco spokesperson.
Saldanha tries to shrug off the current legal limbo and is pursuing a petition seeking to amend a provision of the Biodiversity Act itself. Sugara says though the legal process seems to be taking time, the bio-piracy case has acted as a deterrent. Sondhi says he is unaware of other such complaints filed by the NBA. “The (Biodiversity) Act was a singular gain in the battle to preserve our biodiversity and its application will determine how far India goes in this effort,” he says.